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HON. HORACE MANN,

FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

DELIVERED AT

LANCASTER, MASS., MAY I^th, 1851.

-BOSTON:
OFFICE OF THE CO MMON WE ALTH.
1851.

SPEECH

HONOEIBLE HORACE MANN,
Delivered at laneaster, Mass , May 19, 1851,
ON THE EUGITIYE SLATE LAW.

Fellow Citizens : — We are assembled on a
great occasion and for a great purpose. The
election of a Member of Congress, indeed, is not
an extraordinary event ; but it is extraordinary
that principles of the most vital importance to
the honor of Massachusetts, and to the cause of
Human Liberty throughout the world, should
be involved in a local election. Such, however,
is now the fact.
Gentlemen, the assertion and the recognition
of the Eights of Man have made great progress
among the nations of Europe, within the recol
lection of many who are now before me. Not
withstanding the partition of Poland by Allied
Robbers, and the obliteration of that kingdom
from the map of Europe ; notwithstanding Hun
garian subjugation to Austrian despotism, and
many other atrocious crimes against humanity,
such as nations only cap commit; for they are too
vast and mons trous to be perpetrated by any
individual ; — I say, notwithstanding these facts,
the great fabric of human liberty has been ris
ing, in Europe, while the solid structures of des
potism have been disintegrating and making
ready for their fall.
But truth compels me to acknowledge that,
during the last three quarters of a century, our
course has been downward. While among the
other nations of Christend'om, the altar-fires of
Liberty have been kindling and burning with a
brighter flame, ours have been waning. At the
foundation of our Government an institution
existed amongst us, utterly irreconcileable with
the fundamental principles of the government

itself. But it was then limited in its extent,
and its spirit no where existed in great intensi
ty. Even those who cherished it most were
ashatneCi c f it ; and, in those provisions of the
constitution whick were designed for its tempo
rary protection, a com.non regard for decency
forbade the mention ot its name. Fatally to
our own peace and honor, that small spot of gan
grene was admitted into the system, and it has
since shot its virus through the whole body pol
itic. From speaking of it with hushed breath,
the bold abettors of Slavery now shout forth its
praises. From providing for the extermination
of the African slave trade, they have converted
the slave States into another Africa, this side
the tropics ; and by the successful robbery of a
neighboring republic, they seek to create a new
America, with which the slave-trade, once abol-
»ished and declared piracy, may be revived and
legalized. The Middle Passage is to be transfer
red from the ocean to the land. Maryland, Vir
ginia, Kentucky, &c., are to be the Gold Coast,
Benin and the Galinas ; the place of supply, the
place of demand, and the highways of commerce
between them, are to be within our own Ijorders
and protected by the American flag ; and that
horrid traffic which all the leading nations of
Christendom united in declaring to be a felony
punishable with death, is now to be maintained
and defended, under penalty of death and a dis
solution of the Union.
Nor is it sufiicient that the tide of slavery
should rise and overflow the vast and uninhabi
ted regions of the West. It surges up against

the Free States themselves, and all the dikes
and barriers of Constitutional Law which we
have been enacting for se.venty-five years, can
not stay its flood. We thought that Massa
chusetts was the impregnable citadel of freedom;
but unconstitutional and inhuman laws, dictated
by slaveholders, are now executed amongst us,
and at our very doors ; and the individual whom
for thirty years this state had delighted to hon
or, now pollutes its air by cheering on the hunt
of men.
Thank God, there is a part of our people
who, while they suffer, resist. Only a por
tion amongst us have reached that lowest depth
of degradation, where they surrender, not
their limbs only, but their wills, to the hateful
service of their masters. Slavery has done its
perfect work, only when the soul is enslaved.
I rej oice to believe that we have not only seven
thousand in this our Massachusetts Israel, who
have not bowed the knee to Baal, but seven
hundred thousand; and recent events foretell
not only an increasing number, but a more de
termined spirit.
Why is it, fellow citizens, that Massachusetts
stands first, or among the first, in 1851, in her
hostility to the Fugitive Slave Law ? I answer,
for the very reason that she stood first in her
hostility to the encroachments of the British
crown in 1773. And in less than seventy-five
years from this time, those who oppose, and
those who defend this inhuman law, will stand,
historically, as wide asunder, and will share as
high an honor, or suffer as deep an ignominy,
as is now awarded to the lovers of Freedom and
the minions of power at the era of the revolu
tion. Let all Young Men beware not to be se
duced by any temptations of immediate profit
or mistaken honor, to lift a hand in defence of
this law. If they do, then before they have
lived out half their lives they will be as ready as
old Cranmer to thrust the offending member
into the flames, and to say with him, " this
hand, thjs wicked hand, has offended."
Gentlemen, we in Massachusetts are a Union-
loving, and law-abiding people. Mr. Webster
and his "retainers," may spare their breath in
exhorting us to abide by the Union. Such a
work in this Commonwealth, is a work of super
erogation. He knows, and they know, that the
number of disunionists in this State, can ^e
counted on a man's fingers and toes. Whatev
er influence they exert, must flow from their
zeal, their talents and their private character. —
They derive none from numerical force. Were
they all to settle in one of our small towns, they
would be outvoted by its inhabitants. I regard
these ever-repeated appeals made to Massachu
setts men ani^to New England men to stand by
the Union, as not merely obtrusive, but as af-
frontive and insulting. Besides, when a man
undertakes the mission of going round the coun
try, preaching honesty, or temperance or chas
tity, he provokes the inquiry whether he is more
honest, temperate or continent than those whom
he exhorts. If the union of these States now
is, or has ever been verging towards a point of
danger, it is solely and only because ambitious
men and mercenary men at the North have given
it that direction by recognizing Southern threats

and Ijravadoes as realities, and thus encourag
ing them. Let the greatest coward see that his
threats are acknowledged as verities, and he
will adopt the cheap mode of threatening, in
stead of the hazardous one of acting. Could
the Chinese have frightened away the British
fleet by their battery of wooden cannon, having
the middle of the ends painted black for a muz
zle, they would have been fools to incur the ex
pense of brass or iron. But John Bull did not
care whether the cannon were of wood or of met
al, and at his first fire the Celestials scampered.
But here, when a few men in a few States poin
ted their wooden guns at us, Mr. Webster, Gen.
Cass and others.for their own ambitious purposes,
cried out that the Union was in danger. I say,
then, if the Union of these. States ever has
been in any proximity to danger, it was not
from menaces uttered by the South, but from
Northern endorsement of them. If northern
leaders had dishonored instead of endorsing this
spurious paper, it never would have got into cir
culation. We are not only Union-loving men, but as I
said before, we are law-abiding men. Had this
not been so, not all the fleets and armies in the
world could have carried Thomas Sims into
bondage. So intimately blended is the rever
ence for law with the very soul of our people, that
if you could convince them that a statute has
legal force and is binding upon the conscience, I
verily believe our juries would give a verdict in
favor of Shylock, though the pound of flesh
which he claimed were to be carved from their
own bosoms. This sideof a just cause for revolu
tion, they will yield submission to all laws en
acted by the Government, with one single ex
ception. The exception I mean embraces those
laws of men which are clearly contrary to the
law of God. And I trust the time is not now
and never will be, when the children of the
Puritans will obey any commandment of hu
man origin, if it conflicts with a Divine com
mand, though they have to lie down in lions'
dens, or walk through furnace fires, as the pen
alty of disobedience.
But with this sentiment of reverence for law
is another sentiment, which is its proper atten
dant and brother, — I mean a desire and a deter
mination to know what that is which is called
law ; what it is that claims this prerogative of con
trolling the will and challenging the conscience.
It is in this spirit that they have discussed and
mean to discuss the Fugitive Slave Law, and to
bring it, Protestant-fashion, to the test of indi
vidual j udgment and conscience.
Character of the Fugitive Slave Law.
I have no need to repeat to you the general
provisions of this inhuman enactment. No lover
of liberty can read them without having their
atrocious character burned into his mind inef-
faceably. You know that it assumes to dispose
of the highest interests of human liberty, — the
liberty of soul as well as the liberty of person; —
and you know that it also assumes to dispose of
the most precious interests of property, — the
property that a man has in himself and in all
his capacities of physical enjoyment and suffer-

ing as well as his property in his money or his
goods; — without a singje one of those safeguards
and protections, which tl e constitution of the
country builds up like a rampart of defence
around us all. This enactment, too, is no the
oretic affair ; it is no dead letter on the statute
book. It is a living monster uncaged and turn
ed loose amongst us, to rob and devour at its
will. Its contrariety to the Law of God,
AND ITS Unconstitutionality.
Now, I have two objections to this law, which
absolve me from all obligations to execute it,
or, in any way or manner, to assist in executing
iit. First, I believe it to be contrary to the law
of God, which, God helping me, shall be the
rule of my conduct, though I should scatter po
litical treasons as the autumn wind scatters
leaves. In his dread description of the judg
ment day, Jesus Christ makes the distinction
' between saints and sinners to turn upon the
fact, whether they have fed the hungry, clothed
the naked and visited those who were sick and
in prison. And who so hungry as those who do
not own and cannot own a morsel of bread ? —
Who so naked as those who do not own, and can
not own a shred of a garment to protect them
from cold, or from the lascivious eye ? And what
prison was ever so deep, what confinement ever
so hopeless, as that southern prison-house, which
holds three millions of our fellow beings within
its melancholy walls, — them and their posterity
forever? He that refuses the common acts
of hospitality to these victims, when fleeing
from their bondage, denies his Lord and Master.
He that refuses them, disobeys every precept of
the Savior, and has no more right to call him
self a Christian, than has the Fejee islander
when he rises from his cannibal banquet. He is
the Levite who passes by on the other side.
And next, I hold this law to be contrary to
'the constitution of the United States, and
therefore of no binding force upon my con
science or my conduct. I do not mean to say
by this, that I shall make forcible opposition to
it. I take the Quaker ground upon this subject;
I will not assist to execute it, though I shall suf
fer it to execute itself on me.
The constitutionality of this law has been ex
tensively discussed. But there is this broad
difference between the arguments of those who
afiirm and those who deny that it is constitu
tional. Those who deny it, argue the question
upon its merits, upon principle, upon those le
gal relations and analogies, that so nobly char
acterize the English law on the subject of Hu
man Liberty. But those who afiirm the con
stitutionality of the law, base their argument
upon technicalities and upon precedents, and
they cannot sustain themselves for a moment
on any other ground. They found themselves,
in the first place, upon the statutory precedent
of 1793, which was an act passed with very little
deliberation, as its history shows, and passed,
too, when it was expected on all hands that
slavery would soon die out. In the next place,
they rely upon the judicial precedent of Prigg's
Case, which was made by a bench of slave-

