In presence of this infinite responsibility, the whole question must be referred to that other tribunal where master and slave are equal, while Infinite Wisdom tempers justice with mercy.

The theory of compensation is founded on the intolerable assumption of property in man, an idea which often intrudes into these debates, sometimes from open vindicators, and sometimes from others, who, while yielding, yet reluctantly…

Impious toward God, and infidel toward man, it is disowned by conscience and reason alike; nor is there any softness of argument or of phrase by which its essential wickedness can be disguised.

If in this world a man owns anything, it is himself.

It is indefeasible and perpetual,--not to be sold, not to be bought.

No man can make black white or wrong right; nor can any Congress or any multitude overcome the everlasting law of justice.

According to a well-known and capital principle of jurisprudence, stolen property cannot be sold, and the attempt to sell it, knowing the primary abstraction, is a crime.

Wherever he finds his property, the original owner may resume it as his own.

The pawnbroker who has received it in pledge must release his hold; the purchaser who has paid the price must give it up.

Infinitely absurd and unnatural is the pretext that a man may reclaim his stolen coat wherever he finds it, but cannot reclaim himself!

Slavery asserts that it is; and the whole country says the same, when it sanctions the return of a fugitive slave.

But this pretension is only a further outgrowth of that appalling tyranny which begins by denying the right of a man to himself.

The Christian Church, by beautiful, glorious example, testifies from earliest days against this pretension.

The whole country will confess the new-born power, and those commercial cities now sympathizing so perversely with belligerent Slavery will be among the earliest to enjoy the quickening change.

Theodore, illustrious in the Eastern Church, imposed this rule upon its monasteries: “You must never employ slaves, neither in personal service, nor in affairs of the convent, nor in culture of the earth; the slave is a man created in the…

Benedict of Aniane, the second of the name in canonization, would not allow convents to be served by a slave.

Through him England first tasted the blessings of Christianity.

When told that they were Angles, he exclaimed, “Not Angles, but Angels,”--“Non Angli, sed Angeli”--and he insisted on their ransom and instruction to become the apostles of their countrymen.

Augustin commenced the work, so that the conversion of England may be traced to the sympathies aroused by English slaves on the banks of the Tiber.

Execrable” is the assumption,--“execrable” wherever made: “execrable” on the plantation, “execrable” in this Chamber, “execrable” in every form it takes, “execrable” in all its consequences, especially “execrable” as an apology for…

The assumption, wherever it shows itself, must be beaten down under our feet, like Satan himself, in whom it has its origin.

Slavery is but a bundle of barbarous pretensions, from which certain persons are to be released.

How much shall be paid for the controlling pretension of property in man?

How much allowed for that other pretension to shut the gates of knowledge, and keep the victim from the Book of Life?

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.