ningham after the adoption of this report, arose and expressed his "entire concurrence" in its sentiments.

Thus, this same Cunningham, my friend's favorite authority, holds, that to "regard" or "treat" men as property, is a sin which disqualifies for christian communion; and that American Christians are bound to "exert themselves to their utmost, in all proper ways, to have slavery abolished!" Yet, Dr. Rice is here to prove that "slave-holding is not sinful, nor the relation between master and slave a sinful relation:" and as to zeal for the abolition of slavery, his report in his last General Assembly speaks for itself. You can all see that whatever inconsistencies Dr. Cunningham has broached since he was here collecting money for his church from slave-holding churches, Dr. Rice is at least as far from him, as he is from me, on this subject; but it is not my business to reconcile him with his Scotch authorities. The abolitionists hold no stronger doctrine than is here fully avowed by the Free Church Assembly of last May, (1845,) and endorsed by Cunningham himself, to wit: that "regarding men as property is a sin of the deepest dye, and which ought to disqualify for Christian communion;" and Christians are bound "to exert their utmost for the abolition of slavery."

I know that my friend seeks to avoid the force of this quotation, by making a vain and unmeaning distinction between "holding men as slaves and holding them as property;" as though men could hold slaves any other way than as property. This distinction might blind persons farther off; but if there be twenty slave-holders from Kentucky, I am willing to refer the question to them, whether they do not hold and regard their slaves as property, and whether they do not understand Dr. Rice as justifying their practice from the word of God? Whether, in short, the doctrine of the Free Church of Scotland, just read, is not as unacceptable to professing slave-holders in the South, as anything which abolitionists have ever taught? The fact is, that they ridi

cule the idea of a man holding slaves and not regarding them as property.

Since this subject has been up, a slave-holder present said to a friend of mine, that he knew of no slave-holders who would thank a man for putting in such a wretched plea, in defence of slavery, as that slave-holders do not regard their negroes as property. "We hold our slaves because we want them; and we use them as property because they are our property, and we wish to make what money we honestly Small thanks will Dr. Rice get for such a vindication of slave-holding, from his slave-holding brethren, unless they take the will for the deed-knowing that, whatever he says, he means to support their cause.

can.

I will now read another testimony that American slaveholders "regard men as property," and so are declared worthy of excommunication by my friend's Scotch authorities. I will first read the testimony proving that professing slave-holders do actually hold their slaves as property, and because they desire to have their services, and when I have read it I will tell you who is the author.

"The Jews were expressly permitted to buy men; and that which I buy with my money, belongs to me for all the purposes to which it may be lawfully applied. A man may not use his horse as he may a piece of timber; nor may he use his slave as if he were a horse. But if I buy a horse, he is mine; and I may use his services lawfully. If I buy a man, he is mine, so far as his services are concerned!"-Rice's Lectures, p. 26.

This is the testimony: and the author sits at that table! [Pointing to Dr. Rice.]

Now, it is true, that he adds, in immediate connection with the above quotation, "and I am bound to treat him as a man." Yes: but as a "man" who "is mine;" whose services I may command on the ground that he is mine. If this is not "regarding men as property," then that idea cannot be put in human speech. But the doctrine of the Free Scotch Assembly, and Dr. Cunningham, is, that "regarding

men as property is a sin of the deepest dye," and which disqualifies for church membership. Thus, the very authorities which Dr. Rice quotes as on his side, would turn him out of the church, if he would practice the doctrines of his pamphlet; and they would be consistent, with their own, for, says Dr. Rice, "If I buy a MAN, he is mine!"

Now, when we consider that Dr. Cunningham wrote what my friend quotes under most unpropitious circumstances;that he was born and reared amidst the corruptions of a state church, and a "by authority" religion;-that he is now preaching in a tolerated and taxed church, when not lecturing his classes; (for dissenting chapels are licensed in England as grog-shops are here.) Environed by such darkening circumstances, hampered in his ideas of church discipline by the law of libel, and holding men and measures to be of infidel character because they form voluntary churches, like Dr. Rice's, we may perhaps excuse him for not being exactly clear on the subject of slavery.

