The Sun. — 1861-01-09 (London, England)

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.  higist44=llal Liberty Acts of some of the Northern States. Mr. IVERSON does not. He says, describing in a way which is very satisfactory as regards public sentiment in the North, " Nor do I charge the failure of the execution of this law upon these Personal Liberty bills. No, sir, they have never operated to prevent the execution of the Fugitive Slave law. It is, as I said, mob law, in all circumstances, which has produced these results; and will, as long as the Union and Slavery last together. Whenever a fugitive slave shall be discovered in one of the Free States, and the owner goes in pursuance of law and the Constitution to reclaim him, what follows ? They obtain the arrest of the slave, but before the case comes before a justice, or before judgment can be rendered, there is a mob of free negroes, and whites, who are only one degree removed from their coloured brothers in brutality and ignorance. They assemble and wrest the negro from the possession of the owner, while the conservative masses, the "gentlemen," those who are in favour of justice, who believe the owner is entitled, under the Constitution and the law, to reclaim the slave, what do they do ? They stand with folded arms, and look upon these mobs, and laugh to scorn these Southern people." He then adverts to the proposal which has been made to enact as a remedy that the Free States, who secrete and refuse to bring baek our slaves, will 'be liable in damages. In the first place, what wou'Ld such a law be worth ? You can't sue a State. A State in its sovereign capacity cannot be brought into Court. If a thousand slaves were received by Massachusetts, and refused to be returned, how can you sue the State of Massachusetts ? That would be impracticable and impossible. Besides, you /could have to sue in a Court of Massachusetts, The jury who was to decide on your rights would be a jury of Abolitionists. The defendants who are to be mulcted and the parties who compose the Jury, and the Judges who decide on the claim of owners. All such propositions as that are mere mockery, and no man can suppose that such a remedy as that would be worth a dollar or a cent. As to the protection of slavery in the territories by Congress, that he considers now hopeless. The South will never be satisfied with anything less, but the North will never concede it. He shows how the result of this policy wiil be the rapid forcing all the slaves into the cotton States, and here is a Southern senator's view of the final consequences. " Now, sir, look at the process. We have now in the United States four millions and a half of slaves. They increase, according to the last Census I Bill, at the rate of about thirty-twb per cent. every ten years. If you precipitate all this population into 8 or 10 Gulf States, we will have, in ten years, 6,000,000, in twenty years we shall have 8,000,000 or 9,000,000, and in thirty years 12,000,000 to 15,000,000. In less than twenty years the slave population of the South will largely preponderate over the white. Then will come universal emancipation by the Federal Government, and such scenes of murder between the two races as has never been seen or heard of in the whole world's history. Such, in my opinion, is the inevitable result, and such is the policy of the Free Status." And, allowing a little for rhetorical exaggeration, Republicans would agree with him on the main point, that limitation of the territory of slavery will, under the circumstances of the States, lead to its ultimate extinction.