sacked, and about thirty arrests made. Among those arrested were CASTNER HANWAY and ELIJAH LEWIS, whose only crime had been endeavoring to prevent the effusion of blood. The prisoners were brought to Philadelphia, examined before a Commissioner, and com> mitted on a charge of High Treason. At the next term of the District Court, under a charge from Judge KANE, the Grand Jury found indictments against all of them for this crime. This proceeding was of a startling character, and promised, whether it succeeded or failed, to be a most important era in our history.

Let us look for a moment at the state of facts on which this charge of treason was to rest. An officer of the United States, with a civil process, which gives him no authority to break open the doors of the humblest log-cabin in the country, attended by his posse, attempts to make a forcible entry into a house of which certain citizens had lawful possession. After being duly warned that he would be resisted if he broke in the door, (which was entirely a superfluous and gratuitous act on the part of those within,) he still persisting in the illegal attempt, the parties lawfully in possession of the premises fire upon his party, and kill and wound sundry of them. This is putting the case in the most favorable light for the Government. For if the Slaveholder made the attack on his own responsibility, the act would be clearly a case of justifiable homicide, even if he had not fired first, which circumstance makes the return fire of the negroes a most unequivocal act of self-defence. But if the GORSUCHES acted under direction of the Deputy Marshal, still, as they were doing an act which he was not legally competent to do, they were none the less trespassers, and the assaulted party had the legal right to resist. We remember the case of a mate, left in charge of a ship at Charleston, S. C., who shot a constable coming to arrest him for debt, and was acquitted on this ground. We take it to be well established that a man has a legal right to hinder persons attempting to make an unlawful entrance into his house, and, if it cannot be done without it, to kill them. And that this necessity existed in this case will scarcely be denied by any one.

For doing, then, what was no crime, but a perfectly lawful act, (supposing that there is any law for the class of persons attacked, and if there be not, their defence is perfect,) several colored men were held for the crime of Treason! And as if this were not enough to make the Law Officers of the United States the laughing-stock or the abhorrence of the civilized world, according as they fail or succeed, two peaceable white men, Friends, were put into the same condemnation,

for simply refusing to assist in the unlawful attack! For CASTNER HANWAY and ELIJAH LEWIS came to the spot as peace-makers, for the purpose of dissuading the assailants from making the attack and the assailed from resistance. Having, like truly brave men, thus put themselves in the way of danger, that they might save the lives of others, they were ordered to join the storming party, which, like honorable and just men, they scorned to do. For this crime, as we have said, these two courageous Quakers were committed to gaol on a charge of levying war against the United States! And yet we have the face to abuse the Pope of Rome and the King of Naples for their proceedings against their rebellious subjects! They, at least, have sufficient grounds for their political tyrannies. The State, as represented in their persons, has been most unquestionably endangered. While here we have all their meanness and cruelty without the excuse of their bodily fear. Who believes the United States to be in danger from what happened at Christiana? If there could be a lower depth of infamy than that in which this nation is now plunged, President Fillmore and his law menials at Philadelphia, seem to be diligently seeking it out, that we may be thrust neck and heels into it.

This demonstration, however, was not without its deep significance. It was, in effect, an open and public proclamation that the Slave Power is the Supreme Authority in the land. It was equivalent to the Reactionary Proclamation of the Emperor of Austria by which he repealed the Constitution of the Empire. It avowed that what would be a venial offence, not exceeding manslaughter at the worst, if not an entirely justifiable act, if done to a citizen of a Free State, on an ordinary process, rises to the dignity of Treason when one of our Slaveholding lords and masters is the sufferer. The arrest of Messrs. HANWAY and LEWIS was a plain commencement of a system of Terrorism, by which honest men were to be compelled to turn Slavecatchers or run the risk of being hanged for Treason. It was the newest assault which Slavery has made upon the laws which we have always been taught to regard as the only securities of our civil rights. Whether the ancient spirit which extorted those securities from the tyrants of former times, and which thought a seven years' war not too long to maintain them, still lives, remains to be seen. The Trial by Jury is the next stronghold that will be attacked in this Pro-Slavery assault. We waited to see whether there were virtue enough in Pennsylvania to maintain it, or whether that too, is to be made the supple tool of tyrants in the hands of a Democratic JEFFREYS or SCROGGS. It was to the

people, in that last fastness, that the eyes of the lovers of Liberty were turned, and from their conduct was the inference to be drawn, whether there be a recuperative force in our Institutions sufficient to save them, or whether we must be dragged down into the abyss of tyranny to be rescued only, in due time, by another bloody Revolution.

