excitement caused by the Fugitive Slave Bill, and of the spirit of resistance which it called forth. Even the most Pro-Slavery of the political prints were tame in their rebukes of these demonstrations. Their chief game was to throw dust in the eyes of the people, and to delude them into the belief that the law is a dead letter, which can never be carried into effect. If so, of what special use is it as a measure of pacification to the South? Surely, the Slaveholders did not consent to submit to have their foot put afresh upon our necks, after they had frightened us by the threat of taking it off, with the expectation that the condition of their condescension was to be broken at the

very outset. It is not the actual number of Slaves that may be recaptured under this law, though it will be owing to the Anti-Slavery Agitation if it be not reckoned by hundreds, if not thousands; it is the perpetual sense of danger which haunts the Fugitive and his friends that constitutes the main wickedness of this new abomination. The sword of Damocles may never fall; but as long as it is suspended by a single hair, it creates a suspense worse than death in the hearts of those over whose heads it hangs.

What is the chief end of civil government but personal security? What distinguishes a civilized from a barbarous society, but the dependence which each member reposes in the protection of all the rest? To be at ease in his possessions or his penury, to have his own happiness and such share of this world's goods as he can secure, in his own keeping and at his own disposal, is the great aim of every intelligent member of civil society. Whether he be the master of boundless acres or "Lord of his presence, and no land beside," it is the sense of ownership, the control of all that pertains to him, that makes life sweet and hopeful. Take this away and, though you heap the wealth of Attalus upon him, you take away that which gives all true zest to its enjoyment. It is the difference between a Turkish Pacha or a Russian Boyard and an Englishman of high or low degree. Our fathers did not so much object to the amount levied upon them by Parliament as to the denial of that prerogative of Britons to be taxed and governed by laws to which he has given his consent. The utter insecurity of the Slave is too apparent to need illustration. The distress of indignation and pity which such atrocities excite in every honest heart is always at hand. The participation in the perils of the Slave, to which such indignation and pity must expose every honest man, is imminent and perpetual. There can be no peace until this matter is put at

rest.

These are the things that bring home to men's minds the anomalies of their political estate. It is in vain that they try to wink them out of their own sight and to persuade other people that they are not to be seen. That popular excitation and movement which is the terror of all politicians is only fanned and fed by their vain attempts to quench it. They cry Peace, in vain, for there is no Peace as long as they abide in the tents of wickedness. Uproar, tumult, and bloodshed must be ever near, if not always present. For the time is gone by when coffles of Slaves could be driven peaceably through the streets of northern cities. The lovers of ease must bestir themselves to be rid of the radical cause of the disturbance in the body politic. It would be no unpoetical justice if the same fate which awaits Abolitionists at the South should encounter Slaveholders at the North. If the mobocratic laws and lawless outbreaks of coward Slavery should be re-echoed by answering illegalities, in defence of the Fugitives, on the part of as sensitive Liberty. Have the Slaveholders taken out a monopoly of brute force? Are Constitutions and Laws iron links to us and filmy cobwebs to them? These are questions likely to be asked and answered about these times. Whatever be the result, it can hardly fail to produce that effervescence in the popular mind which tyrants and their tools abhor, and which is the certain precursor of political change.

We look upon this Fugitive Bill as a most significant, as well as a most important event in the history of the Anti-Slavery Revolution. Whence came it? From the degree of protection Anti-Slavery Agitation had thrown around the Fugitives whose evasion Anti-Slavery Agitation had promoted. What is its design? To replace this matter where it stood twenty years ago, when escape was comparatively rare, and rendition absolutely easy. What does it prove? That there is less hostility to Slavery than has heretofore existed? Nay, verily; but the direct contrary. Are there not as many Abolitionists as before the Bill passed? Yes, indeed, and their number will multiply faster than ever before. And yet the wire-pullers at Washington believe, or pretend that they believe, that they have put this Agitation at rest, and pacified the country! We can tell them that revolutions never go backwards, and that a movement, like ours, aimed at the destruction of an element so closely entwined with our institutions as Slavery, is a Revolution. What the present stage of that Revolution may cannot be told from a contemporary stand-point. But the time is not very remote when this imagined victory of the Slave Power will be

be,

seen as certain sign of its weakness, and a sure forerunner of its downfall.

more.

