North is rapidly taking that position when it will be impossible to give any ready compliance, or anything but a legal, forced submission, to the present construction of the Constitution. That fugitives have been surrendered otherwise, and with alacrity, will not afford any sanction for a continuance of the practice. No legal impediments are in force, none will probably be put in force, in any Free State, other than those which relate to all kinds of property, its proof, and the payment of charges, before it will be legally, sofar as the judiciary is concerned, allowed to be taken away. If Mr. Calhoun, in the "Address," means to intimate that the spirit of the Constitution requires that "persons held to service or labor" shall be arrested by the State in which they have taken refuge, and be delivered up voluntarily by such State, or if aid be required by the spirit of the terms of the compact, then the enactments of several of the Free States have been onerous and unjust. But we remind all who think thus, that this was expressly denied, when asked for, in the Convention!

Public sentiment now forbids that any man should be carried off by violence before it has been fully proved that there is at claim upon him for "service." The simple affirmation of ownership will not answer when the claim is contested by the individual whose welfare is most concerned in the issue. The law authorizes "seizure" without "a breach of the peace, or illegal violence." The Act expressly requires an adjudication of the question, before an officer such as it designates. "A reputed slave claims his freedom; he pleads that he is a man, that he was by nature free, that he has not forfeited his freedom, nor relinquished it. Now unless the claimant can prove that he is not a man, that he was not born free, or that he has forfeited or relinquished his freedom, he must be judged free; the justice of his claim must be acknowledged."

If such proceedings, which the nature of the case seems to warrant, or rather require, are unjustifiable, then indeed are Northern legislation and jurisprudence onerous, and scarcely to be endured; but if Southern men may urge such a claim as this of the "Address," then to us, to whom freedom for all is a cardinal point of belief, if we cannot enjoy the privileges, such as they are, of the republic without becoming implicated in returning fugitives, the ground of complaint would seem to be on this side rather than upon the other. In either case, we

*Rev. D. Rice's Address in Convention in Kentucky, 1792.

should not be surprised if the sons should adopt the sentiment of the fathers who "held it to be a self-evident truth,"-"that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,] it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it, and to constitute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." If the government be "insufferable," which does not aid the master to rescue his fugitive slave, so is it much more insupportable if it compel a New England citizen to sanction so cruel a wrong as the binding of undeserved fetters upon human limbs!

And this is the sole issue to-day. It is probably true that according to the Southern intention of the compact, the South does not receive its own; and there seems to be no will or power to render the "pound of flesh" which is "written in the bond." Our fathers made the compromise, which these signers testify to have been well observed during their lives. We cannot do as it is said they did, because were the question again opened, we should not reenact the same ambiguous words. Of the thousands who would loudly denounce an infringement of the Constitution, or any question of its validity, we do not believe that there could be found in Massachusetts one hundred men so recreant to the cause of Freedom as now seriously and solemnly to adopt a Constitution with such a clause in it, for such purposes. The men of 1787 were misled by the declaration in Convention that Slavery would soon be extinct.

The Pro-slavery and the Anti-slavery men join battle on this ground:Both sides singularly enough maintain that the compact has been broken, and to be now scarcely more than an evil. The passage of the laws of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, though no literal violation of the compromise, is still a refusal of the assistance to which the South thinks itself entitled by the letter and spirit of the agreement on the other side, when South Carolina and Louisiana adopted the police regulations concerning free colored seamen, and, still more, when they refused to test those laws before the supreme tribunal of the nation, they purposely denied that "the citizens

*[We wish the author may be correct in his estimate, but think we could easily find a hundred "good whigs," and another hundred "good democrats," in a single ward in Boston, who would cheerfully reenact that clause of the Constitution, and remain in good political repute.- ED.]

of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States," in the sense in which the provision was agreed to here. It is a question of political honesty, how long such obvious infractions shall be screened from observation under a compact which their enactment virtually sets aside. The retaliation, which seems to some an easy method of adjusting the question, has no honesty in it.

As we apprehend the matter, some new adjustment of the questions at issue is imperatively demanded. It is affirmed that the States came into the Union for specific purposes, with specific mutual concessions and admissions. These gentlemen now urge that the North refuses to abide by the terms of the partnership. Setting aside the injustice perpetrated under their laws in their maritime cities, an outrage which ought to have sealed their lips concerning violations of good faith, let us look at the case from their position. It is in the "bond" that slaves shall be redelivered to their claimants, when found in a Free State; the South does not receive the indemnity for coming into the Union, (thus they state the case,) and now demands that the terms should be more strictly complied with, or the partnership declared at an end. We do not see how this trouble can be avoided. Here is an issue to be met in no truckling way. No new compromise made in Congress, or elsewhere, will bind the people of the Free States! The will of the people will have its expression: if that will shall sanction the use of the Free States as hunting-grounds, and permit marauders on these hills, like the soldiers and hounds in the everglades of Florida, to ferret out the panting fugitives, and to return them to that condition of wretchedness which has driven them to try a hope so desperate as the chances of escape offer, then let it be so, and as the South desires; if not, let there be no pretension of doing that which will never be performed, or censure for the party who is aggrieved by any neglect of the letter and spirit of the law.

