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Show 348 L!DERTY AND SLAV EHY. most clear and unequivocal mandates. lie docs not, like Mr. Seward, openly smite the Constitution with his hand, or contemptuously kick it with his foot. He betrays it with a kiss. Mr. Sumner admires the conduct of the Vermont judge; but he can heap the most frantic abuse on the acts of the best men America has produced. Though they be the deliberate public acts of a Clay, or a Calhoun, or a W cbster, or a GEORGE W ASITINGTON, his language is not the less violent, nor his raving vituperation the less malignant. In regard to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, he says : "And still further, as if to do a deed which should 'make heaver:. weep, all ·earth amazed,' this same Congress, in disregard of all the cherished safeguards of freedom, has passed a most cruel, unchristian, devilish act." The great difficulty under which Mr. Sumner labors, and which all the energy of his soul struggles to surmount, is to find language violent enough in which to denounce this "foul enactment,'' this "detestable and heaven-defying bill,'' this "monster act,'' which "sets at naught tbe best principles of the Constitution and the very laws of God!" Now, this bill, let it be remembered, is liable to no objection which may not be urged against TITE FUGITIVE SLAVE LA\V. 349 the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. It will not be denied, indeed, that if the one of these laws be unconstitutional so also is the other, and that both must stand or fall together. Let it also be borne in mind that, as the one rccei ved the support of a Clay, and a Calhoun, and a Webster, so the other received the sanction and the signature of George Washington. Yet, in the face of these facts, Mr. Sumner does not moderate his rage. They only seem to increase the intensity and the fury of his wrath. "The soul sickens," he cries, "in the contemplation of this legalized outrage. In the dreary annals of the past there are many acts of shame-there are many ordinances of monarchs, and laws which have become a byword and a hissing to the nations. But when we consider the country and the age, I ask fearlessly, what act of shame, what ordinance of monarch, what law, can compare in atrocity with this enactment of an American Congress ?" Not content with pouring floods of abuse on the law itself, Mr. Sumner proceeds to consign to infamy its authors and all who have given it their support. For, after famishing examples of what he deems among the most atrocious transactions of the past, he adds : "I would not cxag-ao |
