You argue from the fifth and sixth verses of the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, that God authorized the enslavement of the Jews:  but, on the same page, on which you do so, you also show the contrary.  It may, nevertheless, be well for me to request you to read and read again Leviticus 25:39-42, until your remaining doubts, on this point, shall all be put to flight.  I am free to admit the probability, that under some of the forms of servitude, in which Jews were held, the servant was subjected to a control so extensive as to expose him to suffer great cruelties.  These forms corresponded with the spirit and usages of the age, in which they existed; entirely unsuited, as they are, to a period and portion of the world, blessed with the refining and softening influences of civilization and the gospel.  Numerous as were the statutory regulations for the treatment of the servant, they could not preclude the large discretion of the master.  The apprentice, in our country, is subjected to an authority, equaling a parent’s authority, but not always tempered in its exercise, with a parent’s love.  His condition is, therefore, not unfrequently marked with severity and suffering.  Now, imagine what this condition would be, under the harsh features of a more barbarous age, and you will have in it, as I conjecture, no distant resemblance to that of some of the Jewish servants.  But how different is this condition from that of the slave!

I am reminded in this connexion, of the polished, but pernicious, article on slavery in a late number of the Biblical Repertory.  In that article Professor Hodge says, that the claim of the slaveholder “is found to be nothing more than a transferable claim of service either for life, or for a term of years.”  Will he allow me to ask him, where he discovered that the pretensions of the slaveholder are all resolvable into this modest claim?  He certainly did not discover it in any slave code; nor in any practical slavery.  Where then?  No where, but in that undisclosed system of servitude, which is the creation of his own fancy.  To this system I raise no objection whatever.  On the contrary, I am willing to admit its beauty and its worthiness of the mint in which it was coined.  But I protest against his right to bestow upon it the name of another and totally different thing.  He must not call it slavery.

Suppose a poor German to be so desirous of emigrating with his family to America, as to agree to give his services for ten years, as a compensation for the passage.  Suppose further, that the services are to be rendered to the captain of the ship in which they sail, or to any other person, to whom he may assign his claim.  Such a bargain is not uncommon.  Now, according to Professor Hodge, this German may as rightly as any of your Southern servants, be called a slave.  He may as rightly be called property, as they may be, who, in the language of the South Carolina laws, “shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.”