The "Address" of Mr. Berrien, at least, deserves a reply; and the reply should be candid, manly, straightforward. It is not to be expected that the North will begin to bluster; that is not its usual way of announcing its conclusions. Any response from this quarter must have the impress of the Northern character; and be calm, energetic, and earnest. It must be such that there shall be no questions to be again raised concerning its import. It need never be seen in print, or heard aloud. But it may be manifested in the character and

convictions of the men who shall annually visit the seat of government to take part in the affairs of legislation. The time for weak men, for pusillanimous men, for men who will say and unsay bold things; for men who will truckle for seats near the throne; for men who are "absent on leave," or indisposed at home, when serious votes are to be taken, the time for such men has gone by. They do not express the earnest, living, free thought of the Free States.

Once again, we say, the signers of this "Address," and the South generally, do not understand the views and feelings of the freemen of the North; but they clearly apprehend that there can be only one result of so much agitation; it is that result which they are attempting to prevent. They design to move the South to insist that the North shall do more to help and less to hurt the cause of oppression. If it be possible, they will intimidate some by the prospect of a severance of the Union, or by some similar scarecrow yet to be erected. Will their end be answered? We believe not. There is one admission in the "Address" for which we are thankful, from which the friends of freedom may take courage, and which will silence, we hope, the lips of those who are continually affirming that the agitation has done and can do no good. Forty-eight of the perpetualists thus declare themselves concerning its influence: "This agitation, and the use of these means, have been continued, with more or less activity, for a series of years, not without doing much towards effecting the object intended."

We do not apprehend, in the least, a dissolution of the Union. There are not perpetualists enough who will peril it for the sake of Slavery; or retain Slavery at its expense, if the thing were practicable, as it is not. But for the power of the Free States added to their own, the indefinable power of the Union, unseen, but everywhere felt, there is not strength enough to keep three millions of slaves in bondage in the Southern States. Many of their shrewdest men have said as much. It will be a long day before the minds of the people are prepared for that result. And while the North is becoming more alive to the inconsistency of Slavery in a republic, and more disposed to resent the aggressions of the Slavepower, for every friend of dissolution made here, an opponent of the plan is made at the South. Two large parties have now an existence, both of which urge a dissolution of the Union, the Northern, to be free from the responsibility of

upholding the domestic institution of other people, and the Southern, professedly to support this institution; we are no prophet, if the increase of the one does not annihilate the other.

The "Address" concludes with an appeal for union among Southern men on this subject, and in resistance to the encroachments of the North. The futility of any attempt to array the South, as a section, against the North, will be apparent when it is remembered that not more than one quarter of the white citizens are themselves slave-holders; and that one half the remainder are degraded by the prevalence of the same spirit which crushes the colored man to the earth. These gentlemen may have yet to learn that it is one thing to unite men on the side of Justice and Humanity, and another to band them on the opposite side. Men will never do valiant deeds for conventional privileges which have no foundation in justice and no relation to humanity. Beside, all human nature, not the North alone, is united against oppression; the very stones cry out against it; the genius of the republic is its foe; the law of progress disowns it. It is weak in itself, and the source of all kinds of weakness where it exists. The vaporing of eloquence will not save that which is founded on injustice, and which can have no breath of true life, no strength of arms. He is in a sad plight, who holds a man in his right hand, and contends with the Universe for his supremacy with his left. "Indeed, I tremble for my country," were Jefferson's oftquoted and impressive words, "when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep for ever. Considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheels of fortune, an exchange of situations, is among possible events; the Almighty has no attribute that can take sides with us in such a contest."

Good men of all parties and sections will soon admit the inconsistency maintained in this republic, and be as earnest as the most zealous of to-day, in escaping from the blight of so unnatural a condition as Slavery. The fanaticism of slaveholding is not now what it once was. We can remember when it spoke in different terms from those of this "Address," which. after all, only received the signatures of a small number of the Senators and Representatives of the Southern States. It was once or twice recommitted to be modified; and finally was subscribed by forty-eight of the one hundred and twenty-one delegates in Congress from slave-holding States!