with the cry, “Why, man, have you no conscience?” You will perhaps inquire, whether abolitionists regard all the slaves of the South as stolen—­as well those born at the South, as those, who were confessedly stolen from Africa?  I answer, that we do—­that every helpless new-born infant, on which the chivalry of the South pounces, is, in our judgment, the owner of itself—­that we consider, that the crime of man-stealing which is so terribly denounced in the Bible, does not consist, as is alleged, in stealing a slave from a third person, but in stealing him from himself—­in depriving him of self control, and subjecting him, as property, to the absolute control of another.  Joseph’s declaration, that he “was stolen,” favors this definition of man-stealing.  Jewish Commentators authorise it.  Money, as it does not own itself, cannot be stolen from itself But when we reflect, that man is the owner of himself, it does not surprise us, that wresting away his inalienable rights—­his very manhood—­should have been called man-stealing.

Whilst on this subject of “the rights of property,” I am reminded of your “third impediment to abolition.”  This “impediment” consists in the fact of the great value of the southern slaves—­which, according to your estimation, is not less than “twelve hundred millions of dollars.”  I will adopt your estimate, and thus spare myself from going into the abhorrent calculation of the worth in dollars and cents of immortal man—­of the worth of “the image of God.”  I thank you for your virtual admission, that this wealth is grasped with a tenacity proportioned to its vast amount.  Many of the wisest and best men of the North have been led into the belief that the slaveholders of the South are too humane and generous to hold their slaves fur the sake of gain.  Even Dr. Channing was a subject of this delusion; and it is well remembered, that his too favorable opinions of his fellow men, made it difficult to disabuse him of it.  Northern Christians have been ready to believe, that the South would give up her slaves, because of her conscious lack of title to them.  But in what age of the world have impenitent men failed to cling as closely to that, which they had obtained by fraud, as to their honest acquisitions?  Indeed, it is demonstrable on philosophical principles, that the more stupendous the fraud, the more tenacious is the hold upon that, which is gotten by it.  I trust, that your admission to which I have just referred, will have no small effect to prevent the Northern apologist for slavery from repeating the remark that the South would gladly liberate her slaves, if she saw any prospect of bettering the condition of the objects of her tender and solicitous benevolence.  I trust, too, that this admission will go far to prove the emptiness of your declaration, that the abolitionists “have thrown back for half a century the prospect of any species of emancipation of the African race, gradual or immediate, in any of the states,” and the emptiness of your declaration,