3. But does the prediction of the oppression of a people justify that oppression? Verily it does not. The Lord said unto Abraham that his seed should be afflicted in a strange land four hundred years. But who will pretend to justify the Egyptian task-masters on the plea that the affliction of Israel had been predicted? The divine prescience sees all things at one glance, and may inspire men to prophesy, but prophecy touches not the moral agency of men. When our Lord was crucified, the "scripture was fulfilled," but they who crucified him were murderers, nevertheless. Hence, even should we admit that the curse pronounced on Canaan was of divine authority, and that it meant slavery, no stronger apology for slaveholding could be derived therefrom than Egyptian oppressors might have drawn from the words of Jehovah, for the affliction of Israel in Egypt four hundred years. The cases are parallel. 4. But the argument is utterly baseless because American slaves are not the posterity of Canaan, upon whom the curse was pronounced, and hence that anathema affords just as good an apology for the enslavement of Englishmen as colored Americans. Ham had four sons,--Cush, Misriam, Phut, and Canaan, and the curse was directed against _Canaan_ or Canaan's posterity. But, says one, are not the negroes children of Canaan? By no means. No scholar has ever pretended that Canaan was the progenitor of the negro race. The sacred penman is very careful to put this matter _beyond dispute_. He says: "And Canaan begat Sidon his first born, and Heth, and the Jubisite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite; and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad. And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest unto Sodom and Gomorrah, and Admah and Zeboim, even unto Lasha." Gen. 10: 15-19. Now these nations and boundaries were all located in Asia, and we have no evidence of the subsequent removal of any of the posterity of Canaan to Africa except it be the founders of Carthage,--a city which was long mistress of the sea, and the proud rival of imperial Rome. The Carthaginians were supposed to be the descendants of Canaan. This curse, therefore, did not allude to slavery, but servitude; and as it is a mere prediction of what would be the relation of Canaan's posterity it afforded no apology for the oppression of that posterity;[6] and finally the Africans and colored Americans _are not the descendants of Canaan_, and hence, the passage can have no application to them; and affords _just as good authority_ for the enslavement of Englishmen, Dutchmen and Frenchmen as negroes.