holding judges, and some of the points which
the court professed to decide did not arise in
the case.
Now the statutory precedent covers only a
part of the case ; for some of the most hateful
features of the law of 1850 are not to be fovmd
in the law of 1793 ; and the Supreme Court has
never passed upon the law of 1850 at all. So
two points are clear in the outset, that the
champions of the law cannot get along without
the precedents, and the precedents, in several
most important particulars, fail them altogeth
er.* This question has lately been discussed in
our own vicinity. The liberty of a resident of
Massachusetts, — a man every way entitled to a
jury trial by our Constitution and Laws, as
much as you or I, — has been sacrificed by a Uni
ted States Commissioner in the city of Boston.
He has decided in favor of the law. As you
would naturally suppose, in order to shelter
himself from the odium of such a decision, he
has put all personal and all collateral resources
into requisition to make the case as plausible as
ingenuity can make it. It is said, too, that Mr.
Webster and Mr. AVebster's friends, and the
Commissioner's friends have contributed of
their strength to help the debility of the case.
While the cause was pending befpre him, one
of the points involved in it was brought before
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and also
before the Circuit Court of the United States.
The Commissioner adjourned the case over after
all the arguments of counsel were in. He there
by gave himself an opportunity for preparation
and for consultation. I am taking no exception
to all this. I am glad it was done. We now
have the breadth and length and strength of
what can be alleged in favor of the law. I
never feel so confident of my conclusions, as
when strong men have taken the opposite side,
and have failed to sustain it.
The Opinion of George T. Curtis,
Esq., when consigning Thomas Sims to
Bondage.
Now, to this decision of the Commissioner,
made under such incitements, and with such
assistance, I propose to invite your attention.
The discussion may be dry, but it will not be
uninteresting; for it involves matters as impor-

* It is substantially conceded by tbe Supreme Court of
Massachusetts, in delivering their opinion on the applica
tion of Sims for a writ of habeas corpus, that the Fugitive
Slave Law stands upon precedent alone, and is disowned
by principle. Chief Justice Shaw says :
**At the same time it may be proper to say that, if this
argument, drawn from tile Constitution of the United
States, were now first applied to the law of 1793, deriving
no sanction from contemporaneous construction, judicial
precedent, and the acquiescence of the General and State
Governments, theargument from the limitation of judi
cial power would be entitled to very grave consideration."
I submit that the precedents, on this subject, both legis -
lative and judicial, are substantially divested of all their
force, by the fewness of the cases that have ever arisen
under the law ; by the general obsoleteness into which it
fell ; and, more than all, by that uniform indifference and
neglect, and Imay add inhumanity, with which colored
people and the rights of colored people, have been almost
universally regarded in the different States of the [JnioD.

tant as the liberty of the body and the liberty
of the will, and the liberty and life of the hu
man soul.
It may be said that these are legal and con
stitutional questions, and, therefore, unprofes
sional men cannot understand them. But most,
if not all the points, which I shall bring to your
attention, are matters of intuition, questions
wholly within the jurisdiction of plain common
sense, and therefore can be decided by you as
well as by lawyers or judges. And if I can con
vince 3'ou of the inconclusiveness of some parts
of this decision, of the legal Jesuitism of other
parts, and of the self-contradiction that pervades
the whole, you will not hesitate t6 set it aside,
not as null and void merely, but as discreditable
to the profession of the law, and dishonorable
to the State of Massachusetts.
Is the delivery of an alleged Slave to
the person claiming him an exercise of
"Judicial Power ?"^ Self contradic
tions of the Commissioner.
The first point which the Commissioner dis
cusses is, whether in seizing, by his warrant, a
man actually free, in deciding, by his judgment,
the exact question, whether that man were a
slave, and in sending him, by his certificate,
where the lash and the law of slavery apply to
his body and his spirit, he were exercising "ju
dicial power," as conferred by the Constitution
of the United States upon such courts as Con
gress should establish. He at first decides that he
does not exercise such power. This was well; for
he knows that he wag never appointed, nor com
missioned, nor sworn, nor is paid, nor removea-
ble from office for mal-conduct, as is prescrib
ed by the Constitution in the case of Judges.
Badly heroic as he was, in fact, in exercising
jurisdiction over a human being, and delivering
him over into hopeless and irremediable bon
dage, he was not mad enough to arrogate, in
terms, the prerogative of "judicial power."
But what says his superior, the Attorney
General of the United States ? In delivering
an elaborate opinion, at the command of the
President of the United States, — an opinion
which, as I suppose, passed under the super
vision of the whole Cabinet, and therefore may
be presumed to have the authority of Mr. Web
ster and the other Constitutional advisers of
the President, and which certainly had the
sanction of the President himself, for he acted
upon it; — in this opinion the Attorney General
says: "These officers, [the Commissioners] and each
of them, have Judicial power, and jurisdiction to
hear, examine and decide the case."
"'The certificate to be granted to the owner is
to be regarded as the act and judgment of a ju
dicial tribunal, having competent jurisdiction."
"Congress has constituted a tribunal, with ex-
elusive jurisdiction to determine summarily and
without appeal, who are fugitives from service."
"Th.e judgment of the tribunal, created by this
act, is conclusive upon all tribunals."
Now which is right, the Attorney General,.
with the President and his Cabinet to endorse
him, or Mr, Commissioner Curtis ? I submit to

you that the former were clearly right, so far as
this, — that, when the constitution declares that
" no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or
property without due process of law," (which
imports a trial by jury,) then neither Adam
Gibson, nor Thomas Sims, nor any other alleged
fugitive can be so deprived, without trial by
jury, and the judgment or sentence of the "ju
dicial power," thereupon. The following posi
tion has never been answered, and I think never
can be, namely : that if a resident of Massachu
setts can be deprived of his 'liberty and pro
perty," without a trial by jury and a judgment
of a Court, then he may be deprived of his life
also ; for " life, liberty and property" are secur
ed in the same section, in the same sentence,
and by the same safeguard.
The Attorney General held that, as the pow
er exercised by the Commissioner was a "judi
cial power," it deprived the party of all benefit
from the habeas corpus. And there was some
plausibility in this, though, I think, no sound
ness. But our defenders of the law hold that
this sending of a man into bondage is not a part
of the "judicial power," and yet that it deprives
him of all benefit of the habeas corpus. —
That is, they hold that a man may be deprived
of his liberty and property, (and of course of his
life,) by a ministerial proceeding, not having its
origin in any court, and not to be prosecuted to
final judgment in any court, and yet that all
the courts in the land, competent to furnish
relief in any other case, can afford none in this.
If this be true, if a proceeding held and ac
knowledged by the officer who initiates and con
ducts it, to be a ministerial proceeding, not orig
inated by a court, and never to be carried be
fore a court, does thus take away the trial by
jury, and the security of having one's liberty
and property adjudicated upon by a " court,"
and renders the writ of habeas corpus an empty
form, then, indeed, we may bid " farewell, a long
farewell" to all our liberties. An unprincipled
majority of Congress has only to pass a law that
any man may be imprisoned, or hanged on an
executive warrant, and that the hireling mar-
shall or commissioner shall suffer no " molesta
tion by any process issued by any court, judge,
magistrate, or other person whomsoever," and
despotic power will be enthroned here as effec
tually as it ever was in England in the bloody
days of the Stuarts. Jeffries was at least a judge,
though he acted like a Commissioner.
Who could have imagined, eight months ago,
that a ministerial proceeding could put a citizen
beyond remedy or reach of our courts f
I now come to a position in the commission
er's argument which is not only transparently
fallacious, but is contradicted by iiimself, in the
same opinion, again and again. I shall offer a
series of objections to it.
The point was pressed upon him by counsel
that he was exercising "judicial power." To
maintain this, a passage was quoted from Prigg's
case, in which the court say, "a claim made by
the owner out of possession for the deliveiry of a
slave, * * constitutes in the strictest sense a
controversy between the parties^ and a case
arising under the constitution of the United
States, within the express delegation of judi-

cial power, given by that instrument." Can
any thiiig be more explicit and conclusive, to
prove that the Commissioner was then presum
ing to exercise a part of the "judicial power"
conferred by Congress exclusively upon courts ?
And how does he answer it ? In this way, and
in this way only. He says the court decide
two points :
First, — That a claim for a fugitive slave is a
case arising under the constitution of the Unit
ed States, and so within the grant of "judicial
power" as given by the constitution ; and
Second, — "That being such a case, belonging
to the judicial power of the Union, it was for
Congress to regulate and prescribe the remedy,
the form of proceedings, and the mode and ex
tent in which the j udicial power of the Union
should be called into activity."
He then declares his full admission of both
these propositions. And how does he answer
iiisjirst one, which, at a blow, unseats him from
his usurped bench. He says "the counsel for
the prisoner have insisted most strenuously on
the first of these positions, but have said noth
ing with regard to the second." And what
need had the counsel to say any thing about
the second, the first being admitted 1 The su
preme court had said, and he acknowledged it,
that every case like that then before him, was a
"case arising under the constitution of the
United States, within the express delegation of
judicial power given by that instrument." This
was equivalent to saying that it was a case
which could not be adjudicated upon by a Com
missioner, because a Commissioner is not a
judge,: — is no court nor part of a court. The
plain' statement of the Commissioner's language
is, this : The supreme court declare that I have
no jurisdiction in this case ; but because the
counsel said nothing about another point to be
found in the opinion of the court, therefore I
will take jurisdiction.
But again : this reply of the Commissioner
that the counsel said nothing about the second
point, (when he had acknowledged the validity
of the first, which was fatal,) is not merely an
evasion ; it is founded upon a false meaning at
tributed by him to the second point. He says
the Court held that it was "for Congress to re
gulate and prescribe the remedy, the form of
proceedings, and the mode and extent in which
the judicial power of the Union should be call
ed into activity." Suppose it was for Congress
to do this. Might they not transcend their
power when doing it ; and does not his admis
sion of the first point prove that they have
transcended their power ? — the very point then
in question. The two things cannot stand to
gether. If the trial of the issue, " fugitive
slave or not" be " in the strictest sense," "with
in the express delegation of judicial power,
given" by the Constitution, then this ministeri
al Commissioner cannot exercise it, and Congress
cannot empower him to exercise it. Besides,
the decision of the court was made in 1842. —
Tht law whose constitutionality they had then
¦ under discussion was passed in 1850. Did the
court in '42, declare, or could they declare, that
any law thereafter passed by Congress on this
subject should be held constitutional? Did

