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to secure the success of Mr. SUMNER's election, before it was effected, paralyzed their Anti-Slavery energies, and after it was done, their rejoicings over it left them no time for any action creditable to themselves or honorable to the State. On the 24th of April, Mr. SUMNER was elected by precisely the number of votes necessary for a choice, by the House of Representatives, he having previously received the vote of the Senate. We certainly hope that the course of Mr. SUMNER in the Senate will be such as to show that his election was worth all that was done, and all that was left undone, to effect it. He is able and we believe willing to do a great work in that conspicuous station, if he be not impeded and shackled by the necessary incongruities of his position. That this may be the case, we are compelled to apprehend from the terms of his letter of acceptance, of which the following is a passage:

"I accept it as the servant of the Union, bound to study and maintain, with equal patriotic care, the interests of all parts of our country →→ to discountenance every effort to loosen any of those ties by which our fellowship of States is held in fraternal company, and to oppose all sectionalism, whether it appear in unconstitutional efforts by the North to carry so great a boon into the Slave States, or in unconstitutional efforts by the South, aided by Northern allies, to carry the sectional evil of Slavery into the Free States—or in whatsoever efforts it may make to extend the sectional domination of Slavery over the National Government. With me the Union' is twice blessed—first, as the powerful guardian of the repose and happiness of thirty-one sovereign States clasped by the endearing name of Country, and next, as the model and beginning of that all-embracing federation of States, by which Unity, Peace and Concord will finally be organized among the Nations; nor do I believe it possible, whatever may be the delusion of the hour, that any part thereof can be permanently lost from its well-compacted bulk. E Pluribus Unum is stamped upon the National coin, the National territory, and the National heart. Though composed of many parts, united into one, the Union is separable only by a crash which shall destroy the whole."

This letter of Mr. SUMNER but too plainly expresses the position of the party to which he belongs, and indicates its intrinsic weakness. It undertakes to work with instrumentalities for ends which are mutually destructive of each other. Effectual Anti-Slavery action is impossible under the Constitution, because the Constitution, if carried out in its spirit, would kill the Anti-Slavery action, and the Anti-Slavery action,

if pushed to its ultimate results, would destroy the Constitution. We respect and honor many members of the Free Soil party, and do full justice to the sincerity of their zeal and of their convictions. But we think they never do more effectual work for the Slave than when they are engaged with us in agitating the general mind, irrespective of elections, against wicked laws, or assisting us in obstructing their execution. But on these occasions, and always, we wish the distinction between us and them to be made clear. We believe that we have never claimed them as a part, though we have always recognized them as a consequence, of our movement. We are as willing as they are desirous that there should be no possibility of mistaking the one for the other. We believe we have not been wanting on our part in making the lines of demarcation as broad and obvious as we knew how. They on their side have shown no wish to be mixed up with us. We hope they will make their doctrine and discipline so clear as to leave their enemies no occasion of turning our thunder against them. We cannot promise them success, indeed. As long as they choose to molest the peace and quiet of the nation, however guardedly and constitutionally, they must expect to have those epithets bestowed upon them which we flatter ourselves we have deserved and made respectable. Any malignancy will be sure to be christened by the name of Disunion. They must be very cautious indeed if they do not provoke their enemies to give them that ill name. This has been the chief weapon of the warfare upon Mr. SUMNER. The affirmation, or the inference, that he is a Disunionist has been the moving power of the machinery that has been brought to bear upon him. him. The Commonwealth did us the justice to say that we have never claimed him as one of ourselves. It says, "Everybody knows that they (the Disunion Abolitionists) esteem Mr. SUMNER and his political friends, though honest and well principled, as vastly deficient in the essentials of Anti-Slavery opposition — and why? Because they will stick to the Law, and the Constitution, and the Union." That is precisely the difference. We attack Slavery wherever we find it—in the Capitol or in the Church whether entrenched behind Constitutions or Communion tables. They would limit its jurisdiction within the boundaries laid down by the Constitution. We propose to ourselves utterly to exorcise the wicked spirit, and send him howling back to the bottomless pit. They, if we do not misunderstand them, have no public quarrel with him, provided he keep himself within the parchment circle described by the necromancers of 1787.

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The distinction between the American Anti-Slavery Society and the

Free Soil party, we conceive to be this:- The first recognize no right of the master to his Slave anywhere, either on the plantation or after he has escaped to the North, and consequently deny the validity of any Constitution, or law under it, securing either his original property in the Slave, or his right of recovering him, after escape. The latter does not deny the Constitutional obligations to protect the master in his Slave-property and to provide for its restoration, if it have flown away; but insists that it shall be done decently and in order and with such prudent care as shall guard against any mistake. The Free Soilers have never affirmed, that we know of, that the Slavehunters should not have their pound of flesh, provided it was carved out exactly, nor less nor more, according to law. The Abolitionists deny the validity of the law ab initio, and maintain that no circumstances can be imagined in which it would be less a crime than now. The quarrel of the Free Soilers with the Fugitive Law is not, we take it, with its principle, but with its details. We suppose that a law could be devised, had they the framing of it, which they would be willing ́should be enforced. If they do not mean this, we do not understand what they mean by their professed intention of sticking "to the Law, the Constitution, and the Union." It is not their avowed ground, that a law is not to be passed and obeyed, which shall provide for the restoration of fugitive Slaves; but that this specific law is vicious because it endangers those who are not fugitive Slaves, that there is not sufficient care taken to protect the really free. Now we think it no worse to enslave a free man, whether white or black, than to hold a negro Slave originally, and no worse to make a mistake, real or pretended, in the identity of the man claimed, than it is to send him back upon the most irrefragable evidence of his former condition. Their objection to the Law is that it may make a Free Man a Slave; ours is that it makes a Man a Slave, and it is all the stronger in the case of one who has rescued himself from that horrible pit.

