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Show 304 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. tution. He was living and acting under a constitution already formed, and one which he had taken an oath to support. If, in the construction of this instrument, our fathers really followed "as precedents the abuses of tyrants and robbers " then the course of the Senator in q uestio~ was plain : he should have sujjered martyrdom rather than take an oath to support it. For the law of nature, it is clear, permits no man first to take an oath to support such compacts, and then repudiate them. If they are at war with his conscience, then, in the name of all that is sacred, let him repudiate them, but, by all means, without having first placed himself under the necessity of repudiating, at the same time, the obligation of his oath. There is a question among casuists, whether an oath extorted by force can bind a man to act in opposition to his conscience. But this was not Mr. Seward's case. Ilia oath was not extorted. If he had refused to take it, he would have lost nothing except an office. "There was deep philosophy," says he, "in the confession of an eminent English judge. When he had condemned a young woman to death, under the late sanguinary code of his cotmtry. for her first theft, she fell clown dead THE FUUITIVE SLAVE f,AW. 300 at his feet. 'I seem to myself,' said he, 'to have been pronouncing sentence, not against the prisoner, but against the law itself.''' Ay, there was something better than "deep philosophy" itl that English judge ; there was stern integrity; for, though he felt the law to be hard and cruel, yet, having taken an oath to support it, he hardly felt himself at liberty to dispense with the obligation of his oath. We commend his example to the Senator from New York. But who is this Senator, or any other politician of the present day, that he should presume to pass so sweeping and so peremptory a sentence of condemnation on a compact made by the fathers of the Republic and ratified hy the people of the U nitcd States? For our part, if we wished to find "the higher law," we should look neither into the Dark Ages nor into his conscience. We had infinitely rather look iuto the great souls of those by whom the Constitution was framed, and by every one of whom the ve1·y compact which Mr. Seward pronounces so infamous was cordially sanctioned. " Your Constitution and laws," exclaims Ml'. Seward, "convert hospitality to the refugee "* • |