Just to servants in appreciating their character, we are to yield them due privileges favorable to character. We shall not, then, voluntarily hurt them by their ready disposition to copy their masters' failings. We shall not then, by our white lies, give them the material which so readily turns black by a little wear. We shall not deal in inuendos and irreverence, that so easily become ribaldry and blasphemy in passing to less dainty lips, nor yield to an excess at our tables, which teaches drunkenness to coarser palates. We shall be unwilling to disturb for our dependents the quiet which we ask for ourselves on the Lord's Day; and therefore shall dispense with needless feasting or riding on that day, shunning the too frequent error of increasing our hospitality in entertaining guests by the sacrifice of the religious privileges of our servants, and of estimating the social respectability of a church by the number of rational souls who wait at its door in companionship with horses, while lords and ladies sit or kneel on downy cushions at the altar to speak of communion with Him who is no respecter of persons, and of the utter damnation of all the unbelieving and ungodly. The good master, says Thomas Fuller, remembers the old law of the Saxon king Ina: "If a villain work on Sunday by his lord's command, he shall be free."
Nor should this regard for the character of servants end in mere negations. They should have the positive influence of a Christian temper in the family, and, when arbitrary creeds do not prevent it, they should have liberty to be present at such family devotions as may be held for the edifying of the household. So do we interpret justice in this relation in its bearing on fortune and character. Some might think our view very defective, from leaving out the element of entire social equality. If by this be meant a recognition of the moral worth of faithful servants, we make the recognition, and deem them the equals of all whom they equal in character. But, if social familiarity be the test of equality, it is answer enough that this is a matter of congeniality or elective affinity, and nothing could be more arbitrary and unjust than to force persons into a familiarity for which their education, tastes, and labors disqualify them. Such a course would comport as little with justice as with mercy.