We do not here call in question the mitigations with which Christian masters temper into mildness the hard working of an evil system. Those mitigations do not, however, logically or morally defend slavery. Nay, they condemn it; for they are practical tributes to the fact that the laws of humanity, not of property, are binding in respect to the slaves. Hence they really show the inherent inconsistency of the idea, and the unrighteousness of the system which regards men as property. Notwithstanding those mitigations, the system itself, like every wrong system, produces characteristic evils, which can be prevented only by removing their cause, the false doctrine that men can be rightfully held in ownership. Fallen as man is, no prophet was needed to foretell at the first the dreadful facts that have been recorded in the bitter history of man's claim of property in man. Such a history must always be a scroll written within and without with lamentations and mourning and woe. Man is not a safe depositary of such power. A human institution which subverts a divine institution, and which carries with it the assumption of a divine prerogative in constituting a new species of property, naturally saps the foundations of every other divine institution and law which stands in its way. Hence, for example, the fall of the domestic institution before that of slavery. The inherent wrongfulness of American slavery as a legal and social institution is therefore clearly demonstrated. It formally abolishes by law and usage a divine institution. Hence, in its practical operation, it sets aside other divine institutions and laws. Consequently it stands in the same relations to the divine government with the abolition of the Sabbath by infidel France, and with the perversion of the family institution by the Mormon territory of Utah. Here the fundamental argument from the Bible rests. But slavery justifies itself by the Bible. It becomes essential, therefore, to examine the validness of this justification. There are but two possible ways of avoiding the conclusion that has been reached. To vindicate slavery it must be proved, first, that God has abolished the original institution, conferring on men universally the right to hold property; or, secondly, it must be proved, that, while he has by special enactments taken away from a portion of mankind the right to hold property, he has given to other men the right to hold the former as property. Further, to justify American slavery, it must be shown that these special enactments include the African race and the American States.