recovered from their amazement, he was put beyond the reach of pursuit. An enterprise better contrived and conducted was never known. It was the first sign of spirit that had been shown in Boston since the Tea was thrown into the ocean. But it was shown to an unbelieving genera

tion. The excitement which swelled the breasts of the patriotic "Retainers" of Mr. WEBSTER, when the news was told, was terrific. The newspapers wrung their hands and bewailed the impending downfall of the Republic. The fatal fact was flashed over the wires to Mr. WEBSTER, with the agonizing inquiry, "What 's to be done?" And the melancholy response was returned, that "Mr. WEBSTER was very much mortified!"

ures.

The occasion was one which seemed to demand unprecedented measThe Rescue took place on Saturday. On Tuesday, the 18th, the President issued his solemn Proclamation, recounting the frightful occurrence, calling upon all well-disposed citizens, and commanding all officers, civil and military, "found in the vicinity of this outrage, to aid and assist in quelling this and all other such combinations, and to assist in recapturing the abovenamed person." Mr. CLAY brought the matter before the Senate, by a resolution calling on the President for information, though in the nature of things he could have had none that all did not possess, through the telegraphic despatches to the newspapers. An animated debate ensued, in which the peculiar atrocity of this transaction was dwelt upon by Mr. CLAY and other Compromise Senators, while the absurdity of the attitude of the Government towards the Rescuers of Shadrach was well and wittily set forth by Mr. HALE. Immediately after, General Orders came down from the Secretaries of War and the Navy directing the military and naval officers to yield all practicable assistance in the event of such another insurrection. But though the President was mighty, and the Senate potent, and the Heads of our Army and Navy powerful, it was all in vain. Shadrach was beyond the reach of them all. Safe under the protecting shadow of the British sceptre, he defied them all. To be sure, several persons, Messrs. CHARLES G. DAVIS, ELIZUR WRIGHT, LEWIS HAYDEN, JOHN SCOTT, THOMAS P. SMITH, J. P. COBURN, and ROBERT MORRIS were arrested for the crime of participating in this act, and all but the first, bound over for trial, by Mr. Commissioner HALLETT. These examinations created the warmest interest in the city and throughout the land. When the trials came on in June, however, in spite of all adverse influences, the juries in the cases of JOHN SCOTT and LEWIS HAYDEN, were unable to agree. The Hon. JOHN P. HALE and RICHARD H.

DANA, Jr., Esq., who were the Counsel of the accused in all these cases, distinguished themselves by the zeal, industry, and talent, which they brought to their work.

"

These trials were of the deeper interest to all who watch intelligently the bearings and remoter issues of contemporary events, from their being the first, within the memory of most men on the stage, in which the Government evinced a strong partizan feeling against the accused. The vindication of the Fugitive Slave Law, and of the conduct of the Government at the time of this occurrence, most earnestly demanded a victim. For almost the first time in our history, the sufficiency of the trial by jury, and of the other safeguards which the wisdom of past time has sought to throw around the liberty of the citizen when confronted with an incensed government, were brought to the test of actual experiment. One of the main objects which the assertors of free governments have ever professed to have in view has been the pure and impartial administration of justice. In England, especially, the efforts to surround the tribunals of the law with such circumstances as should make the Judge inaccessible to temptation and above the breath of suspicion, have been unceasing. Indeed, the whole course of English Constitutional history is marked by these attempts, and its different periods may be distinguished by them as the monuments of its progress. This just and salutary jealousy was inherited by their sons, our ancestors, and the danger to liberty through the undue influence of the Crown over the Judges was one main motive-spring of the Revolution. The influence, direct and indirect, of power over law has always been watched with close scrutiny by all who were jealous for the preservation of inherited or acquired securities of liberty, or earnest to achieve them. The best of laws are nugatory when their administration is left at the mercy of time-serving or power-swayed judges. It was to guard against this abuse of the law by the administrators of the law that the Anglo-Saxon race have made the Trial by Jury a part and parcel of their institutions wherever they have transplanted themselves. It is an appeal, in the last resort, from the glosses of legal ingenuity, the chicanery of the Bar or of the Bench, to the common sense of the common people, having the same interest in the preservation of the purity of the administration of justice as its higher and lower officials, without the bias either might, in times of great political pressure, feel towards the predominant power in the State.

Especially is it in State trials touching the life or liberty of the subject or the citizen that the sanctity of the jury should be most rigidly

maintained. And by the sanctity of the jury we mean the observance of all those rules and formalities which stand in the way of the government's packing a jury for its own ends, and which secure to the party accused, as far as human devices can do it, a fair trial by his peers. In a multitude of the cases between man and man, involving nice questions of intricate rights, the decision of a single competent judge would be quite as likely to answer the ends of exact justice as the verdict of Twelve Men selected by lot from the community. But even here, the wise jealousy of the olden time has required that an unlearned but impartial body of twelve men should pass upon every dispute, in the faith that, if they could not unravel and explain a tangled web of law themselves, they could discern when it was properly disentangled, and, if need were, stand between Right and an Arbitrary Judge. But above all, and more than all, is the Anglo-Saxon, the British, the American Necessity of such an impartial body in cases where the Nation denounces one of its members as a just object of its punishments. Woe to the Judge that tampers with this sanction and safeguard of personal liberty, that liberty which it is the first object of civil government to secure! "He that falleth upon this stone shall be broken; and he upon whom it falleth it shall grind him to powder."

