Year: 1861

We cheerfully give place TO the following
Petition from a lady correspondent IN Nir-
ginia She is unknown to us, but she sends
us her name and address We commend to
her reading the speech of Hon. JACOB
CoLLAMER in the L. S Senate, which she
will find in the number of the Free Press
which contains her letter, and we add few
words of our own


l. We inform her that there are no Com
missioners on the repeal of the Personal liber-
ty law There is a Committee of eminent legal
gentlemen appointed to revise all the statutes
of the State and to report to the Legislature
next year If they find any laws inconsistent
with the Constitution of the United States,
no doubt they will recommend their repeal


. Has it ever occurred to our CORES
pondent that it is not an uncommon thing
for Legislatures, in all the States, to pass (un-
intentionally, it Is to be presumed) acts
which in some points conflict with the Z. S.
Constitution and that it is the business of
Courts. both State and L. S. Courts, to de-
eide on what is and what is not Constitu-
tonal when q case comes up for the applica-
ton Of any such act and that when an act
has been decided by the proper CoURT to be
unconstitutional, it, from that moment, has
no more force than piece of blank paper
would have2


5. viii it not occur to our correspondent
that personal liberty law" in VERMONT,
under which no case has ever yet arisen can
not have done much harm to anybody in
Virginia or anywhere else?


4. May it not occur to our correspondent,
after thinking the matter over carefully. that
a rerolution is not got up, by those who start
it on such trivial grounds as the alleged un-
constitutiOnality of State law, which has
never been even brought before the courts to


be tested that the cutlery which she ears
about the personal liberty laws in a few Of
the free States, Vermont being one of them,
lie but a howl got up by ambitious and mis-
chievous men as q means of stirring up and
controlling the timid, the ignorant, the II
resolute ,and the unthinking and thus forcing
the peaceably disposed part Of community to
join in devastating national broil, which,
if it may bring profit and honor and power
to few ambitious men, will certainly bring
unutterable evils upon thousands and hun
dreds of thousands of their fellow beings
for no justifable cause whatever?


). Will it not be well for her, living at
present in community where the slaves are
to the whites (as the census of 1850 showed)
about in the ratio of three to t,co, to ask herself
whether she, and her friend who wishes eyer
mont out of the Union,'' do not look at her
native State through an atmosphere which
gives distant objects seen through it, an un-
natural color? viii she not bring before her
nund's eye, the People of the Green Noun
tain State, as they appeared when she lived
and moved among them, and ask herself if,
on the ,chole, they did not then form an in
dustriOus, intelligent, moral and benevolent
people, wishing the blessings of plenty,
peace and good order to all men, and undesi-
rous of inficting injustice on any OF their
fellow communities throughout the nation !;
and further, whether it is probable that any
or great essential change has taken place