Yet in the midst of their distant island location-blinded, too, by the misrepresentations of our slavery-ridden assemblies and high church courts, and tainted leading men, who tell them that American slaves are not held as property;—this Scotch church declares, that the man who regards man as property ought to be turned out of the church. I have done with the Scotch divines.

Gentlemen and fellow-citizens: I will here state at large, for your satisfaction, and that it may appear in the book, why I have not, at my brother's urgent request, so vehemently repeated, taken this discussion at once into Bible criticism.

I have an argument of three hours' length of the kind he calls for, which I have prepared with labor and care;—an hour and a half on the Old Testament, and an hour and a half upon the New. But I would not present that class of arguments at the beginning of this debate; because I consider that, the strongest part of my argument, and I wished to present the weakest first. Because all my arguments are Bible arguments, every principle which I advocate being

found in the word of God. Because, moreover, I felt it my duty to God to manage this debate as wisely as I could for the truth; and I therefore did not wish to take a solemn practical question at first into Greek and Hebrew lexicons, grammars, critics, and commentators, one half of whose ideas are baked stiff in the oven of German hermeneutics. Before letting in what light may be had from these sources, (and a just use of them yields much,) I have thought proper to argue the question of slavery, for a time, as it is, a solemn matter of fact, and upon the broad principle of common equity

and common sense.

And the event has proved the wisdom and necessity of my course. You have seen that the real point of dispute is, whether slave-holding be this or that. 'Prove,' he says, 'that slavery includes these cruelties-the prohibition to read -the complete power of the master, etc., etc., and I will be an abolitionist.' Here has been his main labor—to deny that certain things belong necessarily to slavery. Was not my long discussion to show what slavery is, therefore, necessary? Besides, one well prepared argument upon the Scriptures is enough; and I take no advantage in putting it off to the last. He has the closing speech at every session, and the benefit, if there be any, of a last impression. I am willing he should. He will, therefore, have full opportunity of presenting what he may have to say upon the teachings of Scripture.

I have said that I felt bound to conduct this debate wisely for the cause of truth, and I am not unacquainted with the course commonly taken by the defenders of slavery. Shunning all clear ideas of slavery, they are accustomed to dip the people at once into the Mosaic institution, and haggle their minds with "doulos," and "ebedh," and "kaunah," etc., etc. It was thus that Dr. Junkin, in the synodical debate in the first Presbyterian church in this city, last fall, Junkinized the minds of the people for two whole days; and when he had done, I do not believe that the heads of his auditors contained two substantial ideas on the topics which he handled.

sense.

Now I determined not to let my brother take this course. I resolved, before giving him an opportunity to display his learning, to give you a chance to judge of his candor and I desired that the public should know; I myself wished to know, to what class of minds my brother belongs. This is a legitimate object sought in a proper way. He is active, unwearied in the propagation of his opinions, and it is material that we know what weight we ought to attach to them, as coming from him.

I have, within these few years past, met a class of men, whom the late ecclesiastical agitations in this country and in Europe have thrown up into notice of whom, I think, it may justly be said, that the world were better if the species were extinct: having few original ideas of their own, they are great gatherers and retailers of the ideas of others; men of fourth or fifth rate minds, who, being of narrow intellect, and stimulated by a large ambition, seek, by sectarian services, to wind their way up to the top of some old ecclesiastical organization, founded by the piety of a former age, to reign amid the moral owls and bats that peer and chicker amid the twilight of its tower.

When slavery is the subject, I have never known a man of this class willing to meet and discuss it, as it actually exists, upon the ordinary and well-known principles of right and wrong. Instead of this, they dive into the dusky regions of antiquity, like rats into cellars, and, guided to despotism by an instinct as precise as that which guides that animal to cheese, they pick up all the instances of restriction upon human liberty which belonged to dark and despotic ages, and twist them into a snake-coil of argument to bind down American Christianity to the toleration of slavery in an age of liberty and light. Slaves themselves, in heart, to authority, as are all caterers to despotism, they are great for lexicons, and profound in commentators; classes of writers, who, from the number of topics which they treat, must necessarily take the most they write upon trust from other men; and they never scruple to weigh the opinion