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pressive, cruel law can derive no just power from the consent of the governed. Those whom the enactment may be intended to favor, can have no right to give their consent to it, if it be iniquitous; and those whom it would deprive of any of the blessings of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness, of course cannot be expected to consent to it. Indeed if they did, their consent would be morally invalid; because men have no more power to alienate their own inalienable rights, than others have authority to take those rights away. A man could no more be justified in voluntarily surrendering his liberty at the command of a tyrant, or a tyrannical majority, than he would be justified in taking away his own life in obedience to a mandate from the same quarter. The rights to life, to liberty, to happiness are not mere kindly gifts of a generous Creator, which we may take, or wantonly toss back to him as we please. We may not, without sin, trample them under our own feet; neither are we at liberty to cast these most precious pearls before swine. No—they are sacred trusts, for which we are accountable; for in the use of them alone can we develope the nature, God has given us, and become what he made us to be.
"Tis liberty alone that gives the flower of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; and we are weeds without it." We cannot without great wickedness, give up our own liberty; and it is the greatest of all wrongs to take away the liberty of others.
The defenders of the new doctrine, 'that we are bound to obey a command of our government, however oppressive, tyrannical atrocious it may be, because the government is the supreme authority,' I say, the defenders of this new doctrine, new certainly in our country, and worthy only of the sycophants of an eastern despot—these defenders of tyranny, whether honorable statesmen or reverend divines, must have shut their eyes to the glorious light in which our nation was born; or they must have been utterly blinded by fears, which selfish speculators and designing politicians have contrived to awaken in the public mind.
Surely distinguished ministers of the Gospel should have known better than to teach, that any emergency could warrant the terrible unrighteousness, which the Fugitive Slave Bill proposes. The fact that so many of the Doctors of Divinity of different denominations have earnestly advocated obedience to this law, only shows how widely the corruption
