after all, if they will show us on the continent of Africa, or elsewhere, three millions of blacks in as good a condition physically and morally-as our slaves, then will we most cheerfully admit that all other Christian nations, combined, have accomplished as much for the African race, as has been done by the Southern States of the Union.

CHAPTER V.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.

WE have, under our present Union, advanced in prosperity and greatness beyond all former example in the history of nations. We no sooner begin to reason from the past to the future, than we are lost in amazement at the prospect before us. We behold the United States, and that too at no very distant period, the first power among the nations of the earth. But such reasoning is not always to be relied on. Whether, in the present instance, it points to a reality, or to a magnificent dream merely, will of course depend on the wisdom, the integrity, and the moderation, of our rulers.

It cannot be disguised that the Union, with all its unspeakable advantages and blessings, is in danger. It is the Fugitive Slave Law against which the waves of abolitionism have dashed with their utmost force and raged with an almost boundless fury. On the other hand,

it is precisely the Fugitive Slave Law-that great constitutional guarantee of our rightswhich the people of the South are, as one man, the most inflexibly determined to maintain. We are prepared, and we shall accordingly proceed, to show that, in this fearful conflict, the great leaders of abolitionism-the Chases, the Sewards, and the Sumners, of the day-are waging a fierce, bitter, and relentless warfare against the Constitution of their country.

§ I. Mr. Seward's attack on the Constitution of his country.

There is one thing which Mr. Seward's reasoning overlooks,-namely, that he has taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. We shall not lose sight of this fact, nor permit him to obscure it by his special pleadings and mystifications; since it serves to show that while, in the name of a "higher law," he denounces the Constitution of his country, he at the same time commits a most flagrant outrage against that higher law itself.

The clause of the Constitution which Mr. Seward denounces is as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall,

in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." This clause, as Mr. Seward contemptuously says, is "from the Constitution of the United States in 1787." He knows of only one other compact like this "in diplomatic history;" and that was made between despotic powers "in the year of grace 902, in the period called the Dark Ages." But whether this compact made by the fathers of the Republic, or the sayings and doings of Mr. Seward in regard to it, are the more worthy of the Dark Ages, it is not for him alone to determine.

"The law of nature," says he, "disavows such compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates them." If this be so, then it certainly follows that in founding states no such compacts should be formed. For, as Mr. Seward says, "when we are founding states, all these laws must be brought to the standard of the laws of God, and must be tried by that standard, and must stand or fall by it." This is true, we repeat; but the Senator who uttered this truth was not founding states or forming a consti

tution. He was living and acting under a constitution already formed, and one which he had taken an oath to support. If, in the construction of this instrument, our fathers really followed "as precedents the abuses of tyrants and robbers," then the course of the Senator in question was plain: he should have suffered martyrdom rather than take an oath to support it. For the law of nature, it is clear, permits no man first to take an oath to support such compacts, and then repudiate them. If they are at war with his conscience, then, in the name of all that is sacred, let him repudiate them, but, by all means, without having first placed himself under the necessity of repudiating, at the same time, the obligation of his oath.

There is a question among casuists, whether an oath extorted by force can bind a man to act in opposition to his conscience. But this was not Mr. Seward's case. His oath was not extorted. If he had refused to take it, he would have lost nothing except an office.

"There was deep philosophy," says he, "in the confession of an eminent English judge. When he had condemned a young woman to death, under the late sanguinary code of his country, for her first theft, she fell down dead