things is true, viz: God hears the prayers and blesses the labors of the most abominable criminals; or those revivals are all spurious, and the converts are hypocrites; or abolitionism is false.

The gentleman is at liberty to take either of the three positions. I hope, he will take one or another of them decidedly. As yet he has made no attempt to reply to this argument. I regret that he has not. I am prepared to present other arguments; but my purpose was to occupy my appropriate position as respondent, and follow him. Since, however, I cannot do this, I will proceed to offer my

4th argument, founded upon what has been termed the golden rule. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them." Matt. vii. 12. This law, it is contended, proves slave-holding in itself sinful; and indeed it is the great argument of abolitionists. What is the meaning of it? It does not mean, that we must do for others every thing which they may suppose, we ought to do; but it does require us to do for others what we would reasonably expect and desire them to do for us, if the case were reversed, and we were in their condition. I acknowledge, that this rule requires us to improve the condition of every fellow-being, just so far as we can, consistently with other paramount duties. Let us, then, apply the rule, as thus interpreted, to the subject in hand.— There, for example, is a slave belonging to a cruel master, who is about to separate him from his family. The case has already been presented. He earnestly begs you to purchase him, and allow him to serve you, because thereby you will do him a great favor, and greatly improve his condition. The price demanded is five hundred or six hundred dollars. You do not wish to purchase a slave; and you have not that amount of money to give him as a present. But you can purchase him, and take his services for your money. This he begs you to do. With much trouble, it may be, you raise the amount of money demanded. The slave is purchased. He thanks God for his improved condition, and

blesses the man who saved him from being torn from those he loves. Now enter your charge against the purchaser. Will you say, he has reduced a free man to slavery? Nohe was already a slave. Will you say, he has made his condition more intolerable than it was? No-he has greatly improved it; and this is his sin, if he have sinned at all! But will you say, that, having conferred one favor, a very great favor, upon this slave, who had no special claims upon him, he is now bound to confer a second and greater favor, by emancipating him? O but, say the abolitionists, if you enslave a man, you do him a great wrong. I deny that the purchaser enslaved him. He was a slave before. Now let the gentleman place himself for a moment in the condition of such a slave, and tell us what he would desire to have done for him. He has already let us know, that he loves his family; and, doubtless, much as he loves liberty, he loves them more. I know what I would wish a man to do for me, were I in such a situation. I would desire him to purchase me, and allow me to serve him; and I would esteem him a benefactor indeed. Then am I not bound by the golden rule to purchase him? So far is that rule from forbidding slave-holding under all circumstances, that under circumstances such as I have supposed, and such as often occur, it makes even the most benevolent men holders of slaves. Yet according to the doctrine of abolitionists, slave-holders are the greatest criminals, and deserve to be executed by the common hangman !

Take another case. Suppose, as it not unfrequently happens, a man has fallen heir to some fifty or more slaves, of different ages. He desires now to do the very best for them. What must he do? Abolitionists say, he must forth with liberate them. But there are difficulties in the way. Some are old and helpless; others are women and children who are incapable of supporting themselves. Shall he turn them. all loose to provide for themselves? But the law, even in Kentucky, says, he must first give bond and security, in an amount sufficient to secure the State against their becoming

a public expense. Is it the duty of a man to give such security for the support of a large number of slaves of dif ferent ages? With me, as a minister of the gospel, it is a fixed rule never to become security for others, nor to ask others to become securities for me. Without departing from this rule, I could not liberate slaves whom I might inherit. But suppose, as it not unfrequently happens, that a man possesses little property except the inherited slaves; who will be willing to become his security for such an amount as the civil law requires? Would it be his duty to ask any one to run such a risk?