For our own part, we have no particular desire to see the present law repealed or modified. If Slaves are to be recaptured and carried back, the worse the law is that regulates it the better we like it. What we preach is, not Repeal, not Modification, but Disobedience. We are content with the existing law, provided we can persuade the people not to suffer it to be executed. We think it much better than one which should avoid the common objections to it. If the liberty of any man is to be endangered by Constitutional legislation, in God's name let it be the free and not the Slave! The free man has had at least a portion

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of his good things in this life, and his chance of deliverance or of escape is comparatively good. But what hope is there for the flying wretch who is seized and delivered again to his tormentors? We had as lief see the richest merchant in New York, (especially if he signed the Slavecatching Call,) or the most devout Doctor in Divinity, (especially if he had baptised and blessed the Bill of Abominations,) we had as lief see either of them made Slaves of as the humblest negro that has escaped from his prison-house. His former condition is no reason whatever for his being returned to it, against his will, but the strongest possible why he should not be. If we are to have a Slavecatching law, it cannot be too bad a one. The worse it is the better the hope that its execution will be evaded. God save us and the fugitive Slave from

a law which will content the North! That will be indeed the invention of the devil, whether he take the shape of Free Soil or of Slavery. Give us a law so flagrant in its wickedness that no mental sight can be so dull as not to perceive it! So imperfect in its details as to make every man tremble for his own safety and that of his children! Our hope in the Free Soil party, is, that its action will always be better than its professions, that its heart will be truer than its logic.

But to return to the doings of the Legislature. We have already stated that the excellent laws proposed by Mr. ROBINSON, in consequence of the Sims outrages, came to nothing. The same fate attended an admirable Bill, introduced by as admirable a Report, proposed by the Hon. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, for the further protection of personal liberty. This bill forbade the volunteer militia taking any part in the arrest or detention of a fugitive Slave; made it the duty of the District Attorney of any district in which an arrest was made, to act as the counsel of the person arrested; provided for the punishment of any person assisting in the removal of any person, not a Slave, or coming into the State for that purpose, by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and imprisonment in the State Prison for not more than ten years; it made it the legal presumption that no person dwelling within the Commonwealth was a Slave, and threw the burden of proof on the claimant or his agent; it enlarged the range of the present law of Habeas Corpus, authorizing any Judge or Justice of the Peace to issue the warrant returnable before any Judge of the Supreme Court or the Common Pleas; it authorized any constable of a town to serve the writ; it required the Judge before whom the writ was returnable, to grant a jury trial to the party accused of being a Slave, if he did not discharge him on the hearing, upon his recognizance, with sureties, in a sum not ex

ceeding a thousand dollars, to prosecute the same,

the verdict of the jury to be conclusive as to the points at issue; and, finally, it provided that all expenses whatsoever, incurred by any person obtaining his Habeas Corpus under this law, should be paid by the Commonwealth.

It was disgraceful to the Legislature that it should have suffered this admirably contrived law to fall to the ground. But this it did. And the relief which it was hoped a Legislature claiming a Reforming character would have extended to the colored children of Boston, now, many of them, virtually denied the blessings of education, or allowed to enjoy them under great disadvantages, through the unchristian and inhuman prejudice of the School Committee, adjudicated into law by the Supreme Court of the State, also was denied. As the present Legislature is composed of the same elements, each boasting of a progressive and reforming tendency, and each vieing with the other in their professions of love of equal rights and impartial liberty, and as it is undistracted with the disturbing force of Senator-making, we most earnestly trust that it will not suffer another year to pass without providing this necessary safeguard to Personal Liberty, and freeing the State from the last vestige of legalized prejudice of color within its borders. As to the first, we fervently hope that the action of our legislators will place Massachusetts in as creditable an attitude as is consistent with the recognition of Slavecatching under any circumstances, as a political duty. If they must needs acknowledge that they are bound to pay a tribute of the flesh nearest other men's hearts to the Southern Shylock, let them at least see to it that he gets no more than his just pound, as allowed by the law and awarded by the Court,

GEORGE THOMPSON.

The last year will be a memorable one to all interested in the AntiSlavery Movement, whether as friends or foes, as being marked by the labors of this indefatigable and eloquent friend of the Slave. For more than four months after the last Anniversary of this Society, Mr. THOMPSON was incessant and most effective in his Anti-Slavery labors. Besides many Meetings which he held, or attended, in this State, he addressed great audiences in Maine, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania. In all these cases, with a single exception, he was received respectfully and heard gladly. The exception was in the

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