their decision act prospectively, and adjudge a
law to be constitutional, which was to be passed
eight years afterwards ? So far from this, the
points then under discussion ; — namely, the
power of a commissioner to adjudge a case more
important than life or death, and the obligation
of a Commissioner to hear exparte evidence, and
to be concluded by it when heard ; — these ques
tions did not come before the Supreme Court,
in '42, and have never been before the Su
preme Court at all. But because that Court had
said, years before, that it belongs to Congress to
prescribe the mode of recovering fugitive slaves,
therefore, says the Commissioner, if Congress
should vest this power in Commissioners, (and
in slave-traders or pirates j ust as well, ) it would
be valid. And because the counsel did not an
swer this point, the Commissioner decides an
admitted point, conclusive in their favor, against
them. But this is not all. After declaring in the
first part of the opinion, his full conviction, that
the delivery of an alleged fugitive comes .with
in " the express delegation of judicial power,"
he uses further on, the following language ; "It
would seem," says he, " that it only remains to
inquire whether the act of 1850, authorises or
requires any thing more than a summary minis
terial proceeding in aid of the right secured by
the Constitution, namely, the right of remov
al." And he holds, that it does not. The act
which, in the first part of the opinion, was ac
knowledged to belong, " in the strictest sense,"
to the "judicial power," has now ceased to be
" anything more than a summary ministerial
proceeding." And again he says, " I have endeavored, in
the foregoing discussion, to show that this is a
summary ministerial proceeding," &o., " If this
be so, and I can entertain no doubt that it is," &c.
This sudden transmigration from a judge to an
executioner, from one who acknowledged that
the delivery of an alleged fugitive is an act of
"judicial power," to one who holds that it is
NOT " anything more than a summary ministerial
proceeding," may suit a disciple of Pythagoras,
or the priests of the Hindoo religion, but it ill
becomes an expounder of American jurispru
dence.
Natcjre and authority of "Judicial
Power" explained and vindicated.
I proceed to another point in the Commission-
ers's decision, and when I have discussed it, I
shall submit to your good sense whether I do
him any injustice in saying that it is most per
spicuously fallacious, and lucidly absurd.
" In all governments formed upon the English
model," says he, " there is a certain class of in
quiries, [powers?] judicial in their nature, but
which are confided to officers not constituting a
part of the judiciary strictly so called." (I do
not like this substitution of the word " inqui
ries" for " powers." If anything under heaven
should be called a power, the prerogative of
sending a human being,,presumptively free, into
bondage, is surely one.) He then instances cer
tain officers in Great Britain, who, though not
judges, perform, ashe says, certain judicialfunc-

tions. A brief remark will suffice for this. Great
Britain, having no written constitution, the cur
rent of its legislative enactments and its judicial
decisions, makes its constitution. If then it has
been the prevailing practice of that government
to confer any given description of powers, upon
any given class of officers, then that is what the
British constitution allows and approves.
But we have a written constitution, and there
fore are not to tolerate a law, (as in the case of
this Fugitive Slave Law,) which is repugnant to
its fundamental provisions. By this constitution
all legislative powers therein granted, are vested
in Congress ; executive power in a President,
and j udicial power in the courts. The constitu
tion of Massachusetts is equally explicit. It
says, " in the government of this Commonwealth
the legislative department shall never exercise
the executive and judicial powers, or either of
them ; the executive shall never exercise the
legislative and judicial powers, or either of them;
the j udicial shall never exercise the legislative
and exucui,ivB powers, or either of them ; to the
end it may be a government of laws and not of
meii." In both these constitutions, the three func
tions of government, namely, to legislate, to ad
judicate and to execute, are expressly recogniz
ed; and the wJwle of their distinctive powers are
lodged in separate departments. No mention
is made of any hybrid or mongrel class, half
judicial and half executive, or half ministerial
and half judicial, or compounded of aliquot partg
of each. Such an officer, under either con
stitution, would be a monster; he would hold
the same relation to their legitimate functiona
ries, that Caliban does to the human race; and,
if created for executing the Fugitive Slave law,
that half devil and half beast would be the fit
ting prototype.
The commissioner professes to have found a
class of eases both under our State and National
constitutions, where powers "judicial in their
nature and special in their purpose may be con
fided to the determination of officers who are
notjudges." Outhis point, he has expended
himself. Here lay the pressure and travail of
his case. Seeing that, in deciding the great issue
before him, "slave or free," he was exercising
judicial power; and in ordering an armed force
to convoy the victim to his house of bondage,
he was exercising ministerial or executive pow
er, (thus blending the functions which both con
stitutions have separated,) the commissioner felt
that he must find some analogy, or some prece
dent, to cover up this obvious violation of all
principle, or his argument was in ruins. It is
in ruins; for he has found no such precedent,
and cannot find any.
The instances he cites from Massachusetts
arc, 1st. Sheriffs, who may preside over juries
when assessing damages for laying out highways,
and may decide such questions of law as arise
on the trial; 2. Auditors, who may examine
vouchers and state accounts between parties
and make report thereof to the court; 3. Com
missioners of insolvency, appointed to distribute
insolvent estates; and 4. County commissioners
who lay out highways.
Now, nothing can be clearer than that, in no

one of these cases, does the oflioer named exer
cise "judicial power." Indisputably, univer
sally, and necessarily, by force of the phrase it
self, the term "judicial power" embraces the
idea of a power, whose decision can be enforced
ininvitum; that is, against an unwilling, con
testing, resisting party. The sublime power of
a court becomes nothingness, and is ridiculous,
if its decrees cannot be executed to the very
death of the party against whom they are made.
For this purpose, they are backed by all the
civil power of the State; and should this prove
insufficient, they are backed by all the military
power of the State; and, even beyond this, by
the whole military and naval power of the na
tion. Without this, judges are but puppets,
or no better than "men in buckram." "Judicial
power" does not consist in a sheriffs presiding
over a jury, nor in an auditor's casting up ac
counts, nor in a commissioner's ciphering out
the dividends of an insolvent's estate, nor in
county commissioners' laying out roads; but it
consists in entering up a judgment which has
the armories at Springfield and Harpers' Ferry,
which has the standing army and militia of the
United States, which has fifty line-of-battle
ships, which has the treasury of the nation to
back it, and to visit with death one man, a
thousand men, or a hundred thousand men, if
need be, who shall confront it with resistance.
Look, Fellow-citizens, at this wretched soph
istry. The Sheriff must make return of the
verdict of the jury to the Court of Common
Pleas, — which is a Court, — and if either party
suggests good grounds of dissatisfaction, the
whole proceeding is a nullity, and the investiga
tion must be made again; and again and again,
until every act and letter of it become unexcep
tionable. The Auditor must make his report to
the court that appointed him, and if the court
see cause, they set aside both it and him. The
acts of the Commissioners of Insolvency derive
all their validity from the consent of the parties,
or from the j udgment of a court, which substitutes
the force of law for consent. And no act of the
County Commissioners, in taking a man's land,
is worth the paper it is written on, until the
verdict of the jury is returned to the Court of
Common Pleas, and there formally accepted and
recorded. Nay, every intelligent farmer in the
country knows the fact, that though the Com
missioners have laid out a new road, or shut up
an old one, and a party feeling himself aggrievei^
has demanded a jury, the former cannot be
worked, nor the latter closed up, until the Court
of Common Pleas shall have passed upon the
proceeding and ratified it.*
If, however, in aU the above cases, the par
ties in interest consent to the acts of Sheriff, Au
ditor, or Commissioner, then those acts become
binding, by virtue of such consent. The party
consenting is afterwards estopped from ques
tioning them. But they derive no authority
from any "judicial power" vested in the officers
*1 object to Mr. Curtis's calling the County Coniniisfion
exs,"T}ie Court of County Commissioners." They' are
nowhere so called in the Act creating them, or in tlv Act
defining their duties. On the contrary, they are exrfessly
contradistinguished from the "Court of Common /leas,"
which is a Court. This may have been an inadv/rtence,
but it shows how he mistook the nature of tlieir pJwers.

