that the Church of Scotland had adopted, substantially, abolition principles. But Dr. Cunningham informs us, that, in 1834, she forbade her missionaries to the West Indies to open their mouths on this subject; and thus he exposes the inconsistency of the abolitionists who urged that church to hold no fellowship with ours, unless she would exclude all slaveholders from her communion.

I am now done with that part of my argument, which is derived from the Old Testament. I am also prepared to hear the gentleman's hour-and-a-half argument, with which he has so repeatedly threatened me; and it is my purpose fairly to meet and refute it. Having done this, I purpose to inquire into the teachings of the New Testament; and I will not only prove from the New Testament, that slave-holding is not in itself sinful, but that every respectable critic and commentator sustains fully my interpretation of the passages in which the subject of slave-holding is brought to view. Mr. Blanchard, I am aware, holds commentators and critics in great contempt; but perhaps this intelligent audience do not view them in the same light. I expect to prove, that the primitive churches took the same view of slavery, and pursued the same course of conduct in regard to it, that we do. Finally, I expect to prove, that the views we take, are those which have abolished slavery wherever it has been peaceably abolished. [Time expired.

Monday Afternoon, 2 o'clock.

[MR. BLANCHARD'S THIRTEENTH SPEECH.] Gentlemen Moderators, and Gentlemen and Ladies, FellowCitizens:

While the house is getting still, and to close up what of this debate precedes my Old Testament argument; I will notice some of those points which my brother has brought forward in this discussion, and to which he seems to attach importance. I have written down for the sake of condens

ing, brief replies on several points which I will read :—not because I deem the points important, but that I may not seem to leave anything without attempting a candid and clear answer. The following are all the points hitherto unanswered that I can recollect, which I have considered deserving of notice; excepting some personalities which it is not worth while to reply to.

1. He asks: "When an elder of the church was implored to buy a slave to save him from being sold from his family; did the elder sin in buying that slave?"

He

Answer. If he bought him to free him; No-that is redemption. If he kept him as his slave; Yes: he did sin: because he has no right to keep slaves or concubines in order to keep them from being abused. Slavery and concubinage being unscriptural relations. 2. He sinned because he still held the slave under all the horrid liabilities of slavery. might die the hour after he bought him, and the slave is sold from his family for a division among merciless heirs; or he might become a bankrupt, and the slave is sold by creditors. Thus to do an uncertain good to one suffering slave, he commits the sin of sanctioning the whole slave system by himself holding slaves. He thus does a general evil that a particular good may come. Being a pious man, his example leads a thousand young men, who had scruples, to become slave-holders. They go into slavery, fall before its temptations, and sink to endless ruin, holding on to this one pious man's skirts. If he bought the slave to keep him as his property he certainly sinned.

2d Case, "A pious elder asked his synod what he should do with some 70 slaves or more, who were a bill of cost to him, altogether earning less than they consumed ?"

Answer. Free them by all means, or, in a little while, they will run him so in debt that the sheriff will sell them in lots or individually, to satisfy creditors, and suit purchasers. Surely 70 persons earning less than they cost must soon eat up his estate. If he can remove to a free State, do so. If this is not convenient, let him do as an infidel sheriff in Vir

ginia did-call his slaves into the house-tell them solemnly they are free-that he will pay them fair wages for fair work-and that they must maintain their own wives, children and old people; and he will find they will earn more for "cash" than for "lash." Then let him take the "True American," and begin to persuade his neighbors to do likewise.

3. When urged with the fact that slave-holders have no title to their slaves but that which they bought of kidnappers and traders; and therefore in justice do not own them. He says; that argument would destroy our title to lands which were by force or fraud wrested from the Indians.