Since the passage of the Law there have been enough attempts to enforce it to prove that the Slaveholders do not mean that it shall remain a dead letter, if they can help it. JAMES HAMLET, of New York, was the first victim selected to try the sufficiency of the Statute. He was seized, September twenty-sixth, under the false pretence of being wanted as a witness in a criminal case, and carried before ALEXANDER GARDINER, a United States Commissioner, by whom, upon the ex parte evidence of two witnesses, no time or opportunity being given him for his defence, he was delivered up to his claimant. Having him in his custody, the claimant made the oath required by the Statute that he feared a rescue, and the alleged Slave was forthwith hand-cuffed and carried off in charge of a Deputy Marshal and two assistants to BaltiThe truly summary manner " in which Commissioner GARDINER acted, although it was but an example of that "alacrity" with which Constitutional duties, however "disagreeable," should be performed, produced a strong sensation, even in New York, and a sum sufficient to ransom him was speedily raised, and he was restored to liberty and his free family. A great meeting of the colored people was held in the Park to welcome him back from Slavery, which was treated with entire respect, by the crowds of Broadway. HENRY GARNETT, of Philadelphia, came next in order. He was arrested October seventeenth, and taken before Mr. Justice GRIER, one of the Associate Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States. After remaining in the custody of the Marshal for one night for the purpose of allowing the claimant an opportunity to procure evidence, (a most extraordinary precedent, surely!) he was brought up before the Circuit Court for final hearing and adjudication. There was evidence enough, under the Law, to show that the man was a Slave as claimed, but the claimant failed to make out his title to him- his owner from whom he had escaped having died, and the executorship of the claimant not being properly authenticated. The discharge of the defendant followed, though not until Judge GRIER had made it perfectly plain that it was through no fault of his that he escaped. He querulously stated that he had gone to the utmost limits of judicial propriety, (most people present, we imagine, thought they must have been pretty extensive limits,) the night before, in explaining to the claimants what course they ought to pursue. According to the maxims of English law, the Judge is expected to be counsel for the prisoner, and see that

he has all his legal rights. But, according to this oracle of American law, it would seem that our American Judges may act as counsel for the prosecution, and lend the weight of their learning and experience to crush the most forlorn of captives. His defence was conducted with great ability by the Hon. CHARLES GIBBONS, and DAVID PAUL BROWN, Esquires, and the Court Room was filled with many of the most respectable and substantial of the citizens of Philadelphia.

Towards the end of October, we were alarmed in this city by the intelligence that Slave-hunters were among us and that their game was WILLIAM and ELLEN CRAFT. The romantic circumstances of their escape, and the universal respect and esteem which their good conduct, since they have resided here, has won for them, caused a very general and strong feeling of sympathy and resolution that nothing but an overpowering physical force should take them away. The huntsmen found no more disposition to help them on the part of the United States Officials, than the strict letter of the Law required. The privilege of issuing the warrant was passed from Judge to Commissioner, and from Commissioner to Judge, with a comity truly edifying, but process was finally issued by Circuit Judge LEVI WOODBURY, and placed in the hands of the Marshal, but no attempt was made to execute it. The Vigilance Committee, appointed by the Anti-Fugitive Law Meeting in Faneuil Hall, to which we shall presently allude, were alert and active. They were in almost continual session, and suits against KNIGHT and HUGHES, the two miscreants in question, were brought in every practicable shape for the purpose of embarrassing their pursuit. They were waited upon at their Hotel and advised to retire while they were well. They were followed in the streets and pointed out as the Slave-hunters. At last they abandoned the chase, for a season at least, and betook themselves to New York. It was singularly fortunate that the first Fugitives marked as victims under the new Act should have been WILLIAM and ELLEN CRAFT. Their story has been so widely spread, and they have actually been seen in the flesh by so many persons, that a more general personal interest could not have been aroused in behalf of any possible objects of the Law. Nothing could have been better devised, if we had had the devising of it, for keeping up a wholesome agitation in the public mind and making it sensible of the extreme odiousness of that most Satanic enactment (which, it seems, even DANIEL WEBSTER himself is either not bad enough or too cunning to approve in the lump,) than such a case as this. Mrs. CRAFT was put in a place of safety as soon as she was

known to be in danger. But Mr. CRAFT showed himself perfectly ready and willing to be the Champion of his people, and to try in his own person the question whether a Fugitive could be taken back from Boston or not. He refused to be bought. He refused to make his escape, which was safe and easy in every direction. He said he had run far enough and did not mean to run any farther. He at least would have a trial by jury, he said. He was reluctantly persuaded to keep himself out of the way at all. Amidst all the excitement of the city, he was the coolest man in it, and he would unquestionably have been an uncomfortable customer for the Slave-hunter or his Marshal.

The heroic conduct of CRAFT in thus braving the power of the whole United States, and actually succeeding in defeating it, while it excited very general admiration among all consistent people at the North, created a very different feeling at the South. A loud cry of indignation was sent up from all her borders, and vengeance on the Marshal was demanded as a slight compensation for her injured rights. But as that officer had declared his readiness to arrest CRAFT, if his claimant would point him out, the President declined this reasonable request. After his victory, which had pointed out the way of escape to others, Mr. and Mrs. CRAFT did not feel themselves called upon to fight another battle, and they soon proceeded to England, where we doubt not they will receive the welcome and the kindness which Britons are every ready to extend to the victims of oppression and the champions of liberty.

A case at Detroit, of a colored man claimed as a Slave, created an intense excitement in that city and the region round about. He declared that he was a free man, and that he had papers at Cincinnati to show it. But the Commissioner ruled that he could not go behind the affidavit of the claimant. The question of identity being all that he had anything to do with, and that he could not admit the free papers as evidence, if they were produced. This was, surely, putting perjury at a premium, and placing all the people, of whatever color, at the of any mercy wretch obtaining an accurate description of one coveted as a Slave, and willing to make a false oath to it. The excitement was so great, and the danger of a rescue so imminent, that three companies of regular troops were called out to guard the jail. A public meeting was held of the most enthusiastic kind, which was addressed by several of the principal citizens. Finally, however, the case was disposed of, as was HAMLET's, by the purchase of the person claimed. A second case, in Philadelphia, had a most instructive ending. A man of the