performing them. We Jiave a case more exactly
in point, and better illustrating the principle, in
the fourth section of the 97th chap, of our Re
vised Statutes, where it is provided that "in ac
tions upon promissory notes and other contracts,
where the amount due appears to be undisput
ed, the debt or damages maybe assessed and as
certained by the Clerk, either under a general
order of the court, or by a special reference of
the case to him ; and the judgment, in either
case, shall be entered in the same form, as if it
had been awarded by the Court, on an assessment
or computation made by themselves." Yet who
will pretend that this act of the Clerk, which
is performed only where there is no dispute be
tween the parties, emanates from any "judicial
power" in that officer ?
The instances cited under the United States'
Constitution have, if possible, still less plausi
bility. The Commissioners appointed by the
courts, can initiate certain proceedings by hold
ing parties to trial, &c., but this function is no
more judicial than that of the grand jury in
finding an indictment. It is a preliminary to a
judicial act, but not such an act. The Commis
sioners are not even required to be sworn, and,
in many instances, it is known they are not
sworn. So of the case of which so much is attempted
to be made, — that of the Commissioner of Pa
tents. Any party feeling himself aggrieved by
any of his decisions, can appeal directly to the
Courts of the United States for redress.
Compare all this with analagous instances in
the legislative department of Government. The
Legislatures of most of the States have created
Commissioners to revise their codes of statute
law. Massachusetts has had several such. Our
Revised Statutes are a monument of the labor of
one of these Commissions. But were they
legislators ? Was their proposed code of any
validity until enacted by the Senate and Hoitse
of Representatives f Just as much as the acts
of sheriff, auditor, or commissioners of the dif
ferent kinds, were acts of judicial power, and
no more. Are the Selectmen of our towns, le
gislators, because they decide, in the first in
stance, who are elected as members of our
House of Representatives ? Are our Governor
and Council legislators, in both the State and
National Governments, because on an ex
amination of votes transmitted to them by the
Selectmen, they issue certificates of election to
our State Senators and to the members of Con
gress elect ? Do they exercise any part of that
power, which makes "each House the judge of
the elections, returns, and qualification of its
own members ?" Just as much, I reply, as sher
iff. Auditor, Commissioner or Clerk, does of
"judicial power." They perforin acts prelimi
nary or antecedent to legislation, but no legisla
tive act; just as the above named classes of of
ficers perform acts preliminary or antecedent to
judicial decisions, but never, in any case, the
authoritative and compulsory judicial act itself.
The strength, or rather the weakness, of
the Commissioner's argument, on this point, con
sists in the obtrusive, projecting, self-shouting
fallacv, of using the exact, technical, constitution
al phrase, "judicial power," as synonimous with

the popular expression, "a judicious act," or "the
exercise of judgment." Officers of all kinds ex
ercise "judicial power," in this broad and pop
ular sense of the phrase ; that is, they perform
acts requiring good judgment. Umpires, aibi-
trators, and referees perform acts precisely likp
those of judges, but they cannot put the whole
physical strength of the government in motion
to enforce them. So sheriffs decide upon the
identity of the party named in their precepts ;
postmasters, to whom they shall deliver letters,
and what postage they shall demand ; custom
house officers, upon the nature and value of
dutiable goods ; assessors, in levying taxes ; pa
rents and teachers on matters of discipline, &c.,
&c. In a popular sense they may all be said to
exercise judicial power; but no particle of that
power, which by the fundamental law of our
government is vested in the "courts." Their
acts are all examinable by the courts. They
cannot set the arm of the government in mo
tion to execute their judgments. Indeed the
Wxxulu ttiguiiitjit of the coniinis&ioiier on this
point, is but a play upon words. It is but u.
ciiL;k of % orbil legerdemain. The premises he
starts with are unknown to the Constitution,
and the conclusion he comes to is abhorrent to
humanity. Does not everybody see, that in order to make
the cases parallel, in order to obtain any legiti
mate ground of comparison between them, Sims
should have had the same power of appealing
from the Commissioner's decision to a court,'
which power of appeal belongs of right, to a party
who feels aggrieved by the act of Sheriff, Audi
tor, or Commissioner; and that the certificate
should bind him only by his voluntary assent.
The Commissioner's ''Final" Fallacy,
though not his last.
But there is another point in the Commis
sioner's opinion, which is worthy to be compan
ion to this. I proceed to consider it.
He repeats and keeps repeating, that his de
cision, dooming Sims to all the horrors of bon
dage, and putting him under the control of a
man who claims title to his body and his soul,
to be carried intoa jurisdiction where such titles
are acknowledged, is not "pinal." It is not
final, he says, because if Sims is free, he may
extort that freedom from the laws of Georgia,
which has been denied to him by the laws of
Massachusetts; that is, if the judgment which
the Commissioner is giving against a free man,
in a free State, is a false judgment, he may go
to a slave state to obtain redress, — which is ten
thousand times worse than if a jury, in a capital
case, should say, we may find this prisoner
guilty; for if he be wrongfully hung, God will
make him amends.
Besides the inhumanity of this, it contains a
fallacy which is twin -brother to the one just
considered. The judicial word, "final," has a
legal, technical and certain meaning. In the
Courts, and in the law-books, it means the last
judgment in a judicial proceeding. It means
that judgment from which a party cannot ap
peal, though he may ever so much desire it ; or
it means that judgment, after which, however

dissatisfied the party may be,he cannot have his
cause retried or re-heard by a court, but is
compelled to submit.
"Final judgments," says Blackstone, " are
such as at once put an end to the action." This
is a precise description of the judgment render
ed by the Commissioner against Sims. That
victim resisted by prayers and tears; by the sub
duing eloquence of his counsel, and by their
irresistible logic, which, the Commissioner has
never yet begun to answer. But the self-con
stituted judge was inexorable. Though he
knew that according to the terms of the Fugi
tive Law, there was no escape from his decis-
sion; though he knew that his certificate was
to protect the man-hunter from all "molesta
tion by any process issued by any court, judge,
magistrate, or other person whomsoever," yet
like Pilate, he washes his hands and siy, " I
am innocent of this man's blood, see ye to it;"
for my decision is not "final." And why ? Be
cause, in another juristiction, in another suit,
where the plaintiff is to be defendant, and the
defendant plaintiff, or perhaps against another
party; in a place too, where all the common law
presumptions in favor of freedom are reversed;
where the law is diflTerent, and the rules of evi
dence are different; and where the respondent
himself is reduced to the condition of a chattel
and a brute, a decision, at some indefinite fu
ture period, may be had, that the man, whom
the Commissioner now declares to be a slave, is
free, and has always been so. Because of this
future and contingent event; because of this al
most impossible possibility, the Commissioner's
decision is not final. I deny this. The decis
ion is final, because, as Blackstone says, it "at
once puts an end to the action." But let us
test the question, not only by its legal definition,
but by its actual effects. It decides that Sims
is a slave. It decides that he owes service to
James Potter; It decides that Potter and his
heirs and assigns forever are the lawful own
ers of Sims and the heirs of his bondage forever;
and when Sims and his posterity shall be
scourged, torn, flayed, mutilated, starved, the
only consolation which the Commissioner has
for him is. Shall the clay say to the Potter that
fashioneth it, what makest thou ? It not only
decides that Sims is a slave, and that he shall
be sent to Georgia, but it sends familiars, like
those which once disgraced even the purlieus of
the Inquisition, to see that the devilish deed is
done. The whole argument of the Commissioner,
that this act of his is not final, is founded on a
quibble, — on the use of the legal word "final,"
as though it were synonymous with the popu
lar word eternal or perpetual. The slavery of
Sims may not be eternal or perpetual; because,
by some miracle of God, or otherwise, he may
escape. But in a technical and juridical sense
the decision of the commissioner is final ; and he
might as well doom a man to be hurled from the
Tarpeiau rock,and say that the act is not final.be-
cause he only commits the victim to the laws of
gravitation, as he has committed Sims to the
laws^f Georgia.
If by any possibility this doctrine that the
decision is not final, could be for a moment sus

tained, then I will submit a case with which to
compare it.
The Constitution says " No_ State shall pass
any law impairing the obligation of contracts."
Here we have a constitutional basis, — the same
as for the reclamation of fugitive slaves. Some
states have passed laws impairing the obligation
of contracts, as the stop-laws of Kentucky, and
so forth. Suppose a Massachusetts creditor to
claim to Jiave a Kentucky debtor, whose contract
has been so impaired. Could Congress authorize
this pretended creditor to go to Kentucky,
seize enough of the alleged debtor's property to
satisfy his alleged debt, bring it home, or have
it ordered home by a magistrate, for the purpose
of having the right tried here ? And could the
magistrate in Kentucky defend himself against
that provision of the constitution which gives a '
jury trial, where the value in controversy is
more than twenty dollars, on the ground, that
the proceeding delivering the money or proper- i
ty, was not " final ?"
Another Fallacy.
Much is said by the commissioner, in differ- ,
ent places, in the hope of showing that the pro
ceeding before him was only for what he calls
a " limited and special purpose," namely, " re
moval." I confess myself unable to understand, why
the certificate of the commissioner is any more
restricted to a limited and special purpose thau' |
any judicial act, sentence, or execution, of any i
court whatever. The Commissioner declares a |
prima fade freeman to bo a slave. He declares
that James Potter owns Thomas Sims, and the |
posterity in his loins forever ; or that Thomas
Sims and his posterity forever, owes service to ,
James Potter and his heirs and assigns forever, j
Does this "forever" limit the meaning of the |
certificate, as to time ? If so, then a general !
award, or execution against Sims, as contradis- 1
tinguished from this limited one, must extend
and run into the next world. When our Courts
decide that one man owes another man money,
they award execution against his property, with
certain humane exemptions as to clothes, fur
niture, provisions, school books, bible, &c. But
when this commissioner decided that Sims ovved
Potter service, he awarded a certificate against
the adjudged debtor, which made no exemption
whatever ; but included property,- clothes,
books, skin, flesh, heart, brain, soul, and all that
was in him, or of him, with all appurtenances
and appendages, present emblements and future
increase. Yet, according to the commissioner,
the first judgment is a common or general one ;
the last " special and limited." Under our old
laws, (and under the laws of some States yet,)
courts could sentence offenders to the barbarous
punishment of flogging. But they were and
are bound to specify the number of lashes. This
is general. The commissioner delivers over a
slave to be flogged by his master, ad libitum, and
inperpetuum, to be flogged in his own person,
and to be flogged in the persons of his children,
and their posterity, in seeula seeulortim. The
defined flogging of thirty-nine, or such other
number of lashes as can be ¦counted, the com-

