Another item of Northern expenditure by the aid of Northern votes for the support of the peculiar institution, was revealed in the proceedings of the Senate about the same time. In a debate on the Appropriation Bill, Mr. Hunter offered the following amendment :—

"For defraying the expenses of the Supreme Court and District Court of the United States, including the District of Columbia; and also for jurors and witnesses, and for aid of the funds arising from fines, forfeitures, and expenses incurred during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1852, and previous years; and likewise for defraying the expenses of suits in which the United States are concerned, and prosecutions for offenses committed against the United States, and for the apprehension and safe keeping of prisoners, in addition to former appropriations, NINETY THOUSAND DOLLARS.

This was evidently designed to provide for the expense of arresting and trying fugitive slaves, and conducting prosecutions of persons charged with the crime of assisting them. Senator Hale instituted some scrutinizing inquiries concerning the nature and disbursement of these appropriations. He wished to know how much of it was wanted for enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. Mr. Hunter said that claims, in all, had been presented to the amount of $150,000, but he had cut them down to $90,000. He added:

The Comptroller says that, during the present fiscal year, the expenses have been much increased, probably from $30,000 to $40,000, by prosecutions growing out of the Fugitive Slave Law in New-York and Pennsylvania, and prosecutions in New-York and Louisiana, growing out of the violation of the neutrality laws."

The Senate concluded to foot the bill, and the amendment was adopted. Mr. Hale succeeded, however, in securing an amendment precluding officers of the Government from receiving pay as witnesses.*

The temper of the Senate towards the members of that body whose manly course was felt to be a rebuke of their servility, appears in their action in December last, by which the standing rule of electing committees by ballot was disposed of for the purpose of recommending the election of a list agreed upon in a caucus, from which list the names of HALE, SUMNER, and CHASE Were ostracised; for the reason, avowed in the Senate by Mr. Bright, that those gentlemen were considered “outside of any healthy political organization in this country!" Though this was intended to disgrace them, it will prove a testimony to their fidelity, and constitute a monument of the proscriptive meanness of their opponents.†

Mr. Mason, of Virginia, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Af

* National Anti-slavery Standard, June 3, 1852; and National Era, May 27,

1852.

+ Senator Seward had previously declined being on any committee.

fairs, made a report at the first session of the last Congress, in favor of the claim of the Spanish Minister for fifty thousand dollars' indemnity for the Spaniards who brought to this country-or rather were brought here by them-the Amistad Africans. He succeeded, on one occasion, in

having it made the special order for a distant day; but when the day arrived, other things occupied the Senate, and it lost its place. He proposed informally on several other occasions, at both sessions, to take it up, but was prevented by the avowed opposition of the Free Democratic Senators, and their determination to discuss it.

At almost every session of Congress, one or more of the slaveholding members, influenced by the recommendation of the President of the United States, attempts to get a bill of indemnity passed for these scoundrel Spaniards. We trust that every member of Congress who loves humanity or prizes justice will keep a vigilant eye upon future attempts to rob the treasury for the purpose of undoing, virtually, the righteous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in their decision to give liberty to the unfortunate Mendians, who were more entitled to indemnification than their oppressors. Slaveholders doubtless would be pleased to have compensation awarded to their brethren in Cuba who brought Cinquez and his companions from their home in Africa, or to the pirates who, in attempting to hold them in slavery, lost, by the act of a merciful Providence, possession of their victims: but the representatives of the free States should be held to a strict account if they attempt to gratify the slaveholders of the country at the expense of justice and equity.

The arguments of Messrs. Adams and Baldwin in this celebrated case demonstrated the utter groundlessness of the claim of the Spaniards for the Africans, and consequently the groundlessness of their claim for indemnification. Members of Congress would do well to refresh their minds with these able arguments, and also with the statement of facts made by the late Hon. John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, March 2, 1847, and the able speech of Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, in the House of Representatives, against the claim of the Spaniards, delivered April 18, 1844; for which see "Speeches in Congress by Joshua R. Giddings." Boston: Published by John P. Jewett & Co., and New-York, by Lewis J. Bates, 48 Beekman street.

The aggressions of the slave power have been manfully resisted by a number of resolute and able champions of liberty in both Houses. Messrs. Chase, Hale, Sumner, in the Senate; Messrs. Giddings, Durkee, Mann, Allen, Townsend, and Rantoul, in the House, with others in both branches of the National Legislature, have merited the thanks of their country. It is matter of regret that the nation is deprived of the valu

able services of Mr. Rantoul by his unexpected decease, and that some of the other distinguished men just named are not members of the next Congress. We rejoice, however, in the accession to the number of the friends of freedom in the House by the election of Gerrit Smith, a man whom all patriots and philanthropists should delight to honor.

The Presidential Election, in its connection with the action of the two rival Conventions for nominating candidates, presents another humiliating picture of the position of Northern freemen, blinded by their attachment to political parties, and betrayed by their unscrupulous leaders into the support of men and measures which their sober judgment must disapprove, their best sympathies revolt against, and their consciences condemn. If it be said (as it sometimes is) that there is a more deplorable slavery than that of the chattelized negro, the illustration may perhaps be found in the records that follow:

The Democratic Convention for nominating a President and VicePresident, assembled at Baltimore early in June, resulted, on the fiftieth ballot, in the selection of Franklin Pierce and William R. King. A "Platform" for the party and its candidate was also erected, but not before the nomination was first made, lest the consciences or the selfrespect of a portion of the delegates should revolt at their own inconsistency, as professed friends of liberty, in selecting a candidate to grace such a platform. This arrangement proved an accommodation to those who found it consistent to quit the Convention immediately on making the nomination, thus dodging a vote on the Platform, some of them going home to oppose it, and others to protest against it among their constituents. By this means, the Platform, though large enough to hold the candidate, was proved quite too small to hold all the members of the Convention, or all who subsequently voted for the candidate.

