William A. Smith, DD. President of Randolph-Macon College , and Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy., Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery as exhibited in the Institution of Domestic Slavery in the United States: withe Duties of Masters to Slaves.

“ [72] to promote our happiness” will not constitute us equals in any proper sense, unless our advantages be equal. Now, Dr. Wayland himself allows, in the very terms of his proposition, that men are not equal in condition--that is, not equal in advantages. And nothing is more obvious than that men are not equal in that intellectual and moral condition which would enable them to use certain social and political advantages for the benefit of themselves and others: consequently, upon his own admission, they would have no right to them. Unless, then, it can be shown that God has endowed all human beings with intellectual and moral capacities sufficiently developed to enable them to be used for the common welfare, they have no right to what we call political freedom. But it is unquestionable that men are not universally nor even generally so endowed. It is not the case with minors. Political freedom is withheld from them by the laws of all States, for the obvious reason that it is not among the privileges which God, as yet, endowed them with the ability to use for the common welfare. Still, no one, so far as we are aware, ever dreamed that minors were herein abridged of their natural rights, and that government and parents were “odious tyrants” because they subjected them to one of the known forms of domestic slavery! We are not surprised,