proceedings authorized under the 10th section, before a court. In the latter case, the claimant is required to "make satisfactory proof;" in the former, he presents only the certificate of his own deposition, made out by a judge or justice of a foreign State, and in the latter he is required to resort to common law proof, (because the courts may make judgment, or act in no case whatever but upon common law proof.) The proceedings under this statute are authorized, therefore, expressly to evade common law remedies and rights, and give the victim over to his demandant without common law protection or remedy, against every principle of law or justice sanctioned by any jurisprudence of any people whatever. The defendant is expressly denied the right to prove that the papers adduced against him are a forgery. It will be seen that the proceeding under this act is entirely ex-parte— the order of the commissioner is ex-parte, even in the face of the defendant-the whole proceedings are on the part of the demandant, and no act, proceeding, resistance, or defence whatever are allowed to the defendant. Submission to his demandant is all that is admissible on his part. The same section that provides the commissioner to effect the intent of the statute, authorizes the demandant to arrest the person of his victim without aid. The appointment of the commissioner is but to supply the lack of physical power in the claimant to seize and enslave his victim. Had he power, in his own person, to arrest and return the fugitive, the law would not be called for, and would not have been enacted. But he has no such physical power, and therefore Congress authorizes this means to aid the slaveholder in the premises, with the physical power of the States. There is therefore nothing resembling, as to form or intent, the doings of a court of law in the matter. It is simply a mode prescribed, in the form of law, by which the nation shall engage in behalf of the most squalid and limitless despotism that can exist among men. The commissioner is an agent only in one state of the case-and the comitatus, or the militia of the country, and "ALL GOOD CITIZENS," are forced into the army in another state of the case, to gratify the individual wishes, interests, or intent, of the most absolute despot that mind can conceive of, or power create. It is said, sometimes, that 'Congress cannot make a slave or a king." This most atrocious act reverses this position, and expressly creates, the relation of "King and Slave," and that too under the most objectionable and revolting circumstances.

posse

Not only does this law take from all Northern men every legal right, but it forbids all the tribunals of the country, whether state or national, to interfere in their behalf, if demanded as Slaves, by any perjured scoundrel who may have the audacity to make the demand and swear to it. The Constitution of the United States declares that the "Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended." This act pointedly destroys it, by providing, as it does, that the certificate of such commissioner " SHALL PREVENT ALL MOLESTATION OF SAID PERSON OR PERSONS (the claimant and his agents) BY ANY PROCESS ISSUED BY ANY JUDGE, MAGISTRATE, OR OTHER PERSON WHOMSOEVER." The Habeas Corpus is a "process issued" in behalf of freedom. This law declares that such writ shall not issue when Slavery demands any man, woman, or child, of any color, or condition, as a Slave.

Again. This law applies as well to apprentices and minors as to slaves. It gives the aforesaid unaccountable power and authority, in all cases in which persons are charged as "fugitives from labor." The word slave, or slaves, is not used by the act. It treats only of "fugitives from service or labor." In no case are the subjects of this severity called slaves. This act, then, reverses all the laws of this State, and other States, regulating "masters, apprentices and servants,” as well as of "parent and child" in this regard. A Southern man-thief has but to come among us, and demand our children as his children, and claim that they owe him service," or demand them as apprentices who "owe him service or labor," and they are expressly forbid the right to try the question whether the villain's claim is true or false. The commissioners in such case are ordered by the letter of the act to give them up and tote them off to legal bondage. The statutes of the State giving jurisdiction, and made to try the right before its own Judges and Justices, are all reversed, and the helpless youth is given up without trial, on the ex-parte affidavit of a foreigner, which he may not controvert or impeach, to go hence for ever. Were this law to be construed to be applicable to parent and child, and master and apprentice, alone--as by its terms it is only applicable-its provisions would be regarded as too atrocious and despotic to be obeyed. Men, nor women, nor children, sons nor servants, masters nor apprentices, would consent that slaveholders of foreign States should, by so rude a tyranny, break up the primeval and dearest relations of society among us. And yet Congress, to aid cruel men to hold other men and women as cattle, has expressly interfered with our own domestic

relations, and expressly thrown down every barrier, exposed them to the human wolves and lusty man-thieves who prowl for prey amid the desolations of slavery.

A father, or mother, or master, are expressly forbid to defend their son or daughter, or apprentice, against the demand of a slaveholder of a slaveholding State, if such demand is but supported by the deposition of a person unknown to such father, master, son or apprentice in a foreign State, and who therefore could not be confronted or cross-questioned by them; but such son, daughter or apprentice is ruthlessly torn from his parental relations, by the power of a free State, (which may God forbid,) and given over to the blackness of darkness of slavery. The blood almost curdles at the recital. If such an enactment had been promulgated as the decree of the Russian AUTOCRAT, or the military order of the bloody HAYNAU, men would shudder. Yet Daniel Webster could go for the bill to the "fullest extent," and Moses Stuart could say of him, "Posterity, divested of partizan feeling and prejudice, will erect to him a lofty monument."

UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE BILL.

