Again, does it necessarily follow from this admission, that the relation of slaveholder and slave is sinless? Was the despotism of the Roman government sinless? I do not ask whether the _abuses_ of civil government, in that instance, were sinless. But, I ask, was a government, despotic in its constitution, depriving all its subjects of political power, and extending absolute control over their property and persons--was such a government, independently of the consideration of its _abuses_, (if indeed we may speak of the abuses of what is in itself an _abuse_,) sinless? I am aware, that Prof. Hodge says, that it was so: and, when he classes despotism and slavery with _adiaphora_, "things indifferent;" and allows no more moral character to them than to a table or a broomstick, I trust no good man envies his optics. May I not hope that you, Mr. Smylie, perceive a difference between despotism and an "indifferent thing." May I not hope, that you will, both as a Republican and a Christian, take the ground, that despotism has a moral character, and a bad one? When our fathers prayed, and toiled, and bled, to obtain for themselves and their children the right of self-government, and to effect their liberation from a power, which, in the extent and rigor of its despotism, is no more to be compared to the Roman government, than the "little finger" to the "loins," I doubt not, that they felt that despotism had a moral, and a very bad moral character. And so would Prof. Hodge have felt, had he stood by their side, instead of being one of their ungrateful sons. I say ungrateful--for, who more so, than he who publishes doctrines that disparage the holy cause in which they were embarked, and exhibits them, as contending for straws, rather than for principles? Tell me, how long will this Republic endure after our people shall have imbibed the doctrine, that the _nature_ of civil government is an indifferent thing: and that the poet was right when he said,
"For forms of government let _fools_ contest?"
This, however, is but one of many doctrines of ruinous tendency to the cause of civil liberty, advanced by pro-slavery writers to sustain their system of oppression.