free countries, who did not choose to work by the side of Slaves. But in 1850 it succeeded in overcoming by threats of disunion our avowed Northern purpose, prevented the Wilmot Proviso from being applied to the territories, and finally passed by Northern votes, among them that of Samuel A. Eliot of this city, this Fugitive Slave Law, under which Burns was on Friday carried through our streets. This Law, as you know, tramples on all the legal and constitutional guarantees of Freedom. The Constitution says (in the 5th Article of Amendments,) that "No person shall be deprived of his liberty without due process of Law," and also that " In suits at common Law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by Jury shall be preserved." Burns was in possession of his liberty, ten days ago he was a self-supporting, tax-paying citizen of Massachusetts. He had a right to vote at the polls after a year's residence here. He has been deprived of that liberty, he has been turned into a Slave, and he has not seen either Judge or Jury. Now such men as Chas. G. Loring, Horace Mann, Robert Rantoul, Jr., Chief Justice Hornblower of New Jersey declare this Law unconstitutional, while Ben. R. Curtis and Edward G. Loring have argued its constitutionality. two things are plain enough. First, If it is constitutional, then the Constitution has provided no adequate guarantees for the protection of Liberty. Secondly, If, instead of the South threatening to dissolve the Union, it had been the North that was uttering this threat; if the whole North was determined to resist the law, and the South did not care whether it was enforced or not; how long would it have taken Mr. Ben. R. Curtis and Mr. Edward G. Loring to have shown the unconstitutionality of the law? I once put that question to a defender of the law a lawyer. He smiled,

and said "Not five minutes."

But

I am no lawyer, and it may be very presumptuous in me to touch on a question of constitutional law. But there are some common-sense conclusions, which you and I, though

not lawyers, are adequate to. Let me call the attention of the defenders of this law to the following points, which plain men among their fellow-citizens would like to have explained. This examination before the Commissioner is either a trial or it is not a trial of the question of Liberty. If it be a trial, it is a trial without Judge or Jury. If it be not a trial, then a free citizen of Massachusetts is turned into a Slave without a trial. Anthony Burns was a free citizen of Massachusetts when he came before the Commissioner: for the presumption in a free State is that every man is free until he is proved to be a Slave. He was a free citizen when he came before the Commissioner-he left him a Slave, in the hands of his The Commissioner denies that his examination is a judicial process. Anthony Burns, then, was turned into a Slave, without a trial.

master.

Under that law, on Friday, Anthony Burns was sent back into Slavery by the decision of the United States Commissioner. It surprised not only the people, but the lawyers. Most of the lawyers believed that there was legal ground for a reasonable doubt of the man's identity. The Commissioner was satisfied of the identity of the prisoner with the person claimed, only by his own conversation. He was sent back entirely on the ground of what he said himself on the night of his arrest. And this conversation of his is proved only by Brent, the agent of the claimant, whose testimony on other points was contradicted by the strongest evidence. The Commissioner admits that Brent's testimony was completely neutralized, as regards the point of identity, by the testimony of other witnesses of unimpeachable integrity. Nevertheless, he allows him to re-establish his own testimony, by means of his own testimony on another point. The only witness to the identity has been completely disparaged by unimpeachable witnesses, and the Commissioner admits that it is thus disparaged, and yet takes him again as evidence to the conversation on the strength of which he sends back the man to Slavery.

Setting aside everything else, Mr. Loring accepts Brent's account of a conversation, held with the prisoner on the night of the arrest, when in a state of terror; and on the strength of that conversation sends him into Slavery. And yet the Fugitive Slave Law itself declares that "in no trial or hearing under the Act shall the testimony of an alleged Fugitive be admitted in evidence."

