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peace measures?" If we will only become "the setters," and "terriers," and"blood hounds" of the Southern men hunters, they care not how much we bark and howl about the decree, that would make us such.
Once more, it is urged by our opposers that we are very presumptuous in setting up our individual opinions, in opposition to the enlightened wisdom of the greatest statesmen of our country, the majority of our legislators, and of their constituents. Now this is not stating the case fairly. The Fugitive Slave Law is not an offense to only here and there an individual. Millions see and feel it to be most flagrantly unjust and cruel. The minority in Congress, opposed to its enactment, was a very large one; and a great many of the majority, both in and out of Congress, execrate the law, at the same time that they insist upon obedience to it. Indeed it would be hard to find a person, who would undertake to show the justice, much less the mercifulness of the law.
The question before the country, then is, whether a law, which a vast majority allow to be a wicked one—which even the most unscrupulous adherents of Mr. Webster, at first, recoiled from with horror—a law which outrages all the natural, indefeasible rights of those against whom it is directed; and does violence to the best feelings of those who are called upon to execute it; the question is, whether such a law ought to be obeyed, merely because by legislative management a majority of the members of Congress was obtained for it? If the will of the majority be thus absolute; if there be no appeal from it; if there were no natural, eternal principles of right and wrong, upon which we may fall back in such an emergecy, I see not that our own liberties are anymore secure, than they would be under some forms of monarchical government. The way in which Mr. Webster and his fellow laborers flout at conscience, and the moral sense of mankind, shows how little they have of the Democratic spirit; how little fitted they are to help forward our great experiment of self-government.
Men differ much on minor questions of morals, and there is sometimes room for honest differences. But the glorious principles, announced in the Declaration of American Independance, were self evident to all men. So self evident were they, that the oppressors of mankind every where were dismayed at their annunciation; and the oppressed were filled with joy unspeakable. In regard to murder and theft, the consciences of men will not be found to differ much throughout our country, or the civilized world. And could the people of these states be all brought to witness an attempt to take from a man his liberty, and reduce him to the condition of a brute, it cannot be doubted, that a thousand would cry shame upon the deed, for every one, who could attempt to justify it. I have, as yet, met with but a single individual, who, without qualification, affirmed that this law is a righteous one.
