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Show 278 DESPOTISM which habit had so strongly attached them, they greatly preferred the free air of the North to the feverbreeding swamps of the South. It produced, also, another result not less deplorable. 'l'raderd for the southern market were found ready enough to purchase "likely negroes" without any particular inquiry into the means by which the possession of them had been acquired; and in the free states nearest the slaveholding frontier, and in which the free colored people were the most numerous, so great were the abuse:i by ignorant and corrupt justices of the peace and other local magistrates, of the authority vested in them by the act of 1793, and the facilities thereby aiTorded for kidnapping, as soon to give occasion to very loud complaints. An attempt was even made in 1817, in the senate of the United States, to amend that law, so as to guard against these abuses; but apprehen· sions Jest the proposed changes might diminish the facilities for recovering rnnaways caused that attempt to be opposed and abandoned. The border slaveholders, on the other hand, provol<ed at the shelter, aid and concealment often affOrded in the free states, and especially in Pennsylvania, to their runaway slaves, called loudly for a still more stringent Jaw; and in 1818, after a pretty warm struggle, they succeeded in carrying a bill of that sort through both houses of Congres8. 'l'hat bill, a sort of forerunuer of the act of 1850, authorized the claimant to establish his claim on ex parte evidence before some judge of hi8 own state, having done which he was to be· entitled to an executive demand upon the governor of the state in which the fugitive might be found, heavy penalties being imposed upon all who refused to aid in the arrest. The senate added a provision, that after the removal, the person removed should be prove~ to be the same wiih the person claimed by some evidence other than the oath of the claimant. This atnC'ndmcnt, by giving the northern members time .to bethink themselves, defeated the passage of the btll, which, after its return from the senate, was left, not. IN AMERICA, 279 withstanding repeated attempts to take it up to lie and to die on the table of the house • 1 'fhe ~upre~e Court of Pennsyl~ania had latel (1816) ~tven htgh onence to t.hc sla vc-holders by d:. cJdmg, 111 the case of 'l'lte Commonwealth. v. Jfolloway, ? Seargcnt & Rawle's Reports, 605, apparently on Impregnable grom~ds, that ihc children of fugitive ~la~e womcn.born In P~nnsylvania more than a year aficr the arrival of then mothers in the state were ~om frre; an~ that, such children being neithe; fogitiv~ H, nor owmg service to any body as slaves, no claunant from abroad could touch them. In 1819 came before the same court the case of Wri(l'ltt v. Deac?n, 5 Sca~gent & Rawle, 62, on a writ 0 of de ,lwnune repleg_tando s_ue~ _out against Deacon, keeper of the Pbt!adelplna ptl, who held in custody the plaintiff" Wright, at the requeot, and for the tcmpor~ ry convenirncc, of a claimant who had obtained a certtfica~e to remove Wright, as a fugitive from service. :rhe Object was to obtain a review, and a trial by Jury, of the grounds on which the certificate had been grantPd. But the court, taking a far less lawyer-like as well as less statesmau.Jikc view than that of Edmund Randolph above cited, held, 1st. That" it required a law [o~ Congress] to regulate the manner in which the clatm should be made and the fuaitive delivered up," and, on this ground, that the act of 1793 was constitutional-the first reported judicial deci:;ion ever pronounced on that point; and 2dly. rrhat a ccrtifi· catc granted under the act of 1796 was absolutelv conclusive as to the rights of both parties, at least untrl the removal authorized by it had been completed · and ihat after such ccrlificate had once been grant~d, no state court., nor indeed any court, had any right to inter. fere, or to ~e·e~amine the case, either by writ of habeas ~~r~~us, \~r~t of personal replevin, or any other method. I Ius opmwn, m which the three judges concurred, of• For f':'rthcr particulars respecting this bill, see llildrcth's lliatory the Umted Stalca, \'Ol. \'i, pp. ()36-7. |