This grave question came to the proof at Philadelphia on the 24th of November. The trial of CASTNER HANWAY commenced on that day before Judges GRIER and KANE, and continued for more than ten days. For the prosecution, besides the District Attorney of the United States and two assistants of the Philadelphia Bar, Attorney General BRENT, of Maryland, and Mr. COOPER were detailed to assist on the behalf of that State. The prisoner was defended by Messrs. JOHN M. REED, THADDEUS STEVENS, JOSEPH S. LEWIS and THEODORE CUYLER. It is, of course, idle to attempt any detail of this most important State Trial. It soon became evident, after the evidence for the Government had been entered upon, that there was no case against the prisoner. Attorney General BRENT did his best, but he was no match for Mr. REED, whose management of the defence was truly masterly. Even Judge GRIER saw that the indictment for Treason could not be sustained with any show of law or decency. His charge to the Jury was so plain on this point that they acquitted the prisoner within ten minutes after leaving their seats. The District Attorney then entered a Nolle Prosequi upon the other indictments for Treason. Most of the prisoners were then turned over to the State authorities to take their chance for an indictment for murder. We have recently heard, however, that the Grand Jury for Lancaster County have thrown out the bills, and that the men held have been discharged. Some of the prisoners, however, were held on the indictments for misdemeanor in assisting in the escape of the Slave. At this time, the Rev. SAMUEL WILLIAMS, a colored clergyman, is on trial for having given notice of the intended attack of the GORSUCHES. We hope, however, that the institution of the Jury will still prove as effectual a barrier against the designs of our Slavecatching Government as it has done thus far in all the trials under the Fugitive Act. It is the last hope of Personal Liberty.

THE RESCUE AT SYRACUSE,

The excitement in the public mind which the Christiana Affair had created had not yet subsided when it was renewed by the intelligence

of another successful rescue of a Slave, at Syracuse, more fortunate than the last, inasmuch as no lives were lost or serious injury inflicted on the kidnappers. On the 1st of October a colored man was arrested in Syracuse, N. Y., claimed as the Slave of one MCHENRY, of Missouri, and brought before Commissioner SABINE for examination. As soon as the news spread through the city an intense excitement prevailed. It happened that the County Agricultural Fair was holding on that day, as also a Convention of the Liberty Party, so that the city was unusually full. The bells of several churches were tolled and no other topic occupied men's thoughts or tongues. When the Commissioner adjourned for dinner a crowd of persons, colored and white, seized the Slave JERRY and carried him off. This attempt, however, was not successful, the officers intercepting him and carrying him back to a place of security. The excitement was in no degree diminished by this disappointment, and the feeling seemed to be paramount in the town that JERRY should not be taken away as a Slave. The military companies were ordered out by the Sheriff; but, although a portion of them got under arms, they all finally refused to act. When the examination was resumed at 5 o'clock, the Police Office, where it was held, was surrounded by an excited crowd, the noise and confusion of which, as well as vollies of stones discharged through the windows, hindered the process of saving the Union that was going on within. At seven the Commissioner adjourned the hearing, but the crowd still remained. The officers in charge of JERRY entrenched themselves as well as they could and even fired upon the besiegers, but without effect. This measure, of course, had no tendency to allay the excitement, and about nine a general assault was made, the result of which was that the office was carried, the doors broken down, the Fugitive rescued and forthwith put on his way to Freedom with all possible despatch. The Deputy Marshal, FITCH, broke his arm in leaping from the window, and this was all the bodily harm that was done to any one in the accomplishment of this gallant rescue.

This event was made more pointed, and, so to speak, more epigramatic, by the fact that not long before, Mr. WEBSTER, in a speech at Syracuse, alluding to what was said and done at the Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society there in May, declared that a Slave should be taken from Syracuse, yea, even from an Anti-Slavery Convention in Syracuse. It has been thought that this attempt was timed expressly, so as to occur at the time of the Convention of the Liberty Party, that so this prophecy might be fulfilled. But the result seems

to have shown that, in whatever particulars the modern DANIEL may resemble him of old, the gift of prophecy is not one of them. Though orders came down from Washington to spare no pains in bringing these offenders to justice, no arrests were made for a good many days. It was suggested that a wholesome regard for the impending State Election induced those charged with this duty to hasten but slowly in their work. At last, however, Messrs. STEPHEN PORTER, JAMES DAVIS, WILLIAM THOMPSON, MOSES SUMMERS, and possibly some others were arrested, and after examination before Judge CONCKLIN, at Auburn, were bound over for trial. The trial of one of these accused persons is now in progress, and we trust it will terminate as ingloriously for the United States as the previous attempts in the same direction.

How far the Fugitive Slave Law has succeeded, or is likely to succeed, in that beatific pacification of the mind of the country which it was promised it should produce, may be partly gathered from these imperfect sketches of a few of the attempts to enforce it. Those that succeeded, as well as those that failed, only served to alienate still more the Slaveholding and Non-Slaveholding divisions of the country from one another. The South are farther from being satisfied than they were before. The North has been made to see, as it never did before, the true relation in which it stands to its Southern Taskmaster. A little more such pacifying may lead to the only Compromise Measure that has any pacification in it, the Separation of two incongruous political elements, the Dissolution of the Union which is no Union, and the division of the country into its natural relations by the severing of that artificial pressure from without which keeps in irritating contact elements that can never unite.

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MASSACHUSETTS.

In our last Report we related the manner in which the Coalition between the Democratic and Free Soil parties had obtained possession of the State, and the commencement of the struggle for the election of Mr. CHARLES SUMNER as the successor of Mr. WEBSTER in the Senate of the United States. That struggle and its eventual success, formed the entire history of that legislative year. As far as any legislation favorable to Liberty was concerned, the ascendency might as well have remained on the side of the Whigs. The caution and address which was thought necessary on the part of the Free Soilers, in order