missioner calls general or indefinite. But the
uncounted number of lashes ; the vast, unknown,
algebraic quantity ; the infinite series ; that
which Newton with his calculus could not com
pute, nor Rosse with his telescope see the end
of, — that is "special and limited," The taking
of a limited amount of a man's property, care
fully set down in dollars and cents, both in the
text and in the margin of the execution, the
commissioner calls a general purpose. But the
robbing of a man, not only of all he has earned,
but of all his capabilities of earning as long as
he breathes, with full authority to do the same
thing to his posterity to the latest generation,
this is " special and limited." To sentence a
man to be hanged by the neck till h? be dead,
though with privilege of priest, prayer-book and
bible, this too is general and proper ; though in
Massachusetts it can be done only by a majority
of the judges of the Supreme Court. But to
send a man to be worked to death in five years
on a^ sugar plantation, where his being taught
to read the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a felony, —
this is " special and limited," and so may be
done by any hireling commissioner who will do
what Judas did for one third part of his silver
pieces. Fellow-citizens, I submit to any man, clerical,
legal, or lay, who is capable of appreciating mo
ral distinctions, whether this whole doctrine,
about delivering a man up as a slave, and put
ting him bodily into the hands of the claimant,
and thrusting him into slave jurisdiction, under
the pretext that it is done only for the spe
cial and limited purpose of removal, be not atro
cious. It is more like a forgery than an argu
ment. Assumed learning and logic never prac
ticed a greater imposition upon themselves, nor
attempted a greater one upon others, than when
they fabricated this notion, that adjudging a
man to be a slave, stripping him of his liberam
legem, th&t is of all his rights and immunities as
a citizen, and delivering him into actual bond
age, is "for a special and limited purpose
of removal," — only to give him a voyage,
or a pleasure excursion of a few hundred miles,
-^out — but not back. When the successor of St.
Peter, claiming to hold the keys of heaven, and
to have death and hell for his ministers, excom
municated whole sects and peoples, and deliver
ed them over to the great soul-hunter, and sent
)tus familiars with them to see that the " claim
ant" suffered no "molestation" while convey
ing them to the bottomless pit, he might as well
have said that he did it only for a " special and
limited purpose." It was not damnation, it was
only "removal." And do you suppose the devil,
could he have got possession of those outcast
souls, would have cared any more under what
pretence the great Pontiff commissioner made
the delivery, than does the Southern slavehold
er, when he gets possession of a man, of whom
he can make a slave ?
This fallacy about the "special and limited
purpose of removal," did not originate with
Mr. Commissioner Curtis. I exculpate him from
that guilt. He only adopted it and gave it a
"bad eminence" by making it in part, the basis
of his decision. Henceforth, therefore, let the
' people brand it. Let them classify it and de

nounce it, and detest it, as belonging to that im
pious and blasphemous kind of arguments by
which our first parents were beguiled, when Sa
tan told them that, though they sinned against
God, they should not die ; or by which Mr.
Webster cajoled and cozened so many honest
men, when he assured them, that though they
should violate the moral law, by opening all the
territories to slavery, yet some physical law of
geography or the weather would save them from
the penalties.
Distinction between the conditions of
delivering up Fugitives from Justice
AND Fugitives prom Service.
In the absence of all decent materials for an ar
gument, the commissioner resorts to that ten
times exploded position, that there is an analo- /
gy between fugitives from justice and fugitivesf-
from service. Where could he find a bandage of)
prejudice thick enough to blind him to the dis
tinction, that the condition of delivering up the
former is that he be charged with crime, while
the condition of delivering up the latter is that
he be held to labor and that he owes service ? How
can it be said that a man owes service, until the
fact of the indebtedness be proved ? Such reas
onable suspicion of guilt as justifies a grand
jury in finding abUl of indictment is sufficient
in the one case, but such positive proof as would
require the court to enter up judgment and
award execution is absolutely necessary in the
other. The Government demanding a fugitive
from justice seeks possession of him for a trial of
the question of criminality ; but the claimant of
an alleged fugitive from service seeks possession
of him to avoid a trial of the question ot freedom.
The constitution requires that every person ac
cused of crime shall be tried in the State and dis
trict where the crime shall be charged to have
been committed ; but it makes no such pro
vision in regard to the alleged fugitive from
service ; and this injunction in the one ease,
and omission in the other, create the irresistible
inference, that there is a difference between them,
and that the alleged fugitive from service, ac
cording to all the analogies of the common law,
is to be tried where he is found.
But there is one distinction which is broad
enough and luminous enough to make a blind
man see it. An alleged fugitive from justice is ^
not adjudged to be a criminal previous to deliv»
ery, nor is he made a criminal, in the eye of the
law, by the act of delivery. But the alleged
fugitive from service is adj udged a slave, and
made a slave by the certificate of the commiss
ioner. The State receiving a fugitive from jus
tice does not proceed forthwith to punish him.
But the receiver of an alleged fugitive from ser
vice owns him, and may proceed to control him
and beat him, and rob him, and starve him, on
the very instant that the commissioner puts the
certificate into his hands. If any one cannot
see this distinction no apt of the moral oculist
can give him sight.
The papers inform us that when Sims wa%
landed in Savannah, he was taken to jail and
received the "usual reprimand,'' which, as every
body knows, is a flayed and blood-streaming

10

back. By whose certificate was the nine-thong
ed eat laid on ? Had he been a murderer or a
pirate, would excoriation have been the first act
of welcome on his arrival ? No ! Murderers
and pirates would have had a jury. A man who
will not see such a distinction as this, would ex
cite no pity should he be made to feel it.
In treating this topic, the Commissioner makes
one assertion that seems insane. He says that
to authorize the delivery up of a fugitive from
justice, in order to his removal, " it must be
proved that he has committed a crime." Such a
declaration was never made before, and I do
not believe it will be ever made again. You
could not find a lawyer south of Mason and
Dixon's line who would venture to say this. —
Every body knows that the supposed crim
inal needs only to be charged with crime. —
It is the alleged slave who must be proved
to be held to service before he can be con
stitutionally surrendered. But as though
this was not absurd enough, the Commissioner
goes on to say, that though the alleged fugitive
from justice must be proved, in the place where
he is taken, " to have committed a crime," yet,
after his removal, he must be proved again, to
have committed it. How can a man be proved,
in any legal way to have committed a crime,
without being confronted with the witnesses
against him ? Why, after having been so prov
ed, is he put upon trial again ?
Right of Trial by Jury.
As to all the Commissioner sayg in denial of
the right of trial by jury, I shall make but one
or two remarks. I have argued that question
elsewhere ; and, until I see some answer to that
argument, I have no occasion for repetition or
corroboration of it. After using the word per
son some twenty times, to signify the President
of the United States, electors, senators, repre
sentatives. United States officers, Indians, Afri
cans, &c., the Constitution declares that "No
person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law ; — this
" due process of law," meaning trial by jury.
This is one fact. Adam Gibson, Henry Long,
Thomas Sims, and many others, some of them
now acknowledged on all hands to have been
free, have been sent into slavery without this
trial. This is another fact. Now put these
two facts together. No man shall be deprived
of liberty or property, except by the jury trial.
These men have been deprived of liberty and
property without the jury trial. These are the
two ends. Now fill up the space between them
with what you please, and call it argument, law,
gospel, or what you will, every body must see
that it is nothing, and can be nothing but Meph-
istophiles' jugglery. I dismiss this point with a
simple proposition: — In Massachusetts, we know
no legal distinction founded on color. Through
all the gradations, from the person who has the
preternatural whiteness of an Albino, to one
whom you can see in the darkest midnight,
Because he is so solid black, — all, under our
Constittition and laws, are alike free^ten, or
alike slaves. Notwithstanding the Commis
sioner's decision makes us all slaves, yet I main

tain that, in the eye of the law, we are all free.
How then, can any one of us freemen, be robbed
of liberty and property, and turned into a slave,
but by freeman's proof, — that is, trial by jury ?
I acknowledge that after we have been proved
to be slaves by freeman's proof, then all the un
utterable consequences of slavery follow, of
course; — just as when a man has been proved
to be a murderer, the consequences of murder
follow. But until, mark this, UNTIL a man
has been proved to be a s'ave, by freeman's
proof, he remains legally free. And a magis
trate who takes jurisdiction of a proceeding by
which a man may be deprived of liberty or prop
erty, without freeman's proof, prejudges his
victim, when he allows the first witness to be
called or the first paper to be read ; and he
might just as well do it, in a ease of " life," as in
a case of " liberty and property."
The Commissioner's view of ''State
Rights."
The next position of the commissioner, which
I shall notice, relates to the right of Congiess
to make use of State courts to execute United
States laws.
Now we have the express authority of the
Supreme Court of the United States for saying
that "Congress cannot vest any portion of the
judicial power of the United States, except in
courts ordained and established by itself." —
Martin vs Hunter's Lesee, 1 Wheaton, 330. "The
whole judicial power of the United States should
be, at all times, vested in some courts created
underits authority." lb. 331. "The jurisdic
tion over such cases, [cases arising under the
constitution, laws and treaties of the United
States,] could not exist in the State Courts pre
vious to the adoption of the Constitution and it
could not afterwards be directly conferred on
them ; for the constitution expressly requires
the judicial power to be vested in courts ordain
ed and established by the United States." lb.
335. But the commissioner refers to a passage
in Priggs' case, in which it is said that "while
a difference of opinion exists * * whether State
magistrates are bound to act under it, [ a h-.w of
Congress,] none is entertained by the court,
that State magistrates may, if they choose, exer
cise the authority, unless prohibited by State
legislation." Waving all exceptions to this doctrine, the
utmost that can be made of it is this : that State
magistrates may execute a law of Congress, un
less forbidden by a law of their State ; but when
so forbidden they cannot ; and Congress can
neither compel them to do so, nor annul a pro
hibitory law of the State, by giving validity to
the act of the magistrate, performed in violation
of the State law. Now mark the noti sequitur of
the commissioner's logic ! See how his premis
es belong to one subject and his conclusion to
another. Because a Massachusetts magistrate
may execute a law of Congress, unless the Mas
sachusetts Legislature forbid him, but if so for
bidden he can no longer do it, therefore, when
the Massachusetts Legislature has so forbidden
him. Congress may send the magistrates of
Georgia, or of any other State, into Massaohu-

