that the Jews, when they had got possession of Canaan, made slaves of the people instead of hiring them, ask, with a leer, how they did it. They wish to know if they took an armed band, with ropes and shackles, so as to tie them when they were caught, and thus compel them to slavery.
But of this query there is no need; for Moses, long before they had possession of Canaan, pointed out how this was to be done, especially in times of peace, for the Jews were not always at war with the Canaanites. See Levit. xxv, 45, where the mode of getting slaves is alluded to, as follows: "Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat [or may beget] in your land, and they shall be your possession."
Here the difficulty vanishes, and with it the imagined armed band, ropes and shackles of abolitionism, as there could be no need of tying children, whom they might buy of such Canaanitish families as would be willing to sell them. It is well known that the negroes of all ages have been in the practice of selling their own children, when pressed by want, as they now do nearly all over Africa — who also enslave myriads of their own people by force, as we shall show in the course of the work.
As to the race inland in Canaan, they were never entirely exterminated by the Jews, as there were always remnants of tribes left in the land, who continued during the whole Jewish history, from Moses until they were destroyed by the Romans — a lapse of more than fifteen hundred years. There was always,
