New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-02-26
Lnu-Higher and Lower.

command or inhibition should end cOntro-
versy and estop cavil. And especially IS
this essential in Republic, whose Govern
ment rests rather on Opinion than on Force.
A Despotism may be sustained by the Po-
tency of its cannon and bayOnets, though
hated and loathed by the great body of its
subjects, but Democracy unloved by its
people already totters to its fall.
Such being the case, the enactment of an
unjust law is everywhere criminal, while
in Republic it is essentially reasonable.
1t tends to undermine the very foundations
of the State and whelm the ediGce in
wreck and ruin. The elemental idea of
Law is that of the moral and physical
power of the community put forth to re-
prove and restrain the evil-minded, the
wrong doer. The State is primarily COM
bination of the individuals, inhabiting GER
tain district or territory, to protect each
other from injustice at the hands of the
mere selfish and unprincipled among them.
1t should extend special guardianship to
the simple, the degraded, the powerless,
for they especially need its protection,
while the wealthy, the vigorous, the val
liant, can usually protect themselves. In
protecting the feeble and the depressed, it
vindicates its Divine character and justities
its claim to reverence and loyalty.
But when the Law becomes the ally
and the instrument of OPpressOrs when 1t
lends itself to the lusts of the able and
crafty to win luxury from the unrequited
toll of the ignorant and feeble-when 1t
volunteers its services to score the backs
and manacle the limbs of those whose only
crime is dissemination to give the entire
fruits Of their hard labor to others and
leave their own children worse than desti-
tute- surely it is blasPhemy to say of such
law that its seat is the bosom of God or
to speak of it in the language of admiration
and reverence. To glorify such law is to
defame and vilify the great body of Law,
whose vital aim is Justice betwixt man
and man. 1t is rendering to Juggernaut
the homage due to God.
If the Free States could buy themselves
clear of all obligation or claim for the re-
capture of Fugitive Slaves by contribu
ton of Five Millions of Dollars per annum,
we believe it would be a wise economy to
do it. The spectacle Of a legal man-hunt
inevitably tends to weaken and destroy the
popular reverence for Law among Us.
However those reared amid the influences
Of Slavery may regard it, the People of
the Free States kH0lO full well that the
forcible enslovement of an innocent man
who desires and struggles for liberty is an
unIighteous act. All the Doctors Of Di-
vinity who could stand between Andover
and Princeton could not wholly deaden the
general conscience to the essential iniquity
of such an act. He who engages in slave
catching having been educated among free
men, cannot divest himself of the cOnvic
ton that he is doing a mean action. 1t he
holds any public station wnich requires
him to engage in this business, he will gem
orally do it, rather than resign; but be does
it heartlessly, listlessly, and with a secret
hope that his efforts may somehow be BAT
fled. A few whose god is money and
larger number who would do any safe
thing for five dollars may evince alacrity
in this work, bat the natural tendency is
all the other way.
The orators and journalists of the Slave
States do us gross injustice. They will not
allow US to have any conscience. If pi-
rate should chase ashore on their coast the
white crew and passengers of some Circas-
sian or Swedish vessel, and should insist on
their surrender as his lawful captives under
some compact with our Government, they
would realize how revolving, how Intensely
mean, this Slave catching business appears
to Northern people, Take the following
illustration from recent Washington let
ter;
AT this moment, under the roof which covers
me, there tolls in hopeless, unremitted drudSery
On aged woman, whose wages are received by
chivalrous popinjay, who has sold SUCCESSFULLY be-
fore her face she children OF her body, until, at
three score, she stands cbdless as Niobe, and
shattered IS a reed, a monument OF our domestic
slavetrG6e. -
1.-THE last Of this woman's progeny, the child OF
her ..-;,k an ace the luckless BENJAMIN of her
scattered brood, was crippled boy. Even he,
very few months since was sent TO the shambes,
without even lesve-tsking from the angushed
woman. because niggers sold high. Her deep
drawn signs, as she drags herself day after day
through her undated tasks, are. to me, an elo-
quent comment upon our domestic slave trade
We ask considerate. earnest men 70