Senator CHASE, in his speech of March 26th, said:—

I ask Senators, who propose to support that bill, where they find the power to legislate on this subject in the Constitution? I know to what clause I shall be referred. I know I shall be told that the Constitution provides that "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." But this clause contains no grant of legislative power to Congress. That power is conferred exclusively by special clauses, granting legislative power in respect to particular subjects, and by the eighth section of the first article, which, after enumerating the specific powers of Congress, proceeds to declare that Congress shall have power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof.

Now, Sir, what power is vested, by the clause, in relation to fugitives from service, in the government, or in any department or officer of the government? None at all; and if none, then the legislative power of Congress does not extend to the subject. The clause is a clause of compact. It has been so denominated by every Senator who has had occasion to speak of it. The honorable Senator from Massachusetts told us that he "always thought that the Constitution addressed itself to the Legislatures of the States, or to the States themselves; that he had always been of the opinion that it was an injunction upon the States

themselves." If this opinion be correct, the power of legislation and the duty of legislation must be with the States, and not with Congress."

We are not prepared, I hope, and I trust we never shall be prepared, to give the sanction of the American Senate to the bill and the amendments now upon our table-a bill which authorizes and requires the appointment of two hundred and sixty-one commissioners, and an indefinite number of other officers, to catch run-away slaves in the State of Ohio; which punishes humanity as a crime; which authorizes seizure without process, trial without a jury, and consignment to slavery beyond the limits of the State, without opportunity of defence, and upon ex-parte testimony. Certainly no such bill can receive my vote."

Furthermore, the Bill suspends the Habeas Corpus Act,* the great bulwark of liberty, the Magna Charta of the civilized world. In Section IX. of the Constitution is this clause:

"THE PRIVILEGE OF THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS SHALL NOT BE SUSPENDED UNLESS WHEN, IN CASES OF REBELLION OR INVASION, THE PUBLIC SAFETY MAY REQUIRE IT.”

There was no "rebellion or invasion" in the land when the Bill was passed, although it is impossible to tell how soon the fact will be otherwise, if its diabolical provisions continue to be carried out. The Bill, as has been shown, is not confined to fugitive slaves; it includes all "fugitives from service or labor," be they white or colored. The Fugitive Slave Bill, Section VI., constitutes the commissioner a court, from whose decision there is no appeal! There shall be no "molestation of said person or persons, by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever." The commissioner, whoever he may be, a Postmaster, Collector, Tide-waiter, Ward Justice, Street Inspector, Clerk of the Market--in the recent case, the Clerk of the Circuit Court-is constituted the High Court of Judicature, his decree is irreversible, and neither any judge of the State Courts, or United States Court, can issue the writ of Habeas Corpus, for the purpose of inquiring whether the person has been illegally deprived of his liberty.

By an act of the State of New-York, and by similar acts of other States, a slave brought into the State by his master shall be free. But the Fugitive Slave Bill appears to trample upon the State laws in this respect. Such a person-once a slave-may be arrested under

* Habeas Corpus.-"You may have the body before the Court." This is the great writ of personal liberty. It lies, where a person being indicted or imprisoned, (and an illegal arrest is in law an "imprisonment,") unlawfully or unconstitutionally, applies to another tribunal for relief in the premises.

the Bill, be taken before a commissioner, and be remanded into slavery. The decision of the upstart commissioner-judge, is "conclusive;" there shall be no molestation by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever! It is true that the language of the bill is, that slaves who shall escape from one State into another State, may be arrested and remanded back; but in the phraseolgy of slaveholders it is an "escape"-a constructive escapeto run away from the master anywhere.

In the celebrated Prigg case, in Pennsylvania, Judge Story, in the name of the Supreme Court of the United States, gave an opinion that the law of 1793, upon which the late Fugitive Slave Bill is founded, was is some respects not free from reasonable doubt or difficulty as to its constitutionality, viz.: in that part that conferred authority on State magistrates to issue process, &c., for the reclamation of fugitive slaves, and which has been generally understood to require them to perform this service. Eminent jurists in several States have long since given similar opinions. Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, during the recent session, in his place on the floor of the House of Representatives, pronounced the law of 1793 INFAMOUS. Congress cannot confer jurisdiction upon a court not created by the Constitution and laws of the United States; and transcended its powers in this way, in the enactment of the law of 1793, which was besides unconstitutional, because it authorized the Federal Courts to try a claim to a man as a slave, without the intervention of a jury. The Constitution (Art. 5 of the Amendments) says that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." And Art. 6th provides that in criminal prosecutions, (and the proceedings in the case of Hamlet were of a criminal nature,) the accused shall enjoy a speedy and public trial by jury, and be confronted with the witness against him. Neither the law just passed, nor any other, can constitutionally take away this right, or authorize any commissioner or court to determine a case affecting the life or liberty of an individual in a "summary manner." It is vesting such commissioner or court with power as absolute as that of the "Star Chamber," or "Turkish Kadis." It has been well said that the courts of the United States have power to appoint commissioners to take affidavits and acknowledgments of bail; but they do not possess, and cannot receive, authority from Congress to delegate to a commissioner the power of trying a cause.

We see that the Bill enacted by Congress in 1793, approved by