11

setts, to do what our own State had forbidden
our own magistrates to do. I say " send the ma
gistrates of Georgia here " because Congress may
just as well, and even better for us, authorize
the magistrates of any State in the Union to
come here, set up courts, and pass sentences
which shall convey our citizens into bondage, as
to stay at home, and make records, which, when
brought here, shall have the same effect. This,
then, is the law-logic of the commissioner : Be
cause a Massachusetts magistrate may aid in re
claiming an alleged fugitive, on Massachusetts
ground, unless forbidden by his State, yet, if so
forbidden, then the Legislatures of fifteen slave
States, may send their magistrates, or the acts
of their magistrates here, to do the same thing.
The State might prevent its own magistrates
from aiding in this nefarious work ; but this
would be of no avail, for any one, or all, of fif
teen sets of slave state magistrates may come
and do the forbidden thing.
Pierpont Edwards once said of a clergyman
that if his text had a contagious disease, the
sermon would not catch it ; and a blind man,
being asked to describe his conception of color,
compared it to a clap of thunder. But all their
ideas were coherent and homogeneous, compar
ed with those premises and conclusions of the
commissioner, by which the State Rights' doc
trine is expounded to mean, the right of one
State to send its magistrates into another State,
to do what the latter has lawfully prohibited its
own magistrates from doing. South Carolina
never claimed so much as this.
Closing Remarks on the Commissioner's
Opinion.
Under the first head, where it had been urged
by counsel, that a freeman might have no op
portunity to prove his freedom in the State from
which he was alleged to have fied, because the
claimant was under no obligation to carry him
to that State, but might send him to the Cuban
or Brazilian market, the commissioner shuts his
eyes to these very probable consequences and
refuses to consider them ; but under the fifth
head, where an argument in favor of the slave
holder could be derived from consequences, he
not only argues elaborately from them, but ba
ses his judgment upon them.
There are two remarks thrown out in the
course of the commissioner's opinion, so shock
ing to every feeling of humanity, that any one,
in commenting upon them, may well be excused
for passing from the language of argument to
that of emotion.
If there be any one right known to the com
mon law, more important and sacred than all
others, it is the right of confronting and cross- ex
amining the witnesses who are brought to tes
tify against us. Without this right, there is no
fraud that cannot be practiced upon the most
honest man, and no guilt that cannot be proved
against the most innocent one. Doubtless this
right of cross-examination is sometimes abused ;
but there are few spectacles more exciting or
more gratifying than to see the demons of false
hood driven out, one after another, from a per
jured villain, until the truth, at last, is wrench

ed from his heart, notwithstanding the double
boltings and barrings, with which he had locked
it there. The fear of this cross-examination,
" casting its shadows before," has prevented
thousands and tens of thousands from swearing
falsely. Next to honesty, this fear is the
greatest protection to property, liberty, and life.
Now the testimony which doomed Sims to
slavery and which may doom any of us with
our wives and children, to slavery, when men
grow, not more wicked, but only a little more
bold in their wickedness than they are now, was
wholly ex parte testimony ; taken, not merely
behind the victim's back, but a thousand miles
behind his back ; of which he had no knowl
edge, and, unless he were omniscient, like God,
could have no knowledge. And when the
counsel of Sims urged upon the commissioner
the enormity of this outrage against all princi
ple, what was his reply ? It was this, and it
makes a man's blood run cold to read it : Sims'
absence from Georgia, "so that he could not be
served with notice, if he was entilleil i, j it, vftis
in his own wrong, and he cannot now complain
that he had no opportunity to cioaa-^.^u^uiAO
the witnesses."
I appeal to all history, that no judge who ever
sat upon a bench where the common law was
recognized and administered, however corrupt
he may have been, ever advanced a more atro
cious doctrine. Why, gentlemen, if a debtor
absconds for the very purpose of defrauding his
creditors, he must have notice before he can be
proceeded against for the recovery of a debt 
If he flees from the State, lurks and hides him
self, he must have the best notice the court can
contrive to give him. If the plaintiff recovers
and takes out execution he must file a bond con
ditioned to make restoration ; and years after
wards, if the defendant shall come back and show
cause, he shall be entitled to a review to annul
the whole proceedings against him. Ay, when a
criminal, a robber, a murderer, an incendiary, is
brought to trial, even he must be " confronted
with the witnesses against him, have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and
the assistance of counsel in his defence." And
yet the Commissioner makes proof out of nothing,
that Sims escaped from slavery, and then, be
cause of this nothing-made proof, he inculpates
him with being absent "in his own wrong."
The other point referred to arose from certain
testimony, (if it can be called testimony,) that
the mother of Sims begged the witness, "wheth
er her son were in a free State or in a slave
State, for God's aake, to bring him back again."
"This," says the Commissioner, "certainly dis
arms the case of any unpleasant features"! !
Why, even the kine of the barn-yard, when the
butcher cuts the throat of her young, will weep
and low, and bellow, for days and days, and say,
as well as in her inarticulate meanings she can
say, "For God's sake; let it be brought back
again ;" though the only consequence of its re
turn will be to have its throat cut by the butch
er again. And are we to expect that the bru
talized, chattelized "cattle" of the South will
have less of that natural yearning and longing
of the soul, at the loss of her offspring, than the
animals of the farmer's yard? God says, "Sane-

12

tify unto me all the firstborn. Whatsoever op-
eneth the womb among the children of Israel,
both of man and of beast, it is mine." And
can we suppose that he has not planted the in
stinct of a mother's love too deep to be destroy
ed, but by the destruction of the being herself
in whom it was planted ? No ! debase the moth
er as you will, by ignorance, vice, superstition,
lust, concubinage, incest, and this wealth of af
fection will still glow at the bottom of her heart,
"rich as the oozy bottom of the deep in sunk
en wrack and sumless treasures." And because
this mother's love had not been all extinguished,
the commissioner says that his sending a human
being into the abyss of bondage, on evidence
that an intelligent barbarian would reject, "cer
tainly disarms the case of any unpleasant feat
ure^." But I shall not expostulate with the
Comm'sfinner. A man must have a heart be
fore he can feel, as he must have eyes before he
can see.
"Oh, who can paint a sunbeam to the blind.
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind."
Fellow citizens, I might occupy your atten
tion much longer, upon this unprecedented
opinion of the Commissioner ; but there are
two or three other topics to which I wish to
call your attention, and I therefore forbear. In
saying what I have said, I disclaim all person
al ill-will or discourtesy towards that magis
trate. Even should I appear not to have suc
ceeded in suppressing my own feelings, I cer
tainly cannot wound his more than he has
wounded mine, and those I believe of nine
tenths of all who have ever read his opin
ion ; — not by a thousand fold as much as he has
wounded the law, whose servant he is, or the
fair fame of Massachusetts of which he is a
citizen ; not so much as his decision will wound
the hearts of an intelligent posterity, who shall
look back upon it as a partizan and an ignoble
act, not to be remembered without a sigh.
Cruelties inflicted by Slavery on
Women.
If the legal relations of slavery did not sustain
the moral ones, as the root sustains the branches
and nourishes the fruit, those moral relations
would seem to demand all our attention. I
know but comparatively little, and no man liv
ing at the North can know but comparatively
little, of the various and ever-repeated wicked
nesses of this institution. It has been my lot,
however, to live for about half the time, during
the last four years, in the midst of a milder form
of slavery. And besides this, I was once engag
ed for about six weeks in the trial of a cause
growing directly out of slavery; and that expe
rience gave me some insight into its dreadful
mysteries. For a moment, the wind blew the
smoke and flame aside, and I looked into its
hell. I saw, then, as I had never seen before,
what a vital and inextinguishable interest every
human being has in this subject; — not the slaves
alone, but the free men, not voters only but all
who can be affected by votes, not men only but
especially women.
For this reason I am glad to see so many ladies
in this audience. It becomes them to be here.

If any mortal should cultivate an abhorrence of
slavery, the female sex should do it. Whatever
any one may hold to be the social relation be
tween free women and slave women, yet before
God and Christ and all the holy Angels, they
belong to the same sisterhood of the human race.
They are your sisters. And what is the condi
tion of these your sisters, in regard to everything
that a virtuous and noble woman holds most sa
cred and dear ?
Ladies, there are now in this land of pretend
ed freedom and pretended Gospel, a million and
a half of women, who have no practical knowl
edge of what a woman's higher life should be,
or what a woman's most precious rights are 
Since the Declaration of Independence, the
number of slaves in this country has increased
from less than five hundred thousand to more
than three millions; and before the close of this
century, their descendants will increase to more
than thrice three millions. And yet, neither as
to the living nor as to the dead, has there ever
been a lawful marriage among them all. There
has never been a man-slave who could say, —
"This is my wife, heart of my heart and life of
my life, and no mortal power shall plhck her
from my side." There has never been a wo
man-slave who could say, "This is my lawful,
wedded husband, whom I promise to love and
cherish, and to whom I vow inviolable constan
cy." "For this cause," says Christ, "shall a
man leave father and mother, and shall cleave
to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh,"
But the "twain" of slaves are never one. And
even when any sham ceremony is observed, to
distinguish this holy relation of husband and
wife from the cohabitations of beasts, and he
who officiates comes to those other words of
Christ, "What, therefore, God has joined to
gether, let not man put asunder," he stops ; for
he knows, and they all know, that a few dollars,
at any time, will bring bereavement upon both,
— a double bereavement, he a widower and she
a widow, both still surviving. Their life, at
best, is but a life of concubinage ; — not even
that concubinage, which, though not founded
upon a lawful contract, has still something like
conjugal fidelity in it, and therefore a semblance
of virtue ; but a various and vagrant concubin
age, traversing the circle of overseer, master,
master's guests and master's sons. The fate of
the children born to the slave mother, you all
know. Those objects upon which all maternal
affections meet and glow as in a focus, are torn
from her bosom, like lambs from the flock when
the shambles are empty.
And as to those females who are young,
sprightly and handsome :—
Charge me not with indelicacy in touching
upon this theme. Honi soit qui mat y pense. I
speak not to fastidious ears, but to the pure in
heart, to whom all things are pure. I speak of
eternal verities, before whose massive force the
heart trembles and bows itself, as reeds before
the tempest. It is the grossest and most shame
less of all indelicacies to patronize and multiply
vice, through pusillanimity in exposing it, —
As to those females, I say, who are young,
sprightly and handsome, whom God has damned
with beauty of form and beauty of face, because

