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Show 340 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. contrary conclusion" from the Supreme Courts of Massachusetts, of New York, and of Pennsyh ·ania, all of which tJibunals have decided that they did confer such a power upon Cong• ·css. In the second place, although those wise men labored to make " misapprehension impossible," yet, according to Mr. Sumner, the Supreme Court of the United States has entirely misapprehended them. So far from seeing that the power in question is not granted to Congress, this high tribunal decides that it is clearly and unquestionably granted. This is not all. The most marvellous failure is yet to come. For, after all their pains to make the whole world see their meaning, these wise men did not see it themselves, but went away, many of them, and, in the Congress of 1793, helped to pass a Fugitive Slave Law! It is to he feared, indeed, that the failure would have been absolutely total but for the wonderful sagacity of a few abolitionists. For the design imputed to the framers of the Constitution, and which they took so much pains to disclose, had remained profoundly concealed fi'Om nearly all men, not excepting themselves, until it was detected by Messrs. Sumner, Chase, and company. But these have, at last, di•- THE FUGITIVE SLA\"E J.. AW. 3H covered it, aud now see it as in a ftooil of light. Iudccd, they sec it with such transcendent clearness, with such marvellous perspicacity of vision, as to atone for the stupidity and blindness of the rest of mankind. So much for Mr. Sumner's historical argument. llis logical argument is, if possible, still more illogical than his historical. In regard to this, however, we shall be exceedingly brio!; as we are sick of his sophisms, and loug to be delivered from the pursuit of them. lie encounters, at the outset, "a difficulty" iu the legislation of the Cong•·css of 1793 and in the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States." But "on examination," says he, "this difficulty will disappear." Perhaps diflicnlty so great never vanished so suddenly from before any other man. The authority of the Congress of 1793, though it contained so many of the most distinguished framers of the Constitution, is annihilated by a few bold strokes of Mr. Sumner's pen. One short paragraph, containing two ineffably weak arguments, docs the business. The first of these arguments is as follows: "The act of 1793 proceeded from a Congress that had already recognised .t.h. e United States Bank, |
