The Ohio star. [volume] (Ravenna, Ohio) 1830-1854, 1852-10-04

law mas not some bearing on Practical quess Are
not the Baltimore edcts before the country7
they practical bearing, when their very purnose
suppress free speech and when that purpose has been
executed again and again?-and the attempt has been
made here, within the last half hour, upon me- to en-
force it?
LOWER LAW DIvINEs.
Now. sir do not believe in preaching against theo-
retca and distant sins, and letting real and present
ones escape. do not believe in denouncing Hindoo
suttees because they the other side of the GLOBE
and defending the extension of slavery in own
land That sin has the beguiing defence of Office and
profits less than ours But that sin destroys only
he BODY ours the soul The modern clergymen of the
'lcwer law" school can select monster of the
Old Testament-Darus, Nebuchadnezzar, or Jeroboam
and hold them up for execration, while they suffer
the greater moral monsters of their parishes to
cape with impunty They have mercy for Jeroboam,
old bunker though he was because he "drove Israel
from following the Lord, more especially there was
chance for the Presidency, any tariff sale of
dry goods TO the South to tempt him. But they forget
that each and all of the sinners whose names
blacken the page of history had their accompanying
temptations, and their casustry for sedefence, just
much as the offenders of day. They forget that
when posterty looks backwards upon great crimes as
they stand historic relief, they their
foul nakedness and deomty, and without any of the
paliaons pretexts by which their wickedness was
soened to the tempted eye of the perpetrator They
forget that it will be of the crimes of day,
of ancient ones when the evanescen circumstances
of the seduction have passed bytha then they, too,
will stand out in the foreground of the historic canvass
in their full proportions and their native deformty
hdeous unmtigated, and execrable. Had not Ananias
and Sapphra temptation every whit strong to keep
back from the apostles part of the prce of their pos
sessions, though they had been offered a sinecure
chaplaincy the Navy for defending the fugitive slave
law? have historic proof that Benedict Arnold at
tempted to justify his treason, the ground that he
seeking the best good of the colonies, just his
followers In times seek TO justify themselves by
the far less plausible plea of saving the Union.
know it is said that if the doctrine of the 'Hgher
Law admitted, all laws will be at naugh and
civil government be overthrown. All history refutes
this; for, of all the who have ever lived those who
contend for the higher law of God have universally been
the faithful and obedent, when human laws were
coincident with the divine. That identical principle in
our nature, which makes true to the will of God,
makes us also true to all the just commands of men*
FALSE INTERPRETATIONS OF LAW.
Another consequence OF most evil portent has grown
of the late political enthusiasm for savery-I mean
false Interpretation of the law of treason. Sir you
know, and all know that under the bloody regns of
British tyrans by construction the great
gine of political and personal vengeance. Under the
old doctrine of constructive treason, if living lips dar
ed to preach the gospel of freedom, they forced
to preach the doctrine of abect submission to ungody
laws, for the heads they belonged to decapitated
and borne soldiers pixies through the streets of Cities
and hung up to tester and rot at all the city gates.
could occupy the day with the recital of instances where
the purest innocence and the nobest virtues fell sacr
fee to forced and arbitrary construction of the law
of treason. Having lately looked through those Eng
lish cases, now declare that they not whit
greater outrage upon the English law than Judge
Kanes charge to the jury in the Christiana cases.
Both had in view the object to do.0n agitation
for freedom, and Lord Jeffreys expostions as
plausible Judge Kane'S
To exclude all possibility of constructive treason,
under Constitution, its trainers defined that offence
in the following words:
"Treason against the United States shall consist
ONLY in lcvying against them in adherng to
their enemies giving them aid and comfort
Judge Kane says, that whatever would make man
accessory to the crime, other felony makes him
principal In this when the very intent of def
milton of our Constitution far to abrogae the
English law. The emphatic word only, in defni-
ton, expressly excludes the accessory 1t only the
who leves the war, the who adheres TO the
enemies of the country, who is, under our Consu
ton, be traitor The other Interpretation opens
the door to all the constructive teasons known to the
worst days of English judicial tyranny-the very dool
which the trainers of Constitution intended to lock
and double lock, and fasten impregnaby.
