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Show 338 LIDERTY AND SLAVERY. rature of the age" and fl'om his multitudinous voices against slavery? It is absurd, says Mt·. Sumner, to suppose that such men intended to confer any power upon Congress to pass a Fugitive Slave Law. It is a fact, we reply, that as members of Congress they proceeded, without hesitation or don bt, to exercise that very power. It "dishonors the memory of the fathers," says Ml'. Sumner, to suppose they intended that Congress should possess such a power. Ilow, then, will he vindicate the memory of the fathers against the imputation of his own doctrine that they, as members of Congress, must have knowingly usurped the power which, as members of the convention, they had intended not to confer? One more of Mr. Sumner's historical arguments, and we are done with this branch of the subject. lie deems it the most conclusive of all. It is founded on the arrangement of certain clauses of the Constitution, ani! is, we believe, perfectly original. We must refer the reader to the speech itself if he desire to see this very curious argument, since we cannot spare the room to give it a full and fair statement. Nor is this at all necessary to our purpose, THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 339 inasmuch as we intend to notice only one thing about this argument, namely, the wonderful effect it produces on the mind of its inventor. "The framers of the Constitution," says he, "were wise and careful men, who had a reason for what they did, and who understood the language which they employed." We can readily believe all this. Nor can we don bt that they "bad a design in tho peculiar arrangement" of the clauses adopted by them. That design, however, we feel quite sure, is different from the one attributed to them by Mr. Sumner. But let us suppose he is right, and then see what woulcl follow. The design attributed to them by Mr. Sumner was to make every one sec, beyond the possibility of a mistnkc, that the Constitution confers no power on Congress to pass a Fugitive Slave Law. "They not only decline all addition of any such power to the compact," says he, "but, to render misapprehension impossible,-to make asSltrance doubly sure,-to exclude any contrary conclusion, they punctiliously arrange," &c. Now, if such were the case, then we ask if design of so easy accomplishment were ever followed by f<tilure so wondetfnl? They failed, in the fit'St place, "to exclude a |