they only attract the gloating eye of Passion,
who can describe the loathsomeness of their
life ? They are ripened for the New Orleans, or
for some other market, whence Southern harems
are supplied ; as, under the Mohammedan reli-
• gion, white Caucasian beauties are sent to the
slave-marts of the darker-skinned Turk.
In that company of seventy-six persons who
attempted, in 1848, to escape from the District
of Columbia in the schooner Pearl, and whose
officers I assisted in defending, there were sev
eral young and healthy girls who had those pe
culiar attractions of form, of feature and of com
plexion, which Southern connoisseurs in sensu
alism so highly prize. Elizabeth Russell was
one of them. She fell immediately into the
slave-traders' fangs, and was doomed for the
New Orleans market. The hearts of those who
saw her and foresaw her fate were touched with
pity. They offered eighteen hundred dollars to
redeem her, and some there were who offered
to give, who would not have had much left af
ter the gift. But the fiend of a slave-trader
was inexorable. He knew how he could trans
mute her charms into gold through the fires of
sin. He demanded twenty-one hundred dol
lars, (though for menial services she would not
have been worth more than four or five,) and
would take nothing less. She was despatched
to New Orleans; but when about half way there,
God had mercy upon her and smote her with
death. Perhaps, foreseeing her fate, she prac
ticed what, under such circumstances, we might
call the virtue of suicide. There were two
girls named Edmundson, in the same company.
When about to be sent to the same market, an
older sister went to the shambles to plead with
the wretch who owned them, for the love of
God, to spare his victims. He bantered her,
telling her what fine dresses and fine furniture
they would have. "Yes," said she, "that may
do well in this life, but what will become of
them in the next?" They, too, were sent to
New Orleans, but they were afterwards redeem
ed at an enormous ransom, and brought back.
There was one girl, who, after her recapture in
the Pearl, was sold six times in seven weeks, in
Maryland and Virginia, for her beauty's sake.
But she proved heroically and sublimely intrac
table. Like Rebecca, the Jewess, she would
have flung herself from the loftiest battlement,
rather than yield herself to a villain. Notwith
standing her masters' pretence that they had
bought her with their money, and owned her
Sbul, yet she had wealth, which, "though aU
the earth were one entire and perfect chryso-
lyte," it could not buy. She was parted vrith
and came to New York; and I have been in
formed in the most authentic manner from the
lady af the very respectable family of which she
became an inmate, that, on an examination of
het person; after the healing-time of the journey
had passed, her body was found scarred and
W-aled with whip-marfcs, which the villains in
flicted lipon her because she would not come to
their bed.
'Now, suppose a sister or daughter of yours,
of this heroic soul and spotless purity, should
find herself on the way to New Orleans;—
suppose, by almost super-human power and

adroitness, she should escape, and should thread
her solitary and darksome path, for hundreds of
miles towards the North Star ; should lie down
in caverns, with poisonous reptiles by day, and
pursue her lonely journey by night, finding the
beasts of the forests to be less terrible than
man ; should swim rivers, and keep off famine
by roots and insects, until at last, thanks be to
God, she sets her mangled and bleeding feet
upon the soil of freedom. Perhaps some echo
of th* fame of the Pilgrim Mothers has reached
her ears. She has heard of Boston and its noble
women of old, and she hies hither as to a city of
refuge, — as to a sanctuary where virtue has an
altar, and where she can lay down her hunted
and weary body, and be at rest. Fallacious
hope ! The lecher pursues his prey and he is
here. He goes to some Glossin lawyer who
sues out a warrant. He goes to some Jack
Ketch who serves it. The victim is seized, at
midnight, under some lying charge, and she is
carried before some Commissioner, whose con
duct, were he a quasi judge, as he pretends
to be, would be enough to make every hair of the
judicial ermine forever detestable. Here a pro
cess is gone through which she does not under
stand, and some papers are read of which she
never heard, and then a judgment is pronounc
ed that her "labor" is "due" to her pursuer,
(and such labor !) that she "owes service" to
him, (and such service !) and then the Commis
sioner delivers her into his arms, and pockets a
fee which common pimps would be ashamed to
work for.
And, my friends, the keenest pang in the
grief of all this, is, that there is no fiction or ro
mance about it. A Commissioner who could
bring himself down to send a man to a Georgia
cotton-field, under this law, the first time try
ing, could send a virtuous and spotless woman
into enforced harlotry, the second time ; and
the Prince of Darkness only knows what he
could not set him to do afterwards. The cler
gymen who could defend the enslavers of Sims
because he "owed" the "service" of one sex,
could defend the enslavers of a woman because
she "owed" the "service" of the other sex ; —
the clergymen of the rich parishes I mean ; —
for it happens with the constancy of a law of
nature, that it is only the clergymen of the rich
parishes who do this. Do they not know how
to serve and reverence their Lord and Master, —
that is, their Pay-Master !
Outrage upon New England Love of
Liberty. ,
But feilowrcitizens, as our feelings are stimu
lated to the keenest sensibility, in looking at
the infinite of wrong which slavery commits; as
we see the millions and millions of human beinga
dimly emerging into view, and crowding down
the vista of futurity to blast our eyes with the
vision of their woe, a poteift voice rings in our
ears, exclaiming " Conquer your prejudices, "
"CoNauEK TOUR PREJUDICES." And this exe
crable counsel is uttered in reference to the in
finite crime and disgrace of sending into slavery,
without a trial, those who are free under pur
laws, — the men to stripes and death, and the

14

women to the body's shame and the soul's per
dition. Fouler, baser, more ungodly counsel
was never uttered, since it was said to our first
parents in the garden of Eden : On the day thou
eatest thereof, "thou shalt not surely die."
And what is it that this lone-honored eulo
gist of Liberty, but now its great apostate, blas
phemes with the name of "prejudice?" If there
be one sentiment more deeply rooted in the pub
lic heart of Massachusetts than any other, more
intertwined and grown together with all the fi
bres of its being, it is the sentiment of liberty.
We have drunk it in with our mother's milk;
we have imbibed it from all the lessons of the
school-room and the teachings of the sanctuary;
we have inspired it with the atmosphere we
breathe, and our organs have been attuned to it
from our birth, by the anthems of the mountain's
wind and the ocean's roar. It was from the
love of Liberty, that our earlier fathers plucked
themselves up by the roots from that natal
soil into which they had been fastening for cen
turies. For this they wandered abroad upon
the ocean, because its engulfing surges were
more tolerable to them than a tyrant's power.
For this, they transplanted themselves to this
land, at that time more distant and more form
idable to them than any part of the habitable
globe could now be to us. For this they per
formed the double task of enduring all priva
tions and dangers, and at the same time of lay
ing the foundations of all our free and glorious
institutions; and as the sires were stricken down
by toil and death, the sons took up the work
and bore it on, generation after generation.
For this noble sentiment of LibertVi our later
Fathers encountered the perils and deaths of a
seven-years' war, and amid poverty and destitu
tion, amid hunger and cold and nakedness, with
out any of the protections and defences of bat
tle which the wealth of their foe could command,
they bared their noble breasts to the shock of
the mailed legions of the British crown. And
when the struggle was ended and the triumph
won, they achieved labors of Peace not less
magnanimous and wonderful than their labors
of war.
They were the pattern-men of the world ; —
not aggressive, not submissive ; not hostile, not
servile ; doing right, demanding right ; they
were the men who would never wield the op
pressor's rod, and would go mad at the touch of
his heel.
Now, there is not one of all those glorious
deeds from the embarkation at Defthaven to the
signing of the Peace of 1783, or the inaugura
tion of the Federal Government in 1789, which
was not begotten by the love of Liberty, or
would have been performed without its creative
energy. And yet, the arch-apostate, standing
in the city of Boston, the home of old Samuel
Adams and John Hancock, within a stone's
throw of the spot where Benjamin Franklin
•was born, in sight of Bunker Hill, and with
Lexington and Concord, as it were, just hiding
themselve^" behind the hills for shame, calls aU
this a " Prejudice ;" and commands us to cast
it from us as an unclean thing. Was it not
enough to make the stones in the streets, and
every block in that eternal shaft which marks