Some years since, when this subject was under discussion in the Synod of Kentucky, an elder rose in his place, and stated, that he owned, I think, about one hundred slaves, the most if not all of whom he had inherited. Some of them were far advanced in life, and could not provide for themselves; others were women and children whom no one would feed and cloth for their labor. He said, he had no desire to hold them as slaves, but wished to do the very best for them. If he should manumit them all, what would become of the aged, and of the women and children? Besides, it was a serious matter to give bond and security for the support of so many of different ages and character. He could not remove them out of the State; for they were inter-married with the slaves of others; and as to giving them wages, he said, taking them all together they were eating him up. With anxious feelings he asked the brethren who urged immediate emancipation, what he ought to do. And now I ask the gentleman to tell us what the golden rule required him to do. Will he enlighten us on this subject? Was it his duty to turn them out to take care of themselves? Then what would become of the aged and infirm, and of the women and children? Was it his duty to separate husbands and wives, parents and children, and remove them to Ohio? But even in Ohio, this land of liberty, of which the gentleman has spoken so eloquently, your laws require, that when a colored person proposes to reside in any county in the State, he shall, within

twenty days after coming into the county, obtain two freeholders as securities for his support and good conduct.

Or take the case of a man owning slaves in the more southern States, the laws of which forbid him to manumit his slaves, unless he will remove them out of the State; what is the duty of such a man? A case precisely in point has recently occurred. A gentleman, I think, in Boston, fell heir to a plantation and a number of slaves in the South. He wrote to the person who had the management of the business, that he would not own the slaves. But he was informed, that he could not liberate them, unless he should remove them out of the State. After much perplexity in regard to his duty in the matter, he concluded to go and live with them, and do for them the best he could. Did he violate the let

ter or the spirit of the golden rule?

Wednesday Evening, 9 o'clock.

[MR. BLANCHARD'S FOURTH SPEECH.]

Gentlemen Moderators, and Gentlemen and Ladies, Fellow Citizens:

I will employ my half hour, first, in briefly adverting to some things which my friend has said in his last speech, and then proceeding with my argument. I wish to answer, categorically and briefly, some questions which he propounded and I will here state the reason why I do not prolong my replies to his remarks, in order that I may not seem to treat his arguments with disrespect. My plan is this:Where I have an argument in my brief which meets what he advances, I do not reply to that point as I go along, but wait until it assumes its proper place in my course of remark. For instance, I have a distinct argument on the "golden rule," which I have prepared with some care. have, also, others upon different points touched upon by my brother; and I hope that in the three days before us, we

I

shall have time to learn a variety of things, if we possess our souls in patience.

He asks me to show him a man, orthodox in all points of faith but one, and heterodox in that. I answer, that the Scribes and Pharisees were orthodox while they "sat in Moses' seat;" and our Savior himself bade the people hear them, and to "do what they said." But they were heterodox in the one point of rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ, their Messiah. Him they rejected because he was poor, obscure and unpopular. And I fear that some reject that same Lord in the person of the despised, stricken slave, and for a like

reason.

He asked, also, concerning the civil rights of negroes, how far we may go in curtailing the rights of man before the sin begins? I answer as I did before, governments may, for just reasons, withhold civil rights without sin. He told you, and truly, that I spoke of the right of voting as a commodity which the community has a right to dispose of, with an eye on its own preservation. This, I believe, is not only true, but commonly believed. I ask, is the Irishman a slave, after landing in this country, and before he obtains his right to vote? I think, if you were to tell the Irishman or honest German that he was a slave, because not yet naturalized, he would be apt to show you a large pair of hands. Is there any similarity whatever between the unnaturalized foreigner's condition and that of a slave? The fact that my brother is in perplexity on this point, shows how slavery blinds and blunts the minds of good men, even on the subject of human rights. "How far may we go in restricting human liberty without necessarily sinning?" I answer: We may go till we come to "certain inalienable rights; among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”That is "How" far we may go in curtailing men's rights without sin. He inquires, with all simplicity, "if we control civil, why not natural rights also?" Why not, as lawfully, go a step farther, and make the man a slave? If you may, for good reasons take away his vote, why not his ser