The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society
History
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
The recent condition of the Jews and Catholics in England, is a still
better illustration of the political condition of the Strangers in
Israel. Rothschild, the late English banker, though the richest private
citizen in the world, and perhaps master of scores of English servants,
who sued for the smallest crumbs of his favor, was, as a subject of the
government, inferior to the veriest scavenger among them. Suppose an
Englishman, of the Established Church, were by law deprived of power to
own the soil, made ineligible to office, and deprived unconditionally of
the electoral franchise, would Englishmen think it a misapplication of
language, if it were said, "The government rules over that man with
rigor?" And yet his life, limbs, property, reputation, conscience, all
his social relations, the disposal of his time, the right of locomotion
at pleasure, and of natural liberty in all respects, are just as much
protected by law as the Lord Chancellor's. The same was true of all "the
strangers within the gates" among the Israelites: Whether these
Strangers were the servants of Israelitish masters, or the masters of
Israelitish servants, whether sojourners, or bought servants, or born in
the house, or hired, or neither--_all were protected equally with the
descendants of Abraham._
Finally--As the Mosaic system was a great compound type, made up of
innumerable fractional ones, each rife with meaning in doctrine and
duty; the practical power of the whole, depended upon the exact
observance of those distinctions and relations which constituted its
significancy. Hence, the care everywhere shown to preserve inviolate the
distinction between a _descendant of Abraham_ and a _Stranger_, even
when the Stranger was a proselyte, had gone through the initiatory
ordinances, entered the congregation, and become incorporated with the
Israelites by family alliance. The regulation laid down in Exodus xxi.
2-6, is an illustration, _"If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years
shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If
he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married,
then, his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a
wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters; the wife and her
children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if
the servant should plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my
children, I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto
the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post;
and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall
serve him forever."_ In this case, the Israelitish servant, whose term
expired in six years, married one of his master's _permanent female
domestics_; but the fact of her marriage, did not release her master
from _his_ part of the contract for her whole term of service, nor
absolve him from his legal obligation to support and educate her
children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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