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Show 22 at last, the right triumphed, the poor man was vindicated, and the oppressor was flung out. 1 know that England has the advantage of trying the question at a wide distance from the spot where the nuisance exists: the planters are not, excepting in rare examples, members of the legislature. The extent of the empire, and the magnitude and number of other questions crowding into court, keep tltis one in balance, and prevent it from obtaining that asccndcncy, and Leing urged with that intemperance, which a question of property tends to acquire. There are causes in the composition of the British legislature, and the relation of its leaders to the country and to Europe, which exclude much that is pitiful and injurious in other legislative assemblies. From these reasons, the question was discussed with a rare independence and magnanimity. lt was not narrowed down to a paltry cleclioncering trap, and, I must say, a delight in justice, an honest tenderness for the poor negro, for man suffering these wrongs, com~ bined with the national pride, which refused to give the support of English soil, or the protection of the English flag, to these disgusting violations of nature. Forgive me, fellow citizens, if I own to you, that in the last few days that my attention has been occupied with this history, I have not been able to read a page of it, without the most painful comparisons. Whilst I have read of Englnnd, I have thought of New England. Whilst I have meditated in my solitary walks on the magnanimity of the English Bench and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the la.w to the most helpless citizen in her world-wide realm, I have found myself oppressed by other thoughts. As I have walked in the pastures and along the edge of woods, 1 could not keep my imagination on those agreeable figures, for other images that intruded on me. I could not see the great vision of the patriots and senators who have adopted the slave's cause:- they turned their 23 bnci<S on me. No: I see other pictures- of mean men : I sec very poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant men, not surrounded by happy friends,- to be plain,- poor ulack men of obscure. employment as mariners, cooks, or stew~ nrds, in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth of Massachusetts,- freeborn as we,- whom the slave-laws of the States of South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, have arrested in the vessels in which they visited those ports, and shut up in jails so long as the vessel remained in port, with the stringent addition, that if the shipmaster fails to pay ti1e costs of this official arrest, and the board in jail, these c1t1zens are to be sold for slaves, to pay that expense. Tlus man, these men, I sec, and no law to save them. Fellow citizens, this crime will not be hushed up any longer. I have learned that u citizen of Nantucket, walking in New Orleans, found u freeborn citizen of Nantucket a man, too, of great personal worth, and, as it happened: Yer~ dea~ to Jlirn, as having saved J1is own life, working cha1ned m the streets of that city, kidnapped by such a process as this. In the sleep of the laws, the private interference of two excellent citizens of Boston has I have ascertained, rescued several natives of this State fr~m these southern prisons. Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a Massachusetts ship was as much the territory of l\'Iassachusetls, as the floor on which we stand. It should be as sacred as the temple of God. The poorest fishing-smack, that floats under the shadow of an iceberg in the northern seas, or l1unts the whale in the southern ocean, should be encompassed by her laws with comfort and protection as much as within the arms of Cape Ann and Cape Cod. And this l<idnapping is suflered within our own land and federation whilst the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States ordains in terms, that, "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." If such a damnable outrage can be |
