The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1850-11-16

There is not only no law, but there IL no rule or
principle Of human conduct rchaterer, which is
without exceptions, and which cannot be over
thrown by exceptional or extreme instancss--not
even the command, g Thou shalt not kill" It is
neither logical nor legitimate, therefore, to cite
or to suppose cases, to illustrate law or prin-
ciple, unless they show its general object and
operation. But the cases supposed by Mr.
BEEcHER do not indicate the usual effects of re-
claiming fugitives,-but the reverse. II can al
most never happen in fact, that slave woman
flies to her free husband in the North And if
it does, it indicates that the husband has volun-
tarily left his wife, and that there is not much
love lost if she is not permitted to pursue fu-
gitive husband. We are not quite sure whether
she has natural right to do it, or whether she
would not be invading his natural rights, by the
pursuit and recapture. But she is fugitive
slave mother If SO, her children are slaves
unless they also have run away, which is highly
improbable, and if they are slaves, then the
mother Is running aDay from her children, which
materially mars our sympathy for her. and spoils
the sentiment that Mr.. .BEEcHER intended to en-
list in her favor. But let US imagine case
which we have as much right TO do as Mr..
BEEcHER, and we viii make it more probable,
and therefore, more logical Suppose fugitive
were to run away from his wife and children,
would not Mr.. BEEcHER, who has such warm
sympathies for the domestic relations, would he
feel bound-not by the law, but by his religion,
to help the humane master to capture him, and
take him back to his weeping and widowed wife
and orphan children! So rs to the slave girl,
suppose she were flying in all the bloom of
youth and innocence to the cities, where Mr..
BEEcHER officiates as minister and editor, and
where more female virtue falls victim annually,
than on the plantations of any State Of the
South, or suppose that having heard of the illicit
pleasures Of those dissipated resorts, she were
hurrying to indulgence, would IT not be incum-
bent on Mr.. BEEoHER to assist her pursuing
master, and snatch the willing victim from life
of vice, of want and of disease
AS for the third instance of Mr.. BEEoHER, the
old fugitive of fifty years Of unrequited toll"
it is clear that if he is pursued, it is purely for
the purpose of saving him from the starvation to
which he would be doomed, in attempting to get
living In a region where young and vigorous
Yankees, and recently imported Germans and
Irish, are engaged in a deadly struggle for bread
and for life. For negro who has worked fifty
years is of no value to his master Mr., BEEcHER,
when he comes to reconsider This case would
certainly if he pretends to humanity, turn "slave-
-catcher"-and help the Marshal. 5ass2 .a..n-.
Va AS for the actual relations Of the sexes among
slaves, they are, according to documentary and
official evidence, far superior to those of the free
negroes in New York, Hayti, or anywhere else
In Hayti, as wo proved not long ago, there are
almost no children at all, born in wcdlock Pro-
mscuous Intercourse is almost universal And
the census Of the United States shows that among
our free negroes there are not near so many chill
dren, as among either slaves or whites. And as
there is no better test of the fidelity or number
of marriages, ttan the number of children among
people. the slaves blest in that respect above
the free negroes. So far therefore, as the OBJ
legation exists, to preserve md not violate the
relations Of husband and wife, and to prevent
lswdness, which is the principle of DR.. BEEoHER's
argument he is bound to obey the Fugitive slave
law, and catch all the runaways he can. W. j
Mr.. BEEcHER then goes on to speak of this
law us commanding him "to rob fellow being
Of every right" to "commit open disgraceful
crime" and says it is "dissolved in the courts of
God the moment it is enacted" He says, this
is no new doctrine. 1t underlies the history of
our institutions it is associated with the Non.
conformist and the Puritan; it has been made
lustrlous by the repatriation of our fathers, and
their pilgrimage hither."
Now this grand idea of rights Of human
rights, and above all, the idea of an idea of hu-
man rights, inherited from the Puritans, is SUI
per-refnement of fancy, in which we cannot
indulge Mr.. BEEcHER. The Puritans did not
pretend to recognize any rights Of man, black
or white, Ango-Saxon, English, Catholic or
Protestant TO civil or religious liberty" or
the right to teach" or the right of free dis
CUSTOM" They did not, in fact, recognize any
such thing as rights at all. They acknowledged
and respected nothing but gifts" They estab-
lished theocracy in Massachusetts in which no
man had share whether he were black, white,
English, Dutch, Catholic, or Protestant, eqcept
Presbyterian. Without being that he had no
vote, he could get no Office, and might be
whipped, hung, or banished, by laD They made
slaves of Indians and negroes, not because they
were inferior, as a race Of men, but because they
were not of the true faith They never pre-
tended to respect rights of conscience, nor any
other rights. To say that liberty of conscience
or right of conscience, is a principle inherited
from the Puritans, is more extravagant fiction
than to say it is inherited from the Jews To
assert this principle now as so inherited, and as
applicable to this law, is a great aggravation of
the absurdity. Why, the Puritans themselves
held slaves; nay more, they had, as is now pro-
ven fugitive slave laws, for the capture of moth