the spot where Warren fell, cry out with most
miraculous organ to rebuke him ?
We have another, and it is a kindred "preju
dice." We have a "prejudice" of sixty years
standing in favor of the principle of the ordi
nance of 1787. That ordinance has been cher
ished in our memories, it has been taught to our
children, and we have displayed it before the
world both as the pledge and the promise of our
devotion to liberty. Five states, now number
ing five millions of men, were the battalions
whom t'nat ordinance wheeled from the ranks
of Belial to the Lord's side. Hundreds of
times have the Whig party and the Democratic
party resolved that the principle of that ordi
nance should be maintained inviolate. Mr.
Webster claimed the application of it to the
new territories as his thunder, and swaggered
as he rattled it. Now he calls the great achieve
ment of Thomas Jefferson and Nathan Dane a
"prejudice," and dishonors their graves by his
scoffs. He abandons the vast regions of Utah
and New Mexico to the slaveholder ; he gives
nearly one hundred thousand square miles of
territory to Texas ; he gives ten millions of dol
lars in money, (more than with all our devotion
and self-sacrifice, we have been able to appro
priate to public education in Massachusetts, for
the last ten years ;) and worse than this, he
gives permission that she may carve out of her
territory a slave state additional to what had
been unconstitutionally contracted for when she
came into the Union.
And for what does he flout us, by stigmatizing
all these sacred convictions and sentiments and
instincts as "prejudices?" Only to feed the
famine of his ambition. He began to see what
every body else has so long seen, that his vices
were bringing upon him the retribution of pre
mature old age and decrepitude; and that un
less he could enter the White House the next
term, he must wait, at least, until the great
Julian Period should bring the world round
again. He parleyed with southern tempters,
and fell.
Nor did he outrage our feelings only. He
sacrificed our pecuniary interests, our very
means of subsistence. Massachusetts would be
prospering under an improved system of protec
tion for our domestic industry, to-day, but for
Mr. Webster's apostacy, which stript us of all
our power and of all our unity, and inflamed
the spirit of southern aggrandizement to demand
every thing and yield nothing. Could the issue
be now formed and the case tried, whether Dan
iel Webster's course in 1850, did not deprive
the workingmen of the country of a tariff for
the protection of their labor, not an intelligent
and impartial j ury could be found that would
not bring him in guilty. This result every un
biased man at Washington, saw, last summer ;
while he was cajoling the men of the north with
the delusion that, if they would surrender lib
erty, they should have their reward in a tariff.
I speak of this with confidence, because there
are hundreds of my constituents and acquain
tances who wiU bear me witness that, in per
sonal interviews and by correspondence, they
were warned, that if they followed Mr. Webster
in his recreancy to principles, he would leave

them without relief in the matter of property.
Fellow citizens, I will trespass upon your
attention but for a moment longer. I wish to
advance one idea for the consideration of all so
ber, moral, and religious men ; and when this
idea is duly considered, I trust to its working a
revolution in public sentiment. In selecting
men to be our political leaders, we have some
times committed the gravest moral error. We
have assumed the falsity of a distinction be
tween a man's public and his private life. We
have supposed that the same individual might
be a bad man and a good citizen ; might be a
patriot and an inebriate, a faithful officer and a
debauchee, at the same time ; might serve his
country during "office hours," and the powers
of darkness the rest of the twenty-four. But I
say, as of old, no man can serve God and Mam
mon. We have been too prone to judge of men by
their professions and by their connections. We
seem to have forgotten that the tree is to be
known by its fruit, and a man by his life. If
we are to take the Pharisee's rule, and determ
ine a man's piety by his creed, and by the num
ber and lengtiJi of his prayers, then piety will
be the cheapest thing in the market ; and as
worthless as it is cheap.
In choosing teachers to be the guides and ex
emplars of our children, we demand high moral
worth ; and we would as soon thrust our youth
into the centre of pestilence, as amid the con
tagion of vicious and profiigate men.
In selecting our religious guides, we feel al
most justified in being captiously and morbidly
critical; we hardly admit that we can be strict
to a fault ; and the man who fails to carry per
sonal purity and exemplariness into the pasto
ral life, is driven from it with indignation and
contempt. ^
I admit too, rejoicingly, that, in Massachu
setts, this preventive and praiseworthy disci
pline has been more extensively applied to po
litical men, than in any other State in the Union.
Our higher State offices have been filled for
years, saving very rare exceptions, with men of
distinguished probity and a spotless life. And
why, in this department, should we ever grant
dispensations, and absolutions ; or, like the old
popes, sell inctulgences to sin ?
Now, let this doctrine be applied : for I hold
it to be no unwarantable invasion of private
character, to apply these principles to public
men. When public men openly and notorious
ly practice vice, they make the vice public, and
bring it within public jurisdiction; — £f it is pub
lic for example, it is public for criticism ; and,
under such circumstances, the moral and reli
gious guides of the community are as solemnly
bound "truly to find and due presentment
make," of these offences, as the grand jury is,
in the case of crimes against the laws of the
land. I say therefore us letapply this doctrine.
How long have all good citizens in Massachu
setts labored in the glorious cause of Temper
ance. They have devoted time, expended tal
ent, lavished money, incurred obloquy ; but as
their reward, they have plucked the guilty from
perdition ; rescued the young, just losing their
balance over the precipice of ruin ; saved the

widow and the fatherless from unutterable
woe, and driven demons of discord from domes
tic Edens. Now why, after all our toils and
sacrifices to uphold and carryforward the cause
of temperance, and to make its name as honor
able as it is blessed ; why should we demolish
all our work by elevating a man to a high polit
ical station, or by upholding him when in it,
who, in the face of the nation and of the world,
will become so drunken that he cannot articu
late his mother tongue ? Is this an example
you desire to set before the ingenuous and as
piring youth of the land ; ay, before your own
children ?
We have had men in the Presidential chair,
not without faults and blemishes of character ;
but hitherto we may proudly say, that we never
have had one there who drowned his reason in
his cups. God grant that we never may. —
Think of this magnificent Ship of State freight
ed with twenty-three millions of souls, and la
den to the scuppers with the wealth of all the
world's hopes, with a pilot at the helm, drunk!
We are an industrious and a frugal people.
The aptitude is born with us. A tru« Massa
chusetts boy seems to take to ingenious labor
and to labor-saving contrivances, from his
birth, — like a duck almost impatient to be
hatched, that it may get into the water. We
prize and honor the home-bred virtues of dili
gence and thrift ; for they bestow upon us aU
our comforts, the means of educating our chil
dren, and leave us a magnificent surplus for
godlike charities to be scattered over the world.
Dr. Franklin has stamped a family likeness
upon us all. His economical wisdom is domes
ticated among us. Take a sound and pure
specimen of a Massachsuetts farmer or mechanic,
and analyze him, and you will find that, of his
whole composition, from six to iten ounces in
the pound is made up of Dr. Franklin. Now
why should we root out this luxuriant, fruit-
bearing virtue ? Why welcome and court
and feed the prodigalities and sensualities of
the Old World, to corrupt th e pristine virtues
of the new ? Can he be a republican after the
severe simplicity and granderur of the old Ro
man type ; can he be an exemplay citizen, who
must have his thirty, forty, or even fifty thou
sand dollars a year to squander upon what I
must not call, " to ears polite," his vices and
passions, but more genteely, "his tastes and
feelings;" while millions of honest laborers
thank God if by incessant toil they can
earn their daily bread for their families,
and the bread of knowledge for their chil
dren ? Can they be good citizens ; or, at
least, are they not grievously deluded, who wiU
give such purses to such a man for being the ad
vocate and agent of their special interests, while
there are hundreds of suffering men and women
and more suffering children, at their own doors ?
Do you want your children to grow up infiamed
byjsuch examples of excess and wantonness ? I
know that all this is defended on the ground
that something must be done for a great man's
family. Ay, that family ! The progeny and cost
liness of the vices, what Californias shall be
able to support ? I know, too, that it is also said
we must have great talents ia the pubUo coun-

16

oils, at whatever price. Well, if this be your
philosophy, don't do the work by halves, but im
port Lucifer at once !
Now, fellow citizens, you know that all the
men who are guilty of these great derelictions
from civil and social duty, are the men who up
hold the Fugitive Slave Law.
I might touch upon more holy relations in
life ; upon virtues without which there is no
home and no domestic sanctuary ; without
which there may be children but the sacred in
stitution of the family is gone. But I forbear. I
only desire to awaken your attention to the
great duty of extending the domain of conscience
over politics ; of holding public men answerable
for those vices which it is a great misnomer to
call private when they are committed in the
face of the world. "The pulpit is false to its
trust," if it does not follow and rebuke them,
under whatever robes of official dignity they
may hold their revels.
Three great stages of development belong to
the world. First, there was the period of phy
sical development, when the tallest man was
crowned king, when the strongest muscles
enacted the laws, when brute force was
"His Royal Majesty," and claimed and re
ceived the homage of mankind. That age
has passed, and how contemptible does aU its
greatness now appear. Then came. the age
when the mind towered above the body, when
a nation's power no longer consisted in the mil
lions of its men, but in the treasuries of its
knowledge ; when the intellect took up the
vastest concentrations of animal strength, which
seemed omnipotent before, lifted them off their
fulcrum, and they became, like a feather, in the
breath of its power. That age is the present.
The Moral Age is yet to be ushered in. In this
age the intellectual forces shall still retain all
their dominion and supremacy over the physi
cal world ; but the moral shall preside over the

intellectual, and move them as God moves the
stars, bringing them out of chaos, and wheeling
them in circuits of unimaginable grandeur, and
for purposes of beneficence yet inconceivable.
In that day, the Lawgivers of the land shaU be
no longer " compromisers" between Duty and
Mammon, and the judges shall judge in righte
ousness. In that day, the Merchant, for the
lucre of trade, shall not pay tribute in human
beings, and send his flesh-tax across the free wa
ters. In that day, the Gospel of human broth
erhood, of doing as we would be done by, and
of loving our neighbors as ourselves, shall not
be doled out to us by priests of the broad-phy
lactery sort, in homeopathic doses, reduced to
the five hundredth dilution. But in that glo
rious day, the men who sit in the Areopagus of
the nation, clothed with the ermine of the Law,
shall be, as the heathen of old figured the em
blem of Justice, blind in the outward eye ; and
all they know of color shall be to give no color
to the law. In that day the successors of St.
Paul shall preach what he preached, standing
"in the midst of Mars Hill," a God of equity, of
righteousness, of justice, of benevolence; the
God who made " of one blood all nations of
men," who, alas ! to so many in our day is " the
Unknown God."
In that day, when a whole people are aroused
to ponder, with unwonted intensity, upon the
great principles for which Sydney and Vane
bled ; for which Hampden smote the tyrant of
his day ; for which the heroes of the revolution
pledged fortune, life and sacred honor; no
voice shall strive to seduce them from their
sacred work by its Belial cry, "Conquer your
Prejudices ! "
Fellow-citizens, if you wish to co-operate in
bringing on this glorious era, your first step is
to vote for that noble man who ransomed his own
slaves, John G. Palprey.

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rOLE UNIVERSITY LIBRRRY

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