4th.  Did you ever know Southern slaves contend for their rights with their masters?  When a Southern master reads the thirteenth verse of the thirty-first chapter of Job, he must think that Job was in the habit of letting down his dignity very low.

5th.  Do Southern masters accord religious privileges and impart religious instruction equally to their slaves and their children?  Your laws, which visit with stripes, imprisonment, and death, the attempt to teach slaves to read the Bible, show but too certainly, that the Southern master, who should undertake to place “his children and his household” on the same level, in respect to their religious advantages, as it is probable that Abraham did (Gen. 18:19), would soon find himself in the midst of enemies, not to his reputation only, but to his life also.

And now, sir, admitting that the phrase, on which you lay so much stress—­“bought with his money”—­was used in connexion with a form of servitude which God approved—­I put it to your candor, whether this phrase should be allowed to weigh at all against the facts I have adduced and the reasonings I have employed to show the true nature of that servitude, and how totally unlike it is to slavery?  Are you not bound by the principles of sound reasoning, to attach to it a meaning far short of what, I grant, is its natural import in this age, and, especially, amongst a people who, like ourselves, are accustomed to associate such an expression with slavery?  Can you deny, that you are bound to adopt such a meaning of it, as shall harmonize with the facts, which illustrate the nature of the servitude in question, and with the laws and character of Him, whose sanction you claim for that servitude?  An opposite course would give a preference to words over things, which common sense could not tolerate.  Many instances might be cited to show the absurdity of the assumption that whatever is spoken of in the Scriptures as being “bought,” is property.  Boaz “purchased” his wife.  Hosea “bought her (his wife) for fifteen pieces of silver.”  Jacob, to use a common expression, “took his wages” in wives.  Joseph “bought” the Egyptians, after they had said to him “buy us.”  But, so far from their having become the property of Joseph or of his king, it was a part of the bargain, that they were to have as much land as they wanted—­seed to sow it—­and four-fifths of the crops.  The possessors of such independence and such means of wealth are not the property of their fellow-men.

I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.  I pass on, now, to the period between the promulgation of the Divine law by Moses, and the birth of Christ.