_The relation can not be forced upon him_.

What though Elizabeth countenanced John Hawkins in stealing the natives of Africa ?--what though James, and Charles, and George, opened a market for them in the English colonies ?--what though modern Dracos have "framed mischief by law," in legalizing man-stealing and slaveholding ?--what though your ancestors, in preparing to go "to their own place," constituted you the owner of the "neighbors" whom they had used as cattle ?--what of all this, and as much more like this, as can be drawn from the history of that dreadful process by which men "are deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be _chattels personal_ ?" Can all this force you to put the cap upon the climax--to clinch the nail by doing that, without which nothing in the work of slave-making would be attempted?
_The slaveholder is the soul of the whole system_.

Without him, the chattel principle is a lifeless abstraction.

Without him, charters, and markets, and laws, and testaments, are empty names.

And does _he_ think to escape responsibility?
Why, kidnappers, and soul-drivers, and law-makers, are nothing but his _agents_.