We will glance at a few points of difference in their condition. 1st.  The German is capable of making a contract, and in the case supposed, does make a contract; but your slave is incapable of making any contract. 2d.  The German receives wages; the price of carrying himself and family being the stipulated price for his services, during the ten years; but your slave receives no wages. 3d.  The German, like any other hireling, and, like any apprentice in our country, is under the protection of law.  But, there is no law to shield the slave from wrongs.  Being a mere chattel or thing, he has no rights; and, therefore, he can have no wrongs to be redressed.  Does Professor Hodge say, that there are statutes limiting and regulating the power of the slaveholder?  I grant there are; though it must be remembered, that there is one way of even murdering a slave, which some of the slave States do not only not forbid, but impliedly and practically admit[A].  The Professor should know, however, that all these statutes are, practically, a mere nullity.  Nevertheless, they show the absoluteness of the power which they nominally qualify.  This absoluteness is as distinctly implied by them, as the like was by the law of the Emperor Claudius, which imposed limitations upon the “jus vitae et necis” (the right of life and death) which Roman slavery put into the hand of the master.  But if the Professor should be so imprudent as to cite us to the slave code for evidence of its merciful provisions, he will, in so doing, authorize us to cite him to that code for evidence of the nature of slavery.  This authority, however, he would not like to give us; for he is unwilling to have slavery judged of by its own code.  He insists, that it shall be judged of by that ideal system of slavery, which is lodged in his own brain, and which he can bring forth by parcels, to suit present occasions, as Mahomet produced the leaves of the Koran.

[Footnote A:  The licensed murder referred to, is that where the slave dies under “moderate correction.”  But is not the murder of a slave by a white man, in any way, practically licensed in all the slave States?  Who ever heard of a white man’s being put to death, under Southern laws, for the murder of a slave?  American slavery provides impunity for the white murderer of the slave, by its allowing none but whites—­none but those who construct and uphold the system of abominations—­to testify against the murderer.  But why particularize causes of this impunity?  The whole policy of the Southern slave system goes to provide it.  How unreasonable is it to suppose, that they, who have conspired against a portion of their fellow-beings, and mutually pledged themselves to treat them as mere things—­how unreasonable, I say, is it to suppose, that they would consent to put a man to death, on account of his treatment, in whatever way, of a mere thing?  Not long ago, I was informed by a highly respectable lawyer of the State