battle, and finally moulded together for general use after the bitterness of the strife has passed away. One question there is, the solution of which seems to be hopelessly impeded by these causes the question, namely: What is the duty of the whole nation, arising under its admitted Constitution, in reference to the subject of Negro Slavery in the Southern States? The passage of the new Fugitive Slave Bill and its enforcement have given occasion for a new discussion of this subject, and have especially stimulated all those influences which we have named, as adverse to the wisest and calmest consideration of important questions. There are some reasons why this should not be regretted, as it presents the question in a more tangible and practical shape than it usually assumes, and enables us to test the declamation it excites by the well-established principles of government, of common sense, and of divine law. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguishing dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." This may be too strong a statement of the case, and no doubt was considered so, as it was not inserted by Congress in the Declaration as adopted. Still, it is undeniable that the introduction of slaves into the colonies was especially patronized by the English Government, and maintained by repeated acts of Parliament. And also, "being openly countenanced by the Dutch in their municipal charter and corporate societies, slavery was forced upon the American Colonies." "In nearly every instance," says Dr. Stevens, "the earliest legislation in each colony was directed to putting down such a species of labor. Virginia early dis There may be occasions when it is the part of wisdom to decline a controversy involved with collateral issues and impractica-couraged it, and during her colonial existence, ble abstractions; but it is not only wise, but manly, to embrace the occasion, when the question is presented in a form that admits of a clear decision by the common sense and common conscience of the world. But before commencing the presentation of our own views of this embarrassing subject, we propose to show the operation of the causes we began by adverting to, in impeding the fair discussion and settlement of the general question, in order that we may bespeak a more candid hearing. passed laws imposing duties on slaves imported into the colony, thus virtually prohibiting them." Mr. Madison says, "The British Government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to this infernal traffic." "South Carolina soon passed a law prohibiting their further importation." It was rejected by the King in council, who declared the trade "beneficial and necessary to the mother country." Massachusetts, the first State in America and that, too, though a member of one of the which directly participated in the slave-trade, Boston churches earnestly rebuked the traffic, imposed duties upon negroes imported, and aimedat other efforts; but as late as 1774, when the Assembly of Massachusetts passed an act to prevent the importation of negroes and others as slaves,' Governor Hutchinson refused his assent, and dissolved the Assembly; because to sanction it would have violated his instructions. The royal orders to Governor Wentworth, of NewHampshire, directed him not to give his assent to or pass, any law imposing duties on begroes imported into New-Hampshire. Slaves were intro duced into Pennsylvania by William Penn; and though before he died he did somewhat to melior In the first draft of the Declaration of Independence submitted by Thomas Jefferson, the following was among the grievances enumerated: "He (the King of Great Britain) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating them and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of a Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought or the labor of individual philanthropy accomplish, and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to probibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. ate their condition, 'he died a slaveholder.' 44 But what could the remonstrances of colonies *Stevens's History of Georgia, chap. ix. when kings, aud queens, and cabinets, and cities, and Parliaments, and associations, for two hundred years, were the patrons and participants in this evil traffic? The treaty of Utrecht, in 1711, constituted Her Britannic Majesty Queen Anne, and His Catholic Majesty Philip V., the crowned slave-merchants of North America; the Queen agreeing in the space of thirty years to bring into the Spanish West Indies one hundred and fortyfour thousand negroes, to the exclusion of every other slave-trader; and in her speech to Parliament the following year, she boasted of her plan in thus obtaining for English subjects a new slave market in the Spanish West Indies. "In 1729, Parliament, at the recommendation of the King, granted supplies for keeping up the slave-traders' posts in Africa; and in 1745 a British merchant embodied the views of the mass of the English people when he entitled his tract, The African Slave Trade, the great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation Trade in America.'" " opposition to these tenets counter petitions were drawn up at Darien and Ebenezer, the former dated January 3d, 1739, the latter March 13th, 