been guilty of crimes to one another; though we suppose them to have been the most abandoned and execrable of men, yet are they perfectly innocent with respect to you receivers.  You have no right to touch even the hair of their heads without their own consent.  It is not your money, that can invest you with a right.  Human liberty can neither be bought nor sold.  Every lash that you give them is unjust.  It is a lash against nature and religion, and will surely stand recorded against you, since they are all, with respect to your impious selves, in a state of nature; in a state of original dissociation; perfectly free.

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FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 109:  See Part II Chapter I second paragraph.]

[Footnote 110:  See Part II Chapter IX last paragraph.]

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CHAP.  XI.

Having now considered both the commerce and slavery, it remains only to collect such arguments as are scattered in different parts of the work, and to make such additional remarks, as present themselves on the subject.

And first, let us ask you, who have studied the law of nature, and you, who are learned in the law of the land, if all property must not be inferiour in its nature to its possessor, or, in other words, (for it is a case, which every person must bring home to his own breast) if you suppose that any human being can have a property in yourselves?  Let us ask you appraisers, who scientifically know the value of things, if any human creature is equivalent only to any of the trinkets that you wear, or at most, to any of the horses that you ride:  or in other words, if you have ever considered the most costly things that you have valued, as equivalent to yourselves? Let us ask you rationalists, if man, as a reasonable being, is not accountable for his actions, and let us put the same question to you, who have studied the divine writings?  Let us ask you parents, if ever you thought that you possessed an authority as such, or if ever you expected a duty from your sons; and let us ask you sons, if ever you felt an impulse in your own breasts to obey your parents.  Now, if you should all answer as we could wish, if you should all answer consistently with reason, nature, and the revealed voice of God, what a dreadful argument will present itself against the commerce and slavery of the human species, when we reflect, that no man whatever can be bought or reduced to the situation of a slave, but he must instantly become a brute, he must instantly be reduced to the value of those things, which were made for his own use and convenience; he must instantly cease to be accountable for his actions, and his authority as a parent, and his duty as a son, must be instantly no more.