ENSLAVING MEN IS REDUCING THEM TO ARTICLES OF PROPERTY—­making free agents, chattels—­converting persons into things—­sinking immortality into merchandize.  A slave is one held in this condition.  In law, “he owns nothing, and can acquire nothing.”  His right to himself is abrogated.  If he say my hands, my body, my mind, MY_self_, they are figures of speech.  To use himself for his own good, is a crime.  To keep what he earns, is stealing.  To take his body into his own keeping, is insurrection.  In a word, the profit of his master is made the END of his being, and he, a mere means to that end—­a mere means to an end into which his interests do not enter, of which they constitute no portion[A].  MAN, sunk to a thing! the intrinsic element, the principle of slavery; MEN, bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped in cargoes, stored as goods, taken on executions, and knocked off at a public outcry!  Their rights, another’s conveniences; their interests, wares on sale; their happiness, a household utensil; their personal inalienable ownership, a serviceable article or a plaything, as best suits the humour of the hour; their deathless nature, conscience, social affections, sympathies, hopes—­marketable commodities!  We repeat it, THE REDUCTION OF PERSONS TO THINGS!  Not robbing a man of privileges, but of himself; not loading him with burdens, but making him a beast of burden; not restraining liberty, but subverting it; not curtailing rights, but abolishing them; not inflicting personal cruelty, but annihilating personality; not exacting involuntary labor, but sinking man into an implement of labor; not abridging human comforts, but abrogating human nature; not depriving an animal of immunities, but despoiling a rational being of attributes—­uncreating a MAN, to make room for a thing!

[Footnote A:  To deprive human nature of any of its rights is oppression; to take away the foundation of its rights is slavery.  In other words, whatever sinks man from an END to a mere means, just so far makes him a slave.  Hence West-India apprenticeship retained the cardinal principle of slavery.  The apprentice, during three-fourths of his time, was forced to labor, and robbed of his earnings; just so far forth he was a mere means, a slave.  True in other respects slavery was abolished in the British West Indies August, 1834.  Its bloodiest features were blotted out—­but the meanest and most despicable of all—­forcing the poor to work for the rich without pay three fourths of their time, with a legal officer to flog them if they demurred at the outrage, was one of the provisions of the “Emancipation Act!” For the glories of that luminary, abolitionists thanked God, while they mourned that it rose behind clouds and shone through an eclipse. [West India apprenticeship is now (August 1838) abolished.  On the first of the present month, every slave in every British island and colony stood up a freeman!—­Note to fourth edition.] ]