The Magistrate who presided at these trials won for himself an unenviable name in connection with the Trial by Jury. When ERSKINĘ was raised to the peerage, upon his appointment to the Chancellorship, he took for the motto of his coat of arms "TRIAL BY JURY," in commemoration of his memorable victories in behalf of the rights of juries in the State trials of HORNE TOOKE, THELWALL and HARDY. His fame he wisely foresaw would rest chiefly, after his triumphs of the forum had become a tradition, upon what he had done to interpose the barrier of a jury between angry power and its victim. The permanent reputation of Judge SPRAGUE will be connected with recollections quite the opposite of this-recollections of his endeavors, happily thus far fruitless ones, to change the authentic customs, recognized by law, which should regulate the order of the Jury list, to suit the purposes of power. He has distinguished himself, as no Judge has done before, of our time at least, by throwing the whole weight of his influence on the side of power and against the accused parties in a State trial. From his Charge to the Grand Jury down through the whole course of the two trials which have been had thus far, before him, it has been obvious to Bar, to Jury and to Spectator that he had pre-ordained a conviction, and that he

was employing his legal acumen and forensic skill to supply the defi ciencies of the District Attorney and his Assistant and to do their work. Though veiled, generally, under the sauvity and courtesy which mark his manners, this was the impression he conveyed to every unbiased mind. And at times even his habitual self-command was hardly enough to conceal the determined purpose of his soul as the trial proceeded, and the angry disappointment occasioned by their abortive issue.

For some reasons, which we will not attempt to account for, the prosecuting officers seemed to have formed the opinion that Boston and certain neighboring towns would be more likely to furnish the materials of a pliant Jury than the remoter districts. It became, consequently, their wish that the order of the Jury list should be so arranged that the jurors from those places should be first called. Now, the law of the United States says that the Jury in the U. S. Courts shall be made up, as nearly as may be, in accordance with the custom of the State in which it is held. And the laws of Massachusetts ordain that all the jurors, from whatever town they may come, shall be arranged in alphabetical order upon the list. It would appear, then, that the course to be pursued was plainly laid down, and that all the names returned should be placed alphabetically, without regard to the towns from which they came. This would, obviously, be the fairest possible course and give both parties an equal chance, with the least possible danger of the panel being affected by the influence of local biases. But Judge SPRAGUE appointed that the towns should be arranged alphabetically, by which course Boston was sure to come first, or nearly so, and the jurors from each town placed alphabetically under it, an arrangement in nowise answering the letter or the spirit of the law. And this, too, in the teeth of his own declaration that he had directed the Clerk to observe the ancient usage, so that there might be no room left for a charge of packing the Jury! Thus making an arrangement differing from the old one, and one not in accordance with the law, but which had the effect of putting the Boston Jurymen into the box!

And then when examining a juror upon the voir dire, to ascertain whether or not he had formed or expressed any opinions incompatible with the due performance of his functions, and the juror declared that he had no feeling in the case except such as sprang from a general sympathy with the oppressed everywhere," Judge SPRAGUE ordered him to stand aside as an incompetent Juror! Could a circumstance

be imagined which would express the animus of a Judge more strongly than this? Perhaps it is true that a general sympathy with the oppressed is a disqualification to a juror in a case where the United States and Slavery are on one side, and a negro or an Abolitionist on the other; but it is an odd decision to be judicially pronounced. That Judge SPRAGUE should have been swift to recognize the constitutionality of the Fugitive Law is perhaps not to be wondered at. But it is rather singular that his regard for his professional reputation should not have made him hesitate to fortify his opinion by the newspaper accounts of the opinions of Judges not duly reported and having no legal weight whatever. Judge SPRAGUE is, doubtless, a learned as well as an acute lawyer, and therefore, perhaps, hesitated to assume the whole burden of that decision. He has virtually ruled out the single virtue of a written Constitution, that it is unalterable by prescription or custom, or any power except that which created it, by arguing from the practice to the letter, instead of compelling the letter to inform and regulate the practice. And he set up, dogmatically, the doctrine which has no good legal authority, but which servile Judges in all time have endeavored to establish, that Juries are not judges of the law as well as of the fact, and to exclude from the Jury-box men who would not bind themselves to accept his interpretation of the law.

But it is in vain to attempt to go into the detail which a due consideration of Judge SPRAGUE's conduct would demand, within our present limits. The explanation of it all, as we conceive, exposes the weak point of our National Judiciary. Our National Judges are, almost of necessity, political Judges. They are appointed as the reward of partisan services, and it is by no means understood that the Bench is any impediment to political promotion. On the contrary, it may be made the vantage ground from which Ambition may vault or climb to the higher places. It is not so in England. There a Judge is removed, by Public Sentiment and the acknowledged proprieties of his position, from the temptations of political life. And eminence at the bar is required, by the profession and by the public, as a condition of elevation to the Bench. How many of the U. S. Judges owe their elevation to their successes of the stump rather than of the forum! The claims of Judge SPRAGUE to his preferment are certainly sufficient. Besides his respectable rank at the bar, he was one of those devoted men who assisted at the grand service held in Faneuil Hall in 1835, for the propitiation of Slavery, and the one who apostrophized WASHINGTON as THAT SLAVEHOLDER!" Unhappy man, who condensed