The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-09-09

| have ever lived, those who contend iOr tne
higher law of God have universally been the
most faithful and obedient, when human laws
were coincident with the divine. That ldenti-
cal principle in our nature, which makes us
true TO the will of God, makes us also true to
all the Just commands of mems
Another con sequence of most evil porteDt
has grown out of the late political enthusiasm
for slavery mean false Interpretation OF
the law of treason. Sir, you know and we
all know that under the bloody reigns of Brit
ish tyrants treason by construction was the
great engine of political and personal VEN
geance Under the old doctrine OF construct
i've treason, if living lips dared to preach the
gospel of freedom, they were forced to preach
the doctrine of abject submission to ungodly
laws; for the heads they belonged to were
decaptated and borne on 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 noblest virtues tell
sacrifice to a forced and arbitrary construction
of the law of treason. Having lately looked
through those English cases, | now declare
that they were not one whit Il greater outrage
upon the English law, than was Judge kane's
charge to the grand jury in the Christiana
cases Both had in view the same object, TO
PIT dorm agitation for freedom, and Lord JEFF
tress expositions were as plausible as Judge
Kane's
To exclude all possibility of constructive
treason under our Constitution, its trainers de-
fined that offence in the following words
Treason against the United States shall consist
| ONLY in levying war against them; or IN adhering
to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort
4, 10
a man an accessory to the crime, IN any other
felony makes him Il principal in this when
the very intent of the new definition in our
Constitution, was so far to abrOgate the Eng
fish law. The emphatic word only in our
definition expressly excludes the accessory. 1t
is oniu the man who leyies the war, or the man
who adheres to the enemies of the country,
who is or. under our Constitution, can be IL
traitor. The other Interpretation opens the
door to all the constructive treasons known to
the worst days Of English judicial tyranny
the very door which the trainers OF our Con-
stitutiOn intended to lock and dOuble-lOck and
fasten impregnably.
And again The doctrine Of accessories and
the relation of accessories to principals, was a
part of the English common law That COM
mon law these United States never adopted
as has been decided again and again, and
therefore there can be no accessories in trea-
son, by construction.
And besides all this, the seventh section of
the Fugitive Slave Law provides penalty for
every act which man can commit in assisting
the escape of slave; 50 that if any such act
were treason before it is no longer so for no
| legal principle is better settled than that when
a subsequent statute reduces the penalty provi
4 81
repealed. even without any repeating words
On any ground, therefore, the charge of Judge
Kane is only inferior in monstrousncss to the
law whose inherent atrocty he sought to ag
gravate
similar attempt to create constructive trea-
son was made in the Syracuse eases; but the
air of Western New York being more electric
with freedom, had salutary effect upon the
health of the Court Would to Heaven that
these healthful breezes of the country could
reach and sweep away the judicial miasma
that stagnates upon our Atlantic cities.
The district attorney at Syracuse, having
rendered himself obnoxious by the inordinate
zeal with which he pursued the suspected in
the rescue cases at that city, was glad to See
it stated in the newspapers that the ladies of
the place had a meeting, and sent him pres
ent of thirty pieces of silver They were three
cent pieces, however-ninety cents in the
whole The ancient Judas got larger pieces
Such however, is now the rivalry to fill his
place, that the competitors must content them
selves with smaller coin.
1t was said also, that when Jerry, the al
legged fugitive in that case reached her Males
TVS dominions he put the irons with which he
had been dressed" into a nice box and sent
them to President Fillmore. When the signer
of the Fugitive Slave Law unlocked these irons,
and unwrapped them, and first took in the full
significance of their meaning, it must have
presented scene worthy the highest art Of
the historic painter! | trust it so happened
that they were received and opened at Cabi-
net meeting!
And under this prolific head of the collate-
raj consequences of slavery, say again, and
finally, where else, since the light of the Chris
tian era first dawned upon the world has it
ever been known that the leading men of a
young Republic espoused the side of slavery
| 1t is unnatural as parricide Look at the Re-
pubics Of Switzerland or at the States Gene
raj of Holland. Look at France ut the period
of the great Revolution, when in her maddened
thrOes for liberty, after fifteen centuries of OPP
preston. one of her first acts was the recogni-
ton of the natural and universal freedom of
man. Look at the South American Republics,
composed as they mainly were Of Catholics,
who for ages had been Injured to bodily and
mental thraldom. and amongst whom slavery
was an existing institution as it was here when
our Declaration of Independence was promul-
gated, yet by Il noble act of moral heroism
they east the incubus away. Yes, | repeat
ours is the first Republic since Christ died for
men. whose leaders have disowned and deserted
the principles of their Government, and be-
come the willing champions of the most re-
morseless of despotisms.
Sir, may as well remark here as anywhere,
in order to make any honest misconstructiOn
of my views impossible, that when speak of
the all-comprehending wickeness of slavery
when say that it is in relation to the wrongs
and crimes of men--what the Primum Mobile
was i'm the ancient systems of astronOmy-an
all-encircling and all-uphoding concave within
which every wrong and every crime has its
natural home-when | affirm this, affirm it
of the system or institution of slavery. And
to this wish to add-what all history proves
that good men may be implicated in bad
system-as in the English hierarchy, which
regard as vicious system of church govern
ment; and yet how many super-eminently
great and good and pious men it has pro-
duced; or, ~ in the Catholic religion, which
believe to be an untrue form of Christianity,
and yet in no religion have there been brighter
examples of purity and benefcence, In bat
ting to overcome the moral wrongs and errors
into which man has been born, the moral
sentiments, like the intellect, grow heroic as
they become victorious, and in their noble
strvngs they reach sublimity of virtue pro-
portioned to the depths Of vice from which
they sprang But this does not prevent bad
systems from producing their natural fruits on
J the mass of men.
And now having shown what mighty
wrong slavery is in and of itself; having shown