1739, strongly disapproving their introduction, and urging the Trustees to persist in their refusal." He quotes the Reverend Mr. Habersham as saying: "I once thought it was unlawful to keep negro slaves, but I am now induced to think God may have a higher end in permitting them to be brought to this Christian country than merely to in America have already been made freemen of support their masters. Many of the poor slaves the heavenly Jerusalem, and possibly a time may come when many thousands may embrace the gospel, and thereby be brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God. These and other considerations appear to plead strongly for a limited use of negroes; for, while we can buy provisions in Carolina cheaper than we can here, no one will be induced to plant much." Free trade, it would appear by this extract, compelled the relinquishment of the original policy.. Hon. Colonel Heron writes, May, 1748 :— Such was the general origin of the institution in the colonies, and the sentiments that existed in relation to it; but in the case of Georgia, the Trustees in England, who held the government of that colony, prohibited the introduction of negroes. They persisted for many years in this prohibition,It is well known to every one in the colony contrary to the repeated remonstrances and that negroes have been in and about Savannah exertions of the colonists themselves; and for these several years past; that the magistrates finally yielded to the representations and knew and winked at it, and that their constant the apparent necessity of the case. What toast is the one thing needful,' by which is meant negroes." those representations were, and what high names lent their sanction to them, the following extracts from Stevens will show : Thus this colony, once the pride of the philan thropic, the object of so many hopes, and the theme of so much eulogy, was pining in misery, and gasping for vitality, even under the eye of its great founder, and within seven years of its first establishment. One of the remedies proposed was, to use their own language, the use of negroes, with proper limitations, which, if granted, would both occasion great numbers of white people to come here, and also to render us capable to subsist our selves, by raising provisions upon our lands, until we could make some produce fit for export, in some measure to balance our importations.' In * Stevens's History of Georgia, p. 268. The celebrated George Whitfield, who was establishing his Orphan House, at Bethesda, Georgia, says:— "Upwards of five thousand pounds have been expended in that undertaking, and yet very little proficiency, made in the cultivation of my tract of land, and that entirely owing to the necessity I lay under of making use of white hands. Had a negro been allowed I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans, without expending above half the sum which has been laid out. An unwillingness to let so good a design drop, and having a rational conviction that it must necessarily, if some other method was not fixed upon to prevent it-these two considerations, honored gentlemen, prevailed on me about two years ago, through the bounty of my good friends, to purchase a plantation in South Carolina, where negroes are allowed. Blessed be God, this plantation has succeeded; and though at present I have but eight working hand-, yet in all probability there will be more raised in one year and with a quarter the expense than has been produced at Bethesda for several years last past. This confirns me in the opinion I have entertained for a long time, that Georgia never can or will be a flourishing province without negroes are allowed.” These historical references will serve to present a general view of the origin of slavery in these States. It will be seen that it was never established or advocated by the colonists as an institution good in itself, but objected to, and only admitted on compulsion when it appeared necessary to their existence. 66 We quote now from the Southern Quarterly Review for January, 1851, the following passages, as confirmatory of the uniformity of these sentiments: "Indeed, for a long time, even our own people were disposed to admit our inferiority in this respect, and were used to base their apology for slavery mainly upon the ground of the present impossibility of abandoning it" and thus many, if not most slaveholders, gradually adopted the oft-repeated assertion, and were wont to admit in argument that our system was in all points inferior to others, and could only be maintained on the plea of necessity." Such were the opinions and acts of the South as represented by their great men in former times. Let us now contrast them with the modern doctrines, inculcated with all the earnestness of conviction by some. The views and arguments of General McDuffie, Governor Hammond, Mr. Calhoun, &c., we need not quote. They are fresh in the minds of all. Mr. McDuffie contended that Republicanism itself cannot exist permanently without the institution of slavery. The laboring population, "the hewers of wood and drawers of water," he thinks, are unsafe depositaries of political powers and rights. The other authorities we have named hold, we believe, the same thing. But as we have not at hand the means of quoting the language of these gentlemen, we