scholars indeed! if, after so many lessons from proficients in the art, who drive the business by wholesale, they should not occasionally copy their betters, fall into the fashion, and try their hand in a small way, at a practice which is the only permanent and universal business carried on around them!  Ignoble truly! never to feel the stirrings of high impulse, prompting them to imitate the eminent pattern set before them in the daily vocation of “Honorables” and “Excellencies,” and to emulate the illustrious examples of Doctor of Divinity and Right and Very Reverends!  Hear President Jefferson’s testimony.  In his notes of Virginia, speaking of slaves, he says, “That disposition to theft with which they (the slaves) have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any special depravity of the moral sense.  It is a problem which I give the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for HIM as well as for his slave—­and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken ALL from him, as he may slay one who would slay him” See Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, pp. 207-8]

4. Heirship—­Servants frequently inherited their master’s property; especially if he had no sons, or if they had dishonored the family.  This seems to have been a general usage.

The cases of Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; Ziba, the servant of Mephibosheth, Jarha an Egyptian, the servant of Sheshan, and the husband of his daughter; 1 Chron. ii. 34, 35, and of the husbandmen who said of their master’s son, “this is the HEIR, let us kill him, and the INHERITANCE WILL BE OURS.”  Mark xii. 7, are illustrations.  Also the declaration in Prov. xvii. 2—­“A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and SHALL HAVE PART OF THE INHERITANCE AMONG THE BRETHREN.”  This passage seems to give servants precedence as heirs, even over the wives and daughters of their masters.  Did masters hold by force, and plunder of earnings, a class of persons, from which, in frequent contingencies, they selected both heirs for their property, and husbands for their daughters?

5.  ALL were required to present offerings and sacrifices.  Deut. xvi. 15, 17. 2 Chron. xv. 9-11.  Numb. ix. 13.

Servants must have had permanently, the means of acquiring property to meet these expenditures.

6. Those Hebrew servants who went out at the seventh year, were provided by law with a large stock of provisions and cattle.  Deut. xv. 11-14. “Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine press, of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, thou shalt give him[A].”  If it be objected, that no mention is made of the servants from the strangers, receiving a like bountiful supply, we answer, neither