“LOVE WORKETH NO ILL TO HIS NEIGHBOR.”

Like unto the Golden Rule is the second great commandment—­“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”  “A certain lawyer,” who seems to have been fond of applying the doctrine of limitation of human obligations, once demanded of the Savior, within what limits the meshing of the word “neighbor” ought to be confined.  “And who is my neighbor?” The parable of the good Samaritan set that matter in the clearest light, and made it manifest and certain, that every man whom we could reach with our sympathy and assistance, was our neighbor, entitled to the same regard which we cherished for ourselves.  Consistently with such obligations, can slavery, as a RELATION, be maintained?  Is it then a labor of love—­such love as we cherish for ourselves—­to strip a child of Adam of all the prerogatives and privileges which are his inalienable birth-right?—­To obscure his reason, crush his will, and trample on his immortality?—­To strike home to the inmost of his being, and break the heart of his heart?—­To thrust him out of the human family, and dispose of him as a chattel—­as a thing in the hands of an owner, a beast under the lash of a driver?  All this, apart from every thing incidental and extraordinary, belongs to the RELATION, in which slavery, as such, consists.  All this—­well fed or ill fed, underwrought or overwrought, clothed or naked, caressed or kicked, whether idle songs break from his thoughtless tongue or “tears be his meat night and day,” fondly cherished or cruelly murdered;—­all this ENTERS VITALLY INTO THE RELATION ITSELF, by which every slave, AS A SLAVE, is set apart from the rest of the human family.  Is it an exercise of love, to place our “neighbor” under the crushing weight, the killing power, of such a relation?—­to apply the murderous steel to the very vitals of his humanity?

“YE THEREFORE APPLAUD AND DELIGHT IN THE DEEDS OF YOUR FATHERS; FOR THEY KILLED THEM, AND YE BUILD THEIR SEPULCHRES."[A]

The slaveholder may eagerly and loudly deny, that any such thing is chargeable upon him.  He may confidently and earnestly alledge, that he is not responsible for the state of society in which he is placed.  Slavery was established before he began to breathe.  It was his inheritance.  His slaves are his property by birth or testament.  But why will he thus deceive himself?  Why will he permit the cunning and rapacious spiders, which in the very sanctuary of ethics and religion are laboriously weaving webs from their own bowels, to catch him with their wretched sophistries?—­and devour him, body, soul, and substance?  Let him know, as he must one day with shame and terror own, that whoever holds slaves is himself responsible for the relation, into which, whether reluctantly or willingly, he thus enters. The relation can not be forced upon him.  What though Elizabeth countenanced John Hawkins in stealing the natives of Africa?—­what though