will turn to the article in our able Southern contemporary, from which we have already quoted for a summary of the opinions we are trying to represent. "The investigation (the writer calls it) is of comparatively recent date, but its results are of vast importance. It has effected a revolution in the intelligence of the South which places the system upon an impregnable position. It has been examined from every point of view, and we believe that every examination has increased its value. We are satisfied now that we are right-right politically, industrially, socially, and above all, religiously." After showing its superiority over every other relation of labor and capital, and the constant advantages to accrue to both parties, but especially the slave, by it, the writer exclaims, "What limits can be set to the admiration for a system which bids fair to do so much!" These quotations and observations will be sufficient to show that there has a new set of opinions, doctrines, and arguments grown up in the South. They are held, we know, chiefly in one State, and are known as the South Carolina doctrines; but they are comparatively new, and may extend themselves. What is the cause of this change? Previous to any external pressure, we have seen that these opinions did not exist at the South; à priori, therefore, there is reason to believe that some connection exists between that pressure and these opinions. We believe it to be the general sentiment that that connection is positive-cause and effect. The "Abolitionists" are responsible for it. They have been unjust, one-sided, and unphilosophical. They have represented the slaveholder as wilfully unjust and wicked. Men whom their neighbors, even their slaves, know to be gifted with every Christian virtue and every human charity, they have maligned and denounced in the most opprobrious terms. Every one, not carried away by their fanaticism has felt this to be injustice, and, indeed, irreconcilable with common sense. All know that men may be morally pure and honest while practising that which others may consider wrong. And no man positively knows for his brother man what is right and what not in complicated cases. "Judge not, that ye be not judged.". Self-preservation, (or what seemed to them to be such,) being the first law of nature, compelled them to defend themselves. Metaphysical subtleties being the chief' weapon of attack, they resorted to the same weapons for defense; and in that section whose mind was impregnated by the genius of a great master of the sophisms of metaphysics, the result is as we have shown. The difficulties of the subject have been increased, and its solution retarded. Since the attack on the institution has been made from without, it has come to be defended as good per se, and we have seen no progress made towards a modification of their systems by the Southern States, no comparisons of opinions by those who have the fullest prac tical knowledge of the difficulties, dangers, and wants of the case. "Thanks to the energy," says the Southern Review," with which these false positions were pressed upon us, we were at length driven to the necessity of investigating the subject from its very depth; we were forced to think for ourselves." Such has been the consequence of this one-sided, narrow-minded, and unreasonable method of treating a question involving serious difficulties and momentous consequences. If the abstract view of the question which the Northern extremists take is indubitably correct, even then the method adopted is impolitic and unwise, retarding the healthy action of sound principles on the minds of those who alone have it in their power to act practically in the matter. The question of the true relationship of races, intellectually, morally, physically, and economically, is undoubtedly a difficult one, and by no means yet settled. Historically, and may we not say providentially, the two most opposite exist here within a government based upon the abstract rights of the whole species. This form of government, the ultimate result of the highest intellect and purest conscience of man, being a self-government, declared and defined by public and common law as rules to be submitted to by all, requires necessarily a certain amount of intelligence, virtue, and even statesmanship, in every individual of the commonwealth. Now, within this government,- -a government only consistent with the highest development,-introduced by unnatural and violent means, we have a race the lowest of the species, the least developed. How are we to act with regard to them; and how are we to bring them into harmony with our system? Let those transcendent minds who have arrived at the solution of all the questions involved in these, who penetrate the designs of the Deity in causing these differences of race, adapting them to differences of climate, as if geographical lines were to bound principles, at least compassionate those groping yet for the truth amid the vast and antagonistic teaching of History, of Physiology, of Metaphysics, and show us the way by steps, rather than by dogmatic assertions of conclusions. forced with regard to the Fugitive Slave Law. It is peculiarly the province of the great Whig party-the party that has been called by European statesmen the doctrinaire party of the Union, and which settles the principles upon which on the whole the government is conducted, whether in or out of power-it is the province we say of this party, that has always been sound on the abstract principles involved whilst admitting the limitations of existing and historical facts, to proclaim, define, and defend the true doctrines which must govern in the case. We do not mean that the party has any thing new to add to its creed to apply here. It has well-established principles that cover it in all its length and breadth. Its pervading idea, what is it but the conservation of those principles by which all laws, if we may so speak, are legitimately enacted or repealed the resistance to that disorganizing spirit that it has always opposed as an element of the opposite party?