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Show 298 DESPOT I ~;\[ act of 1850 was passed; an act which adopts, in express terms., all the judicial extravagances, based on the constitutional clause respecting fugitives from labor ami the act. of 1793, add ing, be::; ides, oth_crs of its own; au act breathing, in CVPrY line, that d1:srcgard of alt right, except the right of the st rongest, upon which the sy~tcm of slavery is founded, and most character~ isticaJ/y forced through the House of Representatives, without the a llowa nce of any debate upon i t. Omit. ting the numerous other objections. which have made that despotic enactment of a professedly democratic ]pgislature a finger-po:;t for the scorn of all t he world, it has bCAn enough for the present purpose to point out the particulars in which it directly t'onflicts with the constitution of the United States. The opinions of some Federal judges, confidently pronounced, and even ostentatiously volunteered, may aflCct to make light of these objections. 'l'hey may even be slurred over and evaded by some state courts from whom better t hings might have been expected. But they have not been answered, nor obviated; and, like the drops of blood on the hands of the murderer, however mutlled and hidden, for the present, under t he judicial , ermine, t hey still bear that silent but indestructible tc.timony which will one day bring the guilty to due punishment. There is no more admirable chapter in Gibbon than that in which he has given a condensed but comprehensive sketch of the Roman jurisprude nce,- a chapter which goes far to show, t hat an historian, accustomed to generalize, and to view things in the whole as well as by piecemeal, may have clearer apprehen· sions of a sy~tem of laws than were unitedly posscs~ cd by scores and hundreds of laborious a n<.l erudite juri~t~, who had made those same laws the sole study of their li ves, but who had still no conception of them, except in d<•tail. After a humorous description of some of the formalities, the knowledge of which was confined to the early IN ,\ i\IERICJr.. 299 Roman lawyers, and which continued to be observed long af.tcr t heir origin and meaning were forgotten, and even after the lawyers thP-mselves had Jt .. arned to laugh at them, Gibbon proceeds as follo·ws :" A more libera l a rt was cultivated, however, by the s?gcs oj Rome, who, in a stricter sense, may be conSidered as the aut hors of the civil law. The alterat ion of the idiom and manners of the Roman~ n·ndered the style of the Twelve Tables less familiar to each ~ising generation,, and t he doubtful pas5ages were 1mperfectly cxplamcd by the study of legal a nli· quarian.s. To define the ambiguitiPs, to ci rcumscribe the latl lude, to apply the principles, to extend the con~eq.uences, to reconcile the real or apparent. contradiCtiOns, was a much nobler and more important !ask, and the province of legislation was silf' ntly mvaded by the expounders of ancient statutes. Their subtle interpretations concurred with the equity of the prmtor to reform the tyranny of the darker aO'es : however stra nge or intricate the means, it was0 the a~m of artificial jurisprudence to restore the simple d_1~tates of nature and n·ason, and the skill of private cJtllens was usefully employed to undermine the public institutions of their country." The precise and simple truth can seldom be expressed in epigrams. The last clause of this instructive quotation is liable to a cri ticism which Gib· bon's sparlding phraseology somewhat too frequently extort~,-that of sacrificing to rhetorical point. rr o rC:'move the rotten materials which ig norance, thoughtlessness, or t he prevailing interest of the moment had incorporated, substituting for them "the simple dic~ ate~ of nature and reason," can hard ly, with any J?sbce, be r:-aid to be an undermining of the institutiOn~ of one's country, since institutions thus piously repa1red, may stand fo rever, instead of being left, by t he failure of rotten supports, to fall by iheir own weight.. But whatever may be thought of the justice of this criticism, the leading American la\\:,ycrs and courts of this present generation seem determined |