submit to this Act if modified. His brief emphatic response was: "No, never, unless compelled by force of arms." Chatham yet weak with disease, but mighty in eloquence, exclaimed in ever-memorable words: "We are told America is obstinate America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest. The Americans have been wronged; they have been driven to madness. I will beg leave to tell the House in a few words that is really my opinion. It is that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, totally, and immediately." It was repealed. Within less than a year from its original passage, denounced and discredited, it was driven from the Statute Book. In the charnel-house of history, with the unclean things of the Past, it now rots. Thither the Slave Act is destined to follow.

Sir, regarding the Stamp Act candidly and cautiously, free from the animosities of the time, it is impossible not to see that, though gravely unconstitutional, it was at most an infringement of civil liberty only; not of personal liberty. There was an unjust tax of a few pence, with the chances of amercements by a single judge without a jury; but, by no provision of this Act was the personal liberty of any man assailed. Under it no freeman could be seized as a slave. Such an Act, though justly obnoxious to every lover of constitutional Liberty, cannot be viewed with the feelings of repugnance, enkindled by a statute, which assails the personal liberty of every man, and under which any freeman may be, seized as a slave. Sir, in placing the Stamp Act by the side of the Slave Act, I do injustice to that emanation of British tyranny. Both, indeed, infringe important rights; one of property; the other the vital right of all, which is to other rights as the soul to the body—the right of a man to himself. Both are condemned; but their relative condemnation must be measured by their relative characters. As Freedom is more than property; as Man is above the dollar that he earns; as Heaven, to which we all aspire, is higher than the

earth, where every accumulation of wealth must ever remain; so are the rights assailed by an American Congress higher than those once assailed by the British Parliament. And just in this degree must history condemn the Slave Act more than the Stamp Act.

Sir, I might here stop. It is enough in this place, and on this occasion, to show the unconstitutionality of this enactment. Your duty commences at once. All legislation hostile to the fundamental law of the land should be repealed without delay. But the argument is not yet exhausted. Even if this Act could claim any validity or apology under the Constitution, which it cannot, it lacks that essential support in the Public Conscience of the States, where it is to be enforced, which is the life of all law, and without which any law must become a dead letter.

The Senator from South Carolina (Mr. BUTLER) was right, when, at the beginning of the session, he pointedly said that a law which could be enforced only by the bayonet, was no law. Sir, it is idle to suppose that an Act of Congress becomes effective, merely by compliance with the forms of legislation. Something more is necessary. The Act must be in harmony with the prevailing public sentiment of the community upon which it bears. Of course, I do not suggest that the cordial support of every man or of every small locality is necessary; but I do mean that the public feelings, the public convictions, the public conscience, must not be touched, wounded, lacerated, by every endeavor to enforce it. With all these it must be so far in harmony, that, like other laws, by which property, liberty, and life, are guarded, it may be administered by the ordinary process of courts, without jeoparding the public peace or shocking good men. If this be true as a general rule - if the public support and sympathy be essential to the life of all law, this is especially the case in an enactment which concerns the important and sensitive rights of Personal Liberty. In conformity with this principle, the Legislature of Massachusetts, by formal resolution, in 1850, with singular unanimity, declared:

"We hold it to be the duty of Congress to pass such laws only in regard thereto as will be maintained by the sentiments of the Free States, where such laws are to be enforced."

The duty of consulting these sentiments was recognised by Washington. While President of the United States, at the close of his Administration, he sought to recover a slave who had fled to New Hampshire. His autograph letter to Mr. Whipple, the Collector of Portsmouth, dated at Philadelphia, 28th November, 1796, which I now hold in my hand, and which has never before seen the light, after describing the fugitive, and particularly expressing the desire of "her mistress," Mrs. Washington, for her return, employs the following decisive language:

"I do not mean, however, by this request, that such violent measures should be used AS WOULD EXCITE A MOB OR RIOT, WHICH MIGHT BE THE CASE IF SHE HAS ADHERENTS, OR EVEN UNEASY SENSATIONS IN THE MINDS OF WELL-DISPOSED

CITIZENS. Rather than either of these should happen, I would forego her services altogether; and the example, also, which is of infinite more importance. "GEORGE WASHINGTON."