And again. the doctrine of accessories and the rela
tion of accessories to principals, part of the
English common law. That common law, these United
States ne-er adopted, has been decided again ane
again. and therefore there can be accessories IL
| treason, by construction.
And besides all this, the seventh section of the fugi
tive slave law provides penalty for every which
man commit in assisting the escape of slave
that, if any such act treason before, is nolonge
for no legal principle is better settled than that whel
subsequent statute reduces the penalty provided in
previous the previous far repealed eveI
without any repeating, words; On any ground, there
fore, the charge of Judge Kane is only inferior il
monstrousness to the law whose inherent atrocty HI
sought to aggravate
| similar attempt create constructive treason wal
made in the Syracuse cases but the air of Western
New York. being more electric with freedom, had
sautary effect upon the health of the Would t.
Heaven that these heslthsul breezes of the countr
could reach and sweep away the Judicial miasma tina
stagnates upon our Atlantic cities.
The district attorney at Syracuse, having rendere
himself obnoxious by the 1nordlnate zeal with whlc
he pursued the suspected in the cases. at tina
city, was glad to it stated in newspapers that tn
ladies of the place had meeting, and him pre-
of thirty pieces of silver. They three-cen
pieces, however-ninety cents in the whole! TIL
ancient Judas got larger pieces Such, however,
the rivalry to fill his place, that the competitors
content themselves with smaller coin.
1t was said also that when jerry the alleged fugv
in that case reached Her Maesty's dominons, he pu
the irons with which he had been "dressed" " into
nice box and sent them to President Fillmore. Whe
the signer of the fugitive slaTelaw unlocked these IRON
and unwrapped them, and first took in the full sgnf
of their meaning, 1t must have presented
worthy of the highest art of the historic painteri
so happened that they received and opene
at a Cabinet meeting.
SLAVERY PR oSTITUTES OUR LEADING MEN.
And under this prolific head of the collateral cons
quences of slavery, say again, and finally, where els
since the light of the Christian first dawned upo
the world, has it everbeen known that the leading
of young Republic espoused the side of slavery?
is unnatural as parricde. Look at the Republics
Switzerland, at the States General Of Holan
Look at France at the period Of the great fevolutio
when in her maddened throes for liberty, after tee
centuries of oppression, of her first acts was Il
recognition of the natural and universal freedom of
Look at the South American Republics, composed
they mainly of Catholics, who for ages had bee
Injured to bodily and mental thraldom, and among
whom slavery existing institution, as it WI
here when our Declaration of Independence pr
mugaed, yet by noble act of moral heroism they
the incubus away Yes, repeat, ours is the first R
| public since Christ died for whose leaders ha'
disowned and deserted the principles of their COVER
ment, and become the willing champions of the mo
remorseless of despotlsms.
Sir, | may well remark here anywhere, in ord
to make any honest msconstruction of my views IL
possible, that when speak of the all comprehendi
wickedness of slavery-when say that it is in rel
, ton to the crimes and wrongs of men-what the Pr
Mobile in the ancient systems of astronomy
, and all encircng and aiupholding concave, with
: which every wrong and every crime has its natur
: home-when affirm this, affirm it of the system
institution of slavery. And to this wish to add-wh
all history proves-that good may be implicated
: a bad system-as in the English hierarchy, which
regard as vicious system of church government; a
j yet how many supereminently great, and good, a
pous men it has produced or, in the Catholic re
gon, which believe to be untrue form OF Chris
any, and yet in religion have there been bright
. examples Of purity and benlhcence. In battling
@ overcome the moral wrongs and errors into which
. man has been born, the moral sentiments, like the int
lect grow heroic they become victorious and in thu
noble strYings they reach sublimity of virtue prop
# toned to the depths of vice from which they spra
But this does not prevent bad systems from producl
i their natural fruits on the mass of men.
II POSITION OF THE FREE SOIL PARTY.
And now, having shown what mighty wrong slave
f is in and of ITSELF having shown what collateral
N basement cruelty, and practical atheism 1t general
and diuses let ask If the political Free Soil pa
D do not go the uttermost verge that patriot moral