—an element which it has always seen is the one that liberty and sure progress has had the most to fear from in this country, because it has known that the principles upon which the government is based are such as without any violence, revolution, or bad faith, can meet all evils and effect all improvements within the proper scope of political action. It has resisted all violence and irregularity whenever they have appeared, and time has justified its faith in the pure principles of sound republican conservatism. To this party, therefore, we appeal in the case before us: first, because we know that the hepublic must look to it in all cases of real danger; and secondly, because men of station and renown within its ranks, and papers professed exponents of its doctrines, have swerved from their allegiance to this cardinal virtue of their party-faith in law. What now is the "Fugitive Slave Law?" Is obedience to it compatible with the principles of the great party whose character we have above attempted to indicate, and binding upon all conscientious citizens? To the first of these questions: We have seen that slavery was established in various States of this Union by the enactments of the mother countries who founded the colonies, and But we have perhaps said enough to pre-in one, Georgia, where it was resisted by the pare the way for the more immediate pur- home governors, it was introduced by the pose of this article, which is to set forth our importunities of the colonists, who supposed views of the doctrines to be held and en- it essential to their existence. Its roots, have occasion to act under the provision of the Constitution in question. therefore, whether for good or evil, are laid commendations of the Governors of Penndeep in the soil of these States. It has sylvania and Virginia, between whose States grown up and become interwoven with all a difficulty had arisen in the surrender of a their institutions, social and political, and, as fugitive slave;" and thus the law would apwe have seen, has got to be defended by one pear to be not only proper, but necessary or two of them as a vital element in the to both North and South, in order to reguState, whilst the rest regard it as an ex-late the proceedings of those who were to tremely delicate and difficult question, requiring the utmost circumspection in its treatinent. Not knowing how otherwise to Now this former law, thus identical with the manage it, or from the absolute necessity of new one in principle, has been tested by the the case, it was recognized by the compact only legitimate test, an appeal to the Su-, or Constitution by which all the States preme Court of the United States, and has agreed to confederate and become one na-received the confirmation of that Court in the tion; and one of the duties of the non-slaveholding State in reference to the institution and the States retaining it, was defined and commanded by the following article: "No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." There seems to be the strongest reason to believe that, without this provision, the Constitution which has conferred such benefits, not only on this country, but on the world, could not have been formed. But whether it could or not, it was formed with it, and it is part and parcel of it, as much as any other provision embodied therein, and is therefore binding until abrogated in the legitimate manner prescribed for such purposes. To violate or to obstruct the operation of it is bad faith, and to evade it, want of mauliness and courage. The parties objecting to it should proceed legitimately for an alteration of the Constitution. If they do not, or dare not do this, we are justified in suspecting them of ignorance of the first principles of sound republicanism, or of dishonest attempts to gain popularity by pretenses to superior virtue. case of Prigg vs. the State of Pennsylvania; The That the recent law of Congress made for the practical enforcement of this provision is "Constitutional," there can be, in our opinion, no sincere difference of opinion. It is declared by one of the best judicial authorities, Judge Nelson, in his recent charge to the Grand Jury of New-York, to be identical in principle with the act of 12th February, 1793, made by a Congress, several of whose members had been distinguished in the. This question of course could not arise in Convention that framed the Constitution, reference to a law so legitimately and clearly, and "which was passed at the earnest re-enacted as we have shown the one in ques |