Vice saps the foundation, and gradually impairs and undermines the mental and moral constitutions of mankind.  Ham being more vicious than his brothers, the mental and moral deterioration of his race, commenced in his own person, and was transmitted by him to his posterity.  A man transmits his intellectual powers, his moral nature, or sentiments, as well as his physical organization to his progeny; and this he does with positive certainty, unless the mother possesses opposite qualities and properties.  The children of the vicious are by nature more vicious than the children of the virtuous.  Hence, we see that men by ordinary generation, transmit their own peculiar vices to their offspring.  Every innate principle, passion and propensity of soul, body and mind, is transmitted from parent to child.  This view of the subject need strike us with no surprise, if we would reflect, that men beget the souls, as well as the bodies of their children.  I read in Genesis, that God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, “and that he became a living soul;” but I am not aware, that the Divine Being has breathed a soul into any other living being since the day he created Adam.  No!  When he breathed a soul into Adam he invested him with the power to procreate the souls as well as the bodies of his progeny.  Hence, every man begets a soul and a body like his own, except so far as his own qualities and properties come in contact with opposite ones in the female; then, of course, some modification of the foetus may be expected.  If an acid and an alkali are brought in contact, the result will be a neutral salt.  We will generally find, however, that in what are called neutral mixtures, there is either a predominance of the acid, or the alkali.  So it is with the children of parents possessing opposite propensities and qualities, either those of the father or the mother, are likely to predominate in the offspring.

Slavery was entailed on Ham’s posterity, in consequence of the indignity with which he treated his aged and pious father.  Ham was a free agent; it was an act of his own.  The Divine Being suffered him to transgress his laws; and foreseeing that it would involve his posterity in the curse of slavery, he foretold the result of the transgression, by the mouth of Noah, Ham’s father.

I have remarked in the preceding pages, that Ham was more wicked than his brothers; and that he transmitted his own corrupt nature to his offspring; and that in consequence of sin, his descendants sank into ignorance, barbarism and brutality which subjected them to the dominion of their more enlightened and virtuous brethren.  Thus, we see, that it was the wickedness of Ham, which involved his race in ignorance, degradation and slavery.  I repeat, that Ham entailed slavery on his own race; it was an effect of the violation of Jehovah’s righteous laws; a just and righteous judgment.  It is clear, from the foregoing remarks, that Ham transmitted the germs of slavery to his posterity, by ordinary generation.