5th.  Such is the nature of American slavery, that not even its warmest friends would claim that it could recover itself after such a “year of jubilee” as God appointed.  One such general delivery of its victims would be for ever fatal to it.  I am aware that you deny that all the servants of the Jews shared in the blessings of the “year of jubilee.”  But let me ask you, whether if one third or one half of your servants were discharged from servitude every fiftieth year—­and still more, whether if a considerable proportion of them were thus discharged every sixth year—­the remainder would not be fearfully discontented?  Southern masters believe, that their only safety consists in keeping down the discontent of their servants.  Hence their anxious care to withhold from them the knowledge of human rights.  Hence the abolitionist who is caught in a slave state, must be whipped or put to death.  If there were a class of servants amongst the Jews, who could bear to see all their fellow servants go free, whilst they themselves were retained in bondage, then that bondage was of a kind very different from what you suppose it to have been.  Had its subjects worn the galling chains of American slavery, they would have struggled with bloody desperation for the deliverance which they saw accorded to others.

I scarcely need say, that the Hebrew words rendered “bondmen” and “bondmaids,” do not, in themselves considered, and independently of the connexion in which they are used, any more than the Greek words doulos and doule, denote a particular kind of servant.  If the servant was a slave, because he was called by the Hebrew word rendered “bondman,” then was Jacob a slave also:—­and even still greater absurdities could be deduced from the position.

I promised, in a former part of this communication, to give you my reasons for denying that you are at liberty to plead in behalf of slavery, the example of any compulsory servitude in which Jews may have held foreigners.  My promise is now fulfilled, and I trust that the reasons are such as not to admit of an answer.

Driven, as you now are, from every other conceivable defence of slaveholding it may be (though I must hope better things of you), that you will fly to the ground taken by the wicked multitude—­that there is authority in the laws of man for being a slaveholder.  But, not only is the sin of your holding slaves undiminished by the consideration, that they are held under human laws; but, your claiming to hold them under such laws, makes you guilty of an additional sin, which, if measured by its pernicious consequences to others, is by no means inconsiderable.  The truth of these two positions is apparent from the following considerations.

1st.  There is no valid excuse to be found, either in man’s laws or any where else, for transgressing God’s laws.  Whatever may be thought, or said to the contrary, it still remains, and for ever will remain true, that under all circumstances, “sin is the transgression of the (Divine) law.”