OCR Text |
Show 3G4 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. tion "intended to give. The deliVCI'Y or the property itself-its PROMPT AND IMMEDIATE DELIVERY- is plainly required, and was intended to be secured." Such prompt and immediate delivery was a part of " the customary or common law" at the time the Constitution was adopted, and its ft·amers, no doubt, intended that this practice should be enforced by the clause in question, ns appears from the fact that so many of them concurred in the Act of 1793. But if such right to a prompt and immediate delivery be guaranteed by the Constitution itself, then, with all due submission, we would ask, what power has Congress to limit or abridge this right? If under and by virtue of the Constitution this right to a prompt and immediate delivery be secured, then what power has Congt ·css to say there shall not be a prompt or immediate delivery? "This right of the master," says Mr. Chief Justice Taney, "being given by the Constitution of the United States, NEITHER CoN a nEss NOR A STATE LEGISLATURE CAN DY ANY LAW OR REGULATION IMPAIR IT OR RESTRICT IT." If this be sound doctrine,-and such we hold it to he,-then Congress has no constitutiollill power to impair or restrict the right in question, by giving the fugitive slave a trial by jury in the THE FUOITIYE SLAV F. l.A W, 365 State to which he may have fled. This would not be to give a "prompt and immediate delivet ·y," such as the Supreme Court declares the master is entitled to by the Constitution itself; it would be either to give no delivery at all, or else one attended with such delays, vexations, and costs, as would materially impair, if not wholly annihilate, the right in question. It is right and propet·, we think, that questions arising exclusively under our own laws should be tried in our own States and by our own tribunals. lienee we shall never consent, unless constrained by the judicial decision of the Supt·cme Court of the Union, to have such questions tried in States whose people and whose juries may, perhaps, be hostile to our interests ant! to our domestic institutions. For we m·e SOVEREIGN as well as they. Only conceive such a trial by ju•·y in a Northern State, with such an advocate for the fugitive slave as :Mr. Chase, or 1Ir. Sumner, or some other flaming abolitionist! There sits the fugitive slave,-" one of the heroes of the age," as J\fr. Smnncr calls him, and the very embodiment of persecuted innocence. On the other hand is the master,-the vile " Slave-hunter," as Mr. Sumner delights to represent him, and 31• |