I do not wish to speak harshly of the Commissioner. No doubt he has a sufficient weight on his own mind and heart to-day. Miserable as is the condition of poor Burns, I do not know but that it is to be preferred to that of Edward Greeley Loring. He had an opportunity of setting the man free on grounds which every Boston lawyer would have admitted to be sufficient. He has sent him back to Slavery upon grounds in which half his legal friends will not sustain him. I believe him honest, but biased against the cause of human liberty, by his habits of mind, and his immediate associations. When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, he wrote articles, defending its constitutionality and necessity, in the newspapers of this city. I have not those articles at hand, but I recollect that they seemed to me at the time to contain arguments the fallacy of which, on any other subject, he would have easily seen. He argued, for instance, that the person claimed as a Fugitive could lay no claim to the constitutional guarantees of liberty, because Slaves were not parties to the Constitution. He thus assumed the very thing to be proved, that the person claimed as a Fugitive, was a Fugitive, and a Slave. And he has now decided the case of Burns according to the 10th Section of the Statute rather than the 6th. According to the latter, he would have had jurisdiction over the three questions of Slavery, Escape, and Identity. These three points the claimant attempted to prove, thus selecting the 6th Section as the one under which he chose to proceed. But Mr. Loring decides that these two points of Slavery and Escape are beyond his jurisdiction—thus narrowing immensely the chances of the defendant. According to

this ruling, you or I may be seized to-morrow, and the two points that we were Slaves, and that we escaped, would be considered as established by a piece of paper brought from the South by the person claiming us. Consequently, if the Commissioner had evidence that I was really the James Freeman Clarke described in the Virginia Record he has no right, legally, to do anything but send me back. He would not do it; but by his own interpretation of law he ought to do it. He would not do it, because I am white and because he thinks he knows that I never was a Slave. But there is nothing in the law about white or black, and Northern free-born men are turned into Slaves very easily in this country. Witness the case of Northop, born in Connecticut, kidnapped in Washington, and for years a Slave on the Red River. Witness that poor fellow who, born free in Pennsylvania, was turned into a Slave in Maryland, and lately escaped from Charleston to Delaware Bay on the outside of a steamer, under the guards, from which he was picked off, half dead, to be sent back to Slavery again by a Delaware Commissioner.

"Nephew," said Algernon Sidney in prison, on the night before his execution, "I value not my own life a chip, but what concerns me is that the Law which takes away my life may hang every one of you, whenever it is thought conve nient." Commissioner Loring's interpretation of this Law may send you or me, your wife or daughter or mine, into Virginia as a Slave, whenever it is thought convenient. It will not be necessary for the Georgia Legislature to offer

5,000 again for the head of Garrison. All that is necessary is that a certificate shall be made out describing him, or Wendell Phillips, or Theodore Parker, as an escaped Slave, and Commissioner Loring being satisfied of their identity must send them back or change his views of the Statute.

The Law, thus explained, is the one which he has defended before this community as constitutional and proper. I blame him for sending back Burns under the Law. I blame him more for being willing to act as Commissioner under such a

law.

Ah! but says he, if good men do not administer it, it will be left to be done by bad men. It seems to me that such a course of reasoning would justify us in doing any wrong thing, which we feared others might do, if we did not. No man who believes Slavery wrong is authorized in turning a Man into a Slave. I blame him then for acting as Commissioner under this Law. But I blame him most of all for defending such an infamous Statute, and for trying to make it acceptable to the community. If those who, in past times, have spent years of toil and sorrow in securing for us the great bulwarks of personal Freedom, Trial by Jury, the writ of Habeas Corpus, and the like, under which we live-if they are entitled to our lasting gratitude, what are those entitled to who exert their ingenuity, learning, and influence to overthrow these securities? These things also will be remembered — but in a different way.

As regards the Mayor of the city, he seems to me to have taken a most ill-judged and unfortunate step in calling out the Military to perform escort duty to the United States Marshal. No doubt he thought that it was done to preserve the peace of the city. But the peace of the city was nowhere threatened, and the great danger was from the armed soldiers themselves. Orders were actually given them to aim at the citizens, close to the scene of the old Boston Massacre. If they had fired, the results no man can tell, but they would have been most deplorable. Many of the troops behaved with brutal disrespect of the rights of peaceable citizens, and furnished us with an example of what it is to live under military rule. The Mayor of the city has, in my opinion, by all this, disgraced us, and shown himself eminently unfit for his position. He has exposed us to the risk of scenes of violence, which we have barely escaped by the good sense of the citizens, and that of some of the officers and soldiersand he has disgraced our military by making them the bodyguard of a Virginia Slaveholder and his Slave-catchers. Long may it be before our troops are called out again for such a purpose as this.