is sound Common Law of all mankind, even more so than slavery, for it exists before slavery can be introduced.  Slavery is introduced when the prisoner of war may be made to work,—­when the tilling of the soil has commenced; though then not always; for we now know that slavery was introduced among the Greeks at a comparatively late period:  but killing parents and eating enemies exists in the hunter’s state, and at those periods when people find it hard work to obtain food, each one for himself, to keep even a starved body and a little bit of soul together.  Chewing our neighbor is even better, for it is older Common Law, than the universal buying of a wife and consequent selling of daughters which exists even now over far the greater portion of the globe.  We take it that our species began with eating itself without paying for the fare.  Partaking of our neighbor precedes all lex scripta, all statute law, all constitutions.  As to ourselves in particular, whose law is the English law, we know that the Druids sacrificed human beings to their gods; and every one knows full well, that man, when in gastronomic contact with the gods, always appropriates the most savory morsels and the largest portions of the sacrifice to himself, leaving to the ethereal taste of Jove or Tezcatlipoca the smell of some burnt bones or inwards.  Yet there is no law on record abolishing human sacrifices.  We know, indeed, that some Teutonic tribes, when they adopted Christianity, positively prohibited the eating of horse-flesh, but no law ever forbade to honor our fathers and mothers by making them parts of our feasts; so that no lawyer of the true sort will deny, that, to this day, the right of sacrificing fellow-men, and the reasonable concomitant of eating the better portion of the sacrifice, still exists.  Greeks and Romans have sacrificed men; why should not we?  That men have their individual rights is no valid objection.  Rights depend exclusively upon the law; and the law, we have shown, does not grant equal rights (at least, not equal destinations) to the Eater and the Eatee; for it seems to be one thing to eat, and another to be eaten.  It was a very silly maxim of the ancient Civil Law, That the law, the regula, is derived from the right (jus), not the jus from the law.  Has not a Supreme Court in one of our States lately denied to a negro even the right to choose between liberty and slavery,—­the choice being left to him by his deceased master,—­because the creature (which, when doing wrong, is responsible and has a will imputed to him) has no will to choose, because it cannot have any, says the Supreme Court of that State?