It may be replied, if this be so, it presents slavery in a worse light still, for it encourages and perpetuates a state of universal concubinage. But it is _not_ so. When a slave takes a companion, and they consent and engage to live together as husband and wife until death, and they thus declare their intentions before others, whether any legal form is gone through or not, they are as truly "no more twain but one flesh" as were Adam and Eve. It has been thus decided by our courts in regard to white persons. [H] Rev. R. I. Breckenridge, D. D. [I] Mehemet Ali. [J] The publishers understand the writer to mean, that the working of them without wages,--the withholding that which is just and equal,--should be immediately and universally abandoned, and that emancipation should be granted as speedily as the slaves can be prepared to use and enjoy their freedom. The right should be acknowledged, and the needful means for its security immediately used. The writer does not say, that holding men in bondage is not generally sinful, nor that all sin should not be immediately repented of and forsaken, but only that there may be exceptions where for a time, and under very peculiar circumstances, it may not be sinful, and cannot consistently with the greatest good be abandoned, without some previous means of preparation. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Three Prize Essays on American Slavery, by R. B. Thurston and A.C. Baldwin and Timothy Williston