Mr. Whipple, in his reply, dated at Portsmouth, December 22, 1796, an autograph copy of which I have, recognises the rule of Washington :

"I will now, sir, agreeably to your desire, send her to Alexandria, if it be practicable without the consequences which you except — that of exciting a riot or a mob, or creating uneasy sensations in the minds of well-disposed persons. The first cannot be calculated beforehand; it will be governed by the popular opinion of the moment, or the circumstances that may arise in the transaction. The latter may be sought into and judged of by conversing with such persons without discovering the occasion. So far as I have had opportunity, I perceive that different sentiments are entertained on this subject.'

The fugitive never was returned; but lived in freedom to a good old age, down to a very recent period, a monument of the just forbearance of him whom we aptly call the Father of his Country. It is true that he sought her return. This we must regret, and find its apology. He was at the time a slaveholder. Though often with various degrees of force expressing himself against slavery, and promising his suffrage for its abolition, he did not see this wrong as he saw it at the close of life, in the illumination of another sphere. From this act

Grateful

of Washington, still swayed by the policy of the world, I appeal to Washington writing his will. From Washington on earth I appeal to Washington in Heaven. Seek not by his name to justify any such effort. His death is above his life. His last testament cancels his authority as a slaveholder. However he may have appeared before man, he came into the presence of God only as the liberator of his slaves. for this example, I am grateful also that, while a slaveholder, and seeking the return of a fugitive, he has left in permanent record a rule of conduct which, if adopted by his country, will make Slave-Hunting impossible. The chances of a riot or mob, or "even uneasy sensations among well-disposed persons," are to prevent any such pursuit.

Sir, the existing Slave Act cannot be enforced without violating the precept of Washington. Not merely "uneasy sensations of well-disposed persons," but rage, tumult, commotion, mob, riot, violence, death, gush from its fatal overflowing fountains;

hoc fonte derivata clades

In patriam populumque fluxit.

Not a case occurs without endangering the public peace. Workmen are brutally dragged from employments to which they are wedded by years of successful labor; husbands are ravished from wives, and parents from children. Everywhere there is disturbance; at Detroit, Buffalo, Harrisburg, Syracuse, Philadelphia, New York, Boston. At Buffalo the fugitive was cruelly knocked by a log of wood against a red-hot stove, and his mock trial commenced while the blood still oozed from his wounded head. At Syracuse he was rescued by a sudden mob; so also at Boston. At Harrisburg the fugitive was shot; at Christiana the Slave-Hunter was shot. At New York unprecedented excitement, always with uncertain consequences, has attended every case. Again at Boston a fugitive, according to the received report, was first basely seized under pretext that he was a criminal; arrested only after a deadly struggle; guarded by officers who acted in violation of the laws of the State; tried in a Court-House surrounded by chains contrary to the common law; finally

surrendered to Slavery by trampling on the criminal process of the State, under an escort in violation again of the laws of the State, while the pulpits trembled and the whole people, not merely "uneasy," but swelling with ill-suppressed indignation, for the sake of order and tranquillity, without violence witnessed the shameful catastrophe.

With every attempt to administer the Slave Act, it constantly becomes more revolting, particularly in its influence on the agents it enlists. enlists. Pitch cannot be touched without defilement, and all who lend themselves to this work seem at once and unconsciously to lose the better part of man. The spirit of the law passes into them, as the devils entered the swine. Upstart commissioners, the mere mushrooms of courts, vie and revie with each other. Now by indecent speed, now by harshness of manner, now by a denial of evidence, now by crippling the defence, and now by open glaring wrong, they make the odious Act yet more odious. Clemency, grace, and justice, die in its presence. All this is observed by the world. Not a case occurs which does not harrow the souls of good men, and bring tears of sympathy to the eyes, also those other noble tears which "patriots shed o'er dying laws."

Sir, I shall speak frankly. If there be an exception to this feeling, it will be found chiefly with a peculiar class. It is a sorry fact that the "mercantile interest," in its unpardonable selfishness, twice in English history, frowned upon the endeavors to suppress the atrocity of Algerine Slavery; that it sought to baffle Wilberforce's great effort for the abolition of the African slave trade; and that, by a sordid compromise, at the formation of our Constitution, it exempted the same detested Heaven-defying traffic from American judgment. And now representatives of this "interest," forgetful that commerce is the child of Freedom, join in hunting the Slave. But the great heart of the people recoils from this enactment. It palpitates for the fugitive, and rejoices in his escape. Sir, I am telling you facts. The literature of the age is all on his side. The songs, more potent than laws, are for him. The poets, with voices of melody, are for Freedom. Who could sing for Slavery? They who make the permanent opinion of the