Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1855-01-04
A,,;.Fuaitive Slave Inv.

A petition, to tie General Court Is now IN
the course of signature, praying that any one
in Massachusetts, who assists in executing tie
Fugitive Slave edict may be forever ex-
sluded from being juror and that any Of
fee holder, who aids or abets kidnappers in
enforcing the odious edict, may be fined and
imprisoned. The Boston Courier, true to its
proslavery instincts, makes the following
comments on the petition aud its sgners:
eve have not seen the petition alluded to
but have no doubt that the folly and frenzy of
aboJitionism could readily conceive of such a
project, and that portion of the new State
Legislature would be glad to have an oppor
tunity to harp upon the slavery subject, since
they can talk of nothing else. But there is
much doubt whether any such scheme can be
carried through the two branches, or whether
the American party would, in its first appear
ance in state legislation, commit an act of in
suit upon the general government of the Unit
ed States by practically multiplying one of its
laws. or that majority of its members have
any desire to signslize themselves as mahg-
nant and sectional party
Now. the Fugitive Slave Act is not law.
1t does not possess one principle or attribute
of law. A law must be founded on justice
and right. 1t must, from moral necessity, be
accepted as right by the conscience of all good
men. 1t must be, from its nature, easy of
execution, because everybody who has moral
sense spontaneously admits that all true laws
should be executed.
The Fugitive Slave edict is essentially wrong
and unjust. 1t is despised, rejected, and
spurned of all good men. 1t cannot be exc
cuted unless at the point of the bayonet and
the cannon's mouth. The human heart rises
up instinctively against all its provisions and
all its purposes /; and the public conscience
demands that it shall not be executed.
If the General Government considers
law, to protect Massachusetts citizens from
kidnappers, an insult, then let it consider it
an insult. We would much rather have the
general government consider itself insulted,
than have man torn from his wife and tami-
ly, and sent to rice swamp as slave. In
suits are pretty much matters of fancy, de-
pending almost wholly upon the one who
takes them, rather than upon the one who
B6SUB W give I1lSlAs Ii thO SOhOAoA SO'SAA-
ment does not construe the passage of an An
ti-Fugitive Slave law, in Massachusetts, as an
insult, there will be no harm done. Those
in favor of this law do not mean to insult
dnyDUuy " s~,---y
poor men who may be robbed of their liberty,
that is all.
We are at loss to see that there is any
possibility Of the law being malignant one
1t is predicated upon certain contingencies,
which it is not necessary should take place.
1t is not necessary that Benjamin F. Hallett
or Loring, or Anger Hole Byrnes should help
Colonel Sutlle to steal men from Massachu-
SETS but if they do SO, we think it necessa-
~ to punish them for so doing. The whole
matter in the premises is in the hands of those
persons themselves. If, after the passage of
such law, they prefer to steal men under the
sanction of an unconstitutional edict, they
can do so but then they do it at their own
peril The charge of sectionalism is also, we
think, very weak one. Slave-making,
slave stealing, slave trading &C., are section
al; but liberty is an unalienable, universal
right. A law to secure the liberty of men,
who have natural right to freedom, besides
having successfully re-asserted that right,
cannot be sectional. We trust, therefore, that
slch law as the petitioners ask for, will be
passed and that slave hunting in Massachu-
sets will henceforth be as perilous as it is in
the dominions of the British Queen.