him back to bondage. Let not northerners speak of their free states after this they have no free states. : Theirs is the most degrading of slavery. Professing to abjure the atrocious system, for the sake of their dollars they permit the south to put its insulting foot upon their necks, they allow their free homesteads to be made the hunting ground of the manstealer. The bold villainy of the south is not half so revolting as the despicable subserviency of the north. But another provision of the Fugitive Bill is, that it suspends the habeas corpus, not towards all fugitives, but in regard to all men claimed as fugitives, be they bond or free, and it forbids them the right of trial by jury. Certain commissioners are named the judges, and they must decide "summarily." In a suit of ten dollars, one must have due notice and time to prepare for trial, and may demand the decision of twelve impartial jurors, but a man in the model republic is sent into life bondage by the summary fiat of one individual, and he too chosen under the full influence of the slave power, and holding his emoluments under its favour.

Let it be well understood that the boasted institutions of the United States demand the greatest care and ceremony about the ownership of a horse or cow, but make the fate of a human being a matter of " summary" decision; that there is far more difficulty in sending a hog to its sty than in tearing a man, unsuspected of crime, from the home of his children and making him a slave for life. But even a worse feature of the bill is, that the witnesses are not required to be put into the witness-box in open court and cross-examined, so that perjury may be discovered; this would be necessary in the pettiest suit for dollars, but for the enslaving of a man the proceedings may he held in the privacy of a commissioner's room, and the issue may be decided on paper affidavits, taken ex parte, thousands of miles away. Nay, more than this, not content with securing every facility for catching the poor stricken fugitive; not content with selecting the most sure tools to carry out the law; not content with setting aside every legal and constitutional protection for individual rights, this infamous bill absolutely provides, as far as the law can provide, for a decision favourable to the man-catcher. The southerners knew the weak point of the north, and they appealed to it; they knew the class of men who were to be the commissioners, and they provided that when one of these functionaries decided for the slave he should get a fee of $5, but when he decided for the slave-holder he should have $10. Could legislation be more infamous than this! And the best of all is, that the expenses of the slave-catching operation come from the public treasury. In the recovery of things-ay, even in the defence of personal rights secured by law-the suitor must pay the costs; but the model republic stands so firmly for human bondage that for it there is an exception, and the slave-holder's victim may be taken to his place of torture at the public cost. Free northerners are made man-catchers, northern laws are suspended, northern judges are bribed to convict at five dollars a man, northern marshals are made slave-gaolers, northern constables carry home the victim, and northern taxation pays the cost of the process. Tell me

no more of your free northern states. Did the true spirit of liberty exist an enactment such as this would be laughed to scorn, and an attempt to carry it out rouse a feeling at the north which would shake the foundations of the "peculiar institution." No, the full guilt of the law rests upon the north. In the House of Representatives, which adopted it, there were 141 northern members and only 91 from the south. There was a sufficient number of absentees, of skulking voters on the final division to have upset the bill. And the assent of the first branch of the legislature was given to it by a northern president, by a citizen of Buffalo.

But let me speak of the fruits of the bill. Scarcely had it passed when the south was awake; affidavits were duly prepared, and the man-thief on the track of the fugitive. Advertisements for runaways were widely published. Let me read you a sample. [Mr. Brown here read an advertisement entitled, "Catch the minister! $250 for any one who will catch a Methodist preacher !" and which went on to describe the party in the most minute manner.] And it was not long ere a victim was found. A coloured man named Hamlet, who had resided in New York for three years, a member of the Methodist church, having a wife and family, sober, industrious, and faithful to his employers, was seized on the affidavit of a Mrs. Brown, of Baltimore, that he was her property. This woman was not able to write, but signed her mark. She could not of course know of her own knowledge what the writing contained which she signed: but yet, on that affidavit, with the additional evidence of her son and son-in-law-who, it is believed, were the only parties to be benefited by the result-Hamlet was torn from his family and sent into slavery. He was the first victim, and the north was not yet accustomed to its fetters, so the price of the chattel was subscribed. Mrs. Brown got her eight hundred dollars, and Hamlet came back a man.