Answer. Law and justice give stolen property to the true owner, when he can be found. But if no owner is found, occupancy and possession give title. If an Indian can show as good a title to a piece of land as a slave can to his head, hands, feet, and person, which God gave to him, and not to another man, let that Indian have the land, by all means. If he can show an equitable right to it, though less strong, than the slave's right to himself, still let him have it. But it is a capital error, in Mr. Rice, to bring the title acquired to the land of dead Indians, whose heirs are unknown, to justify the holding of living stolen men, who are always present to claim themselves; and who do claim. themselves every time they say, in human speech, "my head," "my hands," "my body," &c.; thus showing, that, under God, whose mark and image are upon him, the man belongs to himself. There was a law in England, which provided that the king's goods should be marked with the figure of an arrow-and if goods having this mark were found in the possession of a man, without the king's authority, he was, by that single mark, convicted of having stolen the king's goods, and punished accordingly. Every human being has God's mark upon him, and belongs to God first, and, under God, to himself. The mark of the King of Kings is his own image, and the man who has in his pos session a human being, is, by the mark of God upon him,

convicted of robbing the Almighty-that he may oppress his fellow man.

4. My opponent still reasons about "Hagar," as though she was not only the bondwoman, or bound-woman of Abraham, but the actual slave or property of Abraham.

Answer. If Hagar was Abraham's property, and if she was sent back by the angel as Abraham's slave, then Dr. Rice is bound, by every principle of justice, and by this angel's example, to help to take and send back runaway slaves to their owners. But he has told us that he has seen slaves running away, but never would do any thing to send them back-thus showing, that he, in heart, does not believe in his own argument-that he knows that Hagar was not a slave, and that Kentucky slaves are not justly the property of their masters. For if they are the just property of their masters, then Dr. Rice is wicked to see them running off, without trying to send them back. For, "If thou seest thine enemy's ox, or his ass, going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again." Exod. xxiii, 40. He draws a distinction, however, between not preventing the escape of a slave, and aiding him to escape-condemning abolitionists for the latter, while he practices the former. But the distance between "not preventing," and actually aiding, escaping slaves is so short, that I commend my brother to the careful watching of the southern slave-holders, lest, in a little while, he be found actually helping slaves to run away. [A laugh.]

5. Again. A Massachusetts man went to South Carolina to live with certain slaves who fell to him, as the best plan he could devise to do them (the slaves) good. Was he a sinner?

Answer. If he went there, and honestly told the negroes they were free, and avoided the appearance of evil, by letting his neighbors know that he was no slave-holder, but had simply come to help the negroes out of difficulty, he was no sinner; but if not-if he simply set down among them as a slave-holder-he was a gross sinner. For he left a

free State, where he and his family were surrounded by the influences of freedom, for a slave land, and a practice of slavery and its corrupting influences. He made himself and family props to support the rotting fabric of slavery, to the injury of millions, with the precarious and uncertain hope of benefitting a few slaves.

6. He says Constantine made a law forbidding to separate husband and wife, and yet slavery still existed. He argues thence that separating husband and wife is not an ingredient part of slavery.

Answer. In forbidding the separation of families, Constantine was destroying slavery. He was driving his legislative axe into the very meat and bones of slavery. He was a wise legislator and knew what he was doing. He knew that a repeal of the family state was of the essence of slavery; and therefore began his work of destroying slavery by stopping family separation. If Constantine had added legal personality and wages, his law would have been an immediate abolition law. As it was it stabbed slavery to the heart.

"Then," replies he, "Kentucky Presbyterians do not hold slaves in full, for they do not separate families, and the law of the church forbids it."

Answer. Kentucky Presbyterians do hold slaves in full, for they hold them by a tenure which denies marriage and parentage to them, which Constantine did not. They hold them in a state of virtual and real separation, hourly ready for actual separation; and their slaves are constantly separated by sheriffs for debts and by administrators for a division, which division the heirs have a right to order, and Presbyterians, when dead, cannot prevent. Witness the slave coffles or gangs annually driven from the upper slave States to the lower, and who pass by our city. They used to land here, but blessed be God, such is the state of feeling now, that they do this seldom or no more. The law of the church against it is but an inoperative conscience-plaster. Kentucky Presbyterians holding slaves, are slave-holders.