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Show 18 slave n right to fly from bondage ? Who among us doub~s it ? Let any man ask himself, how he should construe his rights were he made a slave ; and does he not recelVC nn anS\\'.:r from his own moral nature, as bright, immediate, and resistless, as lightning ? And yet we of the free States stop the flying slave, and give him back to bondage ! It does not satisfy me to be told, that this is a part of that sacred instrument, the constitution, which all are solemnl! bound to uphold. No charter of man's writing can sanctify injustice, or repeal God's Eternal Law. I cannot ~scape the conviction that every man, who aids the restoration of the flying sla~e, is a wrong-doer, though this is done by our best and wisest men with no self-reproach. To send him from a free State into bondage, seems to me much the same thing as to transport him from Africa to the West Indies or this country. I shall undoubtedly be told, that the fugitive is a slave by the laws of territory from which he escapes. But when laws are acknowledged violati~ns of the most sacred rights, we cannot innocently be acllve in replacing men under their cruel power. The slave goes back not merely to toil and sweat for his master as before. He goes to be lacerated for the offence of flying from oppression. For hardly any crime is the slave so scored and scarred as for running away; and for every lash that enters his flesh, we of the free States, who have given him back, must answer. I know perfectly how these views will be received at the North and South. Some will call me a visionary, while more will fix on me a harder name. But I look above scoffers and denouncers to that pure, serene, almighty Justice, which is enthroned in Heaven, and inquire of God, the Father of us all, whether he approves the surrender of the flying slave. I shall be charged with irreverence towards the fathers of the Revolution, the framers of our glorious national charter. But I reply, that, great as they 19 were, they were fallible, and that the progress of opinion since their day, seems to me to have convicted them of error in the matter now in hand. I am aware too, that good and wise men, friends who are dear to me, will disap· prove my free, strong language. But I must be faithful to the strong moral conviction which I cannot escape on this subject. If I am right, the truth which I speak, however questioned now, will not have been spoken in vain. Today is not Forever. The men who now scorn or condemn, are not to live forever. Let a few years pass, and we shall all have vanished, and other actors will fill the stage, and the despised and neglected truths of this generation will become the honored ones of the next. Before quitting this topic, it may be well just to glance at the reasoning, by which my views will be assailed. To the exposition of duty now given it will be objected, that the morality of the closet is not the morality of real life; that there is danger of pushing principles to extremes; that difficulties are to be grappled with in the conduct of public affairs, which retired men cannot understand ; that there must be a compromise between the Ideal and the Actual ; and that our rigid rules must be soflened or bend, when consequences, unusually serious, will attend their observance. These common-places are not wholly without truth. Morality is sometimes turned, by inexperienced men, into rant and romance. Solitary dreamers, exalting imagination above reason and conscience, make life a stage for playing showy, dazzling parts, which pass with them for beautiful or heroic. I have little more sympathy with these overrefined, sublimated moralists, than with the common run of coarse, low-minded politicians. Duty is something practicable, something within reach, and which approves itself to us, not in moments of feverish excitement, but of deliberate thought. Good sense, which is another name for that calm, comprehensive reason, which sees things as they |