Very soon after this a coloured person named Adam Gibson was arrested in Philadelphia as the slave Emery Rice. The New York Commercial Advertiser, a pro-slavery paper, tells us that the case came before Commissioner Ingraham; that the prisoner's counsel demanded time to obtain witnesses to prove that Gibson was a free man, but that Ingraham “refused the application, and ordered a summary hearing." The case proceeded, and one Price was called as a witness. The Advertiser tells us he swore he knew the prisoner to be Rice "by his familiar looks," but that he only inferred him to be Knight's slave because he rode Mr. Knight's horse, and had seen him work for him. Mr. Commissioner Ingraham ruled that when a coloured person worked for a slave-holder in Maryland the presumption was that he was a slave-though the witness admitted that many free coloured men were thus employed. Price admitted also that he himself was bound over from the sessions on a charge of kidnapping; and this man was the only witness who identified the prisoner. An hour's delay was asked, but refused by Mr. Commissioner Ingraham, although informed that the prisoner had been kept in ignorance of the real cause of his arrest until he appeared in court. Here was a scene! Two witnesses,

coloured, were however obtained-men of good character-who testified respectively that the prisoner's name was Adam Gibson, and that he was formerly a slave of a Dr. Davis, who liberated all his slaves by his will. The commissioner, nevertheless, had "no doubt of the identity of the prisoner with Emery Rice," and ordered him to be returned to Mr. Knight. This was in a free state of the American union, in the land of William Penn, in the city of Brotherly Love! A human being condemned into slavery for life, on the oath of a professional man-stealer that he had once seen him on Mr. Knight's horse! Behold a republican spectacle of the year 1851. Well, what was the finale of this transaction? Ingraham got his ten dollars, the posse comitatus was called out to enforce the law, northern men took the victim to the claimant, and presented him as his chattel; but the slave-dealer had not villainy enough to receive him. He acknowledged that they had brought the wrong man-that Mr. Commissioner Ingraham's victim was not Emery Rice. What a picture was this! Northern justice prostituted, a judge of a free state, a northern marshal, the free citizens of Pennsylvania, all crouching before southern despotism, rolling in the mire of their own debasement, urging the slave-holder to take a victim, and the dealer in human flesh shrinking from the judicial award!

After this came the case of Henry Long, in the city of New York. He was brought before a sham commissioner, and kept before him until arrested under a valid authority; he was tried and condemned, and sent to Virginia --and he was sold there with the special condition that northern benevolence should never reach him, that he was never to be transferred to a northern owner. Rapidly after this came a scene of blood in the state of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Bulletin tells us that "deputy marshal Hatzel, constable Agen, and four or five other men, proceeded to Chester county to hunt up a chattel. They arrived at the house where the fugitive was supposed to be secreted, and knocked at the door. A coloured woman opened the window to know their business, when she was informed that they had broken the traces of their waggon and wished a light to mend them. She came down stairs and admitted the party in waiting. They thus effected an entrance, and were proceeding up stairs, when they were met by two coloured men and two coloured women. The women and one of the men were armed with axes, and the other had a gun. The marshal told them that they were in search of a fugitive slave; but they refused to let him or any of his men enter the room. The gun was taken from the man, and the party endeavoured to disarm the man with the axe. A pistol was fired at him, the ball of which must have entered his breast, but he still maintained his resistance. The fight continued until the southern gentleman (so says the Bulletin) who was with the party advised the marshal to withdraw, remarking that he would not have one of them killed for all the negroes in Pennsylvania. The party retired, firing several shots as they went, and more than one coloured person is supposed to have been shot. One was seen to fall as the officers were leaving. None of the marshal's party were injured." Here was a spectacle in Christian America!

Northern officials acting as slot-hounds on the track of human beings charged with no crime!-decoying the poor victims from their lair by appeals to their benevolence !—shooting them down like beasts of prey because they loved liberty! And mark the cowardice of the transaction. A posse of seven men and a southern gentleman, all armed to the teeth, driven off by two women and a man with axes and another man disarmed. Show me a tyrant, and I will find you a coward. They had not the courage to go forward, they turned and ran from the poor slaves; but when beyond the reach of the axe, they fired their guns at the victors with the full intent of murder.

After this we had the case of the Crafts, who are now happily in a land where no slave can live. They were closely hunted in the city of Boston, but they escaped to England.

Then came the case of Shadrach, who was seized and brought before a Massachusett's judge; but, somehow or other, there arose an excitement in the court-room, the marshal was jostled and the constables hemmed in, the law was trampled under foot, but the chattel escaped, and is now a free man in free Canada.