The Platform is as follows:

"That Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of every thing appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institu

tions.

"Resolved, That the foregoing proposition covers and was intended to embrace the whole subject of slavery agitation in Congress; and therefore, the Democratic party of the Union, standing on this national platform, will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the Compromise measures settled by the last Congress-the act for reclaiming fugitives from service and labor included; which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the Constitution, cannot, with fidelity, be repealed, or so changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency.

"Resolved,, That the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the Slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."*

The Whig Convention for Presidential nominations was soon after held in the same city. As though emulous of exhibiting a still more bold and defiant hostility to the liberties of their country, and greater subserviency to the slave power, they adopted a similar "platform" before the ballotings began, as had been dictated by a Southern caucus the night previous. Still there were sixty-six votes in the Convention recorded against it. The "platform," as embodied in the 8th Resolution, is as follows:

"That the series of acts of the 31st Congress, known as the Compromise, including the fugitive Slave Law, are received and acquiesced in by the Whig party of the United States, as a final settlement, in principle and substance, of the dangerous and exciting subjects which they embrace; and so far as the Fugitive Slave Law is concerned, we will maintain the same, and insist upon its strict enforcement, until time and experience shall demonstrate the necessity of further legislation to guard against the evasion of the laws on the one hand, and the abuse of their powers on the other-not impairing their present efficiency; and we deprecate all further agitation of the questions thus settled, as dangerous to our peace, and will discountenance all efforts to continue or renew such agitation, whenever, wherever, or however the attempt may be made; and we will maintain this system as essential to the nationality of the Whig party, and the integrity of the Union."†

The ballotings finally resulted in the selection of Gen. Winfield Scott and Wm. A. Graham, as the Whig candidates for President and VicePresident of the United States.

Some instructive particulars may be noticed in the proceedings of these rival Conventions. They vied with each other in their subserviency to the slave power, and yet they both rejected the prominent statesmen of their respective parties, including the political leaders of the last quarter of a century; men of renown as senators, diplomatists, generals, heads of departments, presenting the highest claims on their respective parties, all of whom had humbled themselves to the lowest point of degradation as aspirants for the honors denied them—the very men, for the most part, through whose exertions and influence the lauded "Compromise measures" had been carried! And yet they were cast aside because the odor of their efficient servility had so entered into the nostrils of the people, that the sagacious instincts of the managers of both the Conventions dared not risk the experiment of nominating them! The idolized name of HENRY CLAY might have stood at the head of the

* National Era, June 10, 1852.

† National Era, June 24, 1852. Also 21st An. Rep. Mass. A. S. Soc. (There are verbal variations in the copies, without changing the meaning.)

list, (as once before,) had he been living. The half-deified DANIEL WEBSTER did stand there, but his disappointment at the result hastened his exit. Mr. Fillmore, the acting President, was on the same list, along with Cass, Buchanan, Marcy, and others. These men, who had bartered their manhood for the loaves and fishes of office, were not only deprived of the boon they most coveted, but, by a singular arrangement of distributive justice, were not even suffered to enjoy the poor honor of a partisan passport for the field of competition.

The old leaders of both the parties, so far as their great men were accounted such, were bowed aside, as not competent to be placed in a position where they could act most efficiently for the permanency of the Union, because they had already done so much! Men less publicly known for the flagrant type of their patriotic conservatism would command more votes; and hence the selection of Messrs. Scott and Pierce, only one of whom could obtain the prize, and the other must of course fail! A lesson for unscrupulous aspirants is wrapped up in the record; and even the successful incumbent of the highest office may be well admonished of the tenure by which his unexpected position is to be held. Let him beware of bowing too low to the power that has enthroned him!-the rock upon which his predecessor, Millard Fillmore, made shipwreck.

The deaths of Clay and Webster, coming so closely upon the deaths of their long-cherished hopes, gave the solemn impress of eternity and retribution to the scene. Alas for the statesmanship and the statesmen that know only the present, and forget or overlook, in their calculations, the first principles that enter into the idea of the immutability of God, as well as of the stability and security of man!

The Free Democracy Convention for nominations was held at Pittsburgh in August, and John P. Hale, of New-Hampshire, and George W. Julian, of Indiana, were nominated for President and Vice-President. The "platform" of the Free Democracy, so far as the Slave question is concerned, is described, mainly, in the following Resolutions:

"That no permanent settlement of the Slavery question can be looked for, except in the practical recognition of the truth that slavery is sectional and freedom national; by the total separation of the General Government from slavery, and the exercise of its legitimate and constitutional influence on the side of freedom, by leaving to the States the whole subject of slavery and the extradition of fugitives from service.

"That slavery is a sin against God and a crime against man, the enormity of which no human enactment or usage can make right, and that Christianity, humanity and patriotism alike demand its abolition.

"That the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is repugnant to the Constitution, to the principles of the common law, to the spirit of Christianity, and to the sentiments of the civilized world. We therefore deny its binding force upon the American people, and we demand its immediate and total repeal.