Shortly after came the famous Sims case, also in the city of Boston; but let us admit that the state of Massachusetts is a redeeming feature in the whole case; there are true men there yet; the blood of their ancestors yet beats in their veins. When Sims was arrested, Boston was roused to excitement; the court-house was surrounded with thronging thousands, and to preserve the sanctity of the law, an iron chain had to be carried round the court-house, and a large police force ranged within it to keep off the mob. When the judges entered their court they had to crouch under the iron chain! Of old the conquered had to pass under the yoke as an admittal of their conquest; and was it not a fitting emblem of northern servitude to their southern masters, that the judges of New England had to pass under an iron chain ere they could ascend the bench! Sims was convicted of being a chattel, and he was ordered to be sent back to Georgia. Boston men did the deed; a Boston marshal caught the victim; a Boston judge condemned him; Boston men were his gaolers and carried him into slavery. What a picture of degradation!

[Mr. Brown detailed other cases which arose under the operation of the Fugitive Law, and proceeded]--Had these occurred in Algiers, or among the savage tribes of Africa, the whole world would have been roused to indignation, but as they are daily occurrences in Christian America, in the free northern states of America, in the land of Sabbaths and churches, and schools, and missionary societies, no man must ope his mouth to its iniquity. Where in the wide world could such transactions as these be openly practised but in this boasted land of liberty? [A VOICE: In Hungary] In Hungary, does the gentleman say? I thank him for the allusion. To their eternal disgrace, the Austrians flogged women in Hungary, but they brought down on their heads the denunciations of the whole civilized world. And what comparison is there between the cases? Despot Austria flogs a

woman, but free America sells her into life bondage under all the penalties to which woman can be subject. Many a noble woman would submit to be flogged as a martyr to the cause of liberty, but what true woman would dare to live under all the unspeakable atrocities of American slavery? I have said that there are true men, noble spirits in the northern states who did not witness these things unmoved; but that the full guilt of he iniquity rests on the north, no man can doubt. When a feeling of resistance to the Fugitive Bill began to show itself, who were the men most forward to crush it? Northern merchants, northern editors, northern politicians-ay, northern ministers of Christ. The cry of the "Union in danger" was got up; the American constitution was openly declared to have higher claims to obedience than God's moral law, and popular meetings were held throughout the union to pronounce in favour of the fugitive atrocity. A mass meeting was held in the city of New York, and the great Daniel Webster, the “God-like Daniel,” as he was once styled, was brought there for the occasion. In his speech to the New Yorkers Mr. Webster, while considering the cry for the repeal of the Fugitive Bill, told hem the President "considered the settlement as final," and he would 'carry it into effect." Mr. Webster continued thus: "This is the subject, gentlemen, on which the moral sense of the country ought to receive tone and tension. There ought to be a stern rebuke by public opinion, of all who would reopen this agitating question-who would break this truce, as they call it-who would arm again and renew the war." The New York papers tell us this was received by the audience with "applause and cheers." Think of northern men applauding when told that that is a "final settlement" which makes them the slave-catchers of the "southern chivalry." It is often said that slavery cannot be so bad a thing, for that slaves who have escaped are glad to get back to bondage. If such cases do ever occur, it presents one of the most startling features of the vile system, that it actually degrades men so low that they know not the difference between slavery and freedom. But these New York people bring us new testimony to the demoralizing influence of slavery; they show that it blunts all the nobler feelings in those who are but indirectly connected with it; that men born and reared in the free north can rejoice to pass under the yoke of the south, and give "loud cheers" when they are told by the man who subjugated them that their degradation is to be perpetual.

But the great guilt of slavery lies at the door of American churches. Truly did Albert Barnes say: "There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery one hour if it were not sustained in it." But nearly all the churches of the union are steeped in its iniquities; ministers, office-bearers and people are alike its upholders. In every shape you can find it, from the smooth-tongued parson who preaches that slavery is "not a sin per se," down to the bold denunciator of the "fanatic abolitionist," with stipend paid him from the toil of the poor slave. How can the state of the American church be better described than by the fact that Dr. Spring, an eminent light of the Presbyterian church, and minister of a large congregation in New York, publicly made this declaration: "If by