On the part of the blacks, the law and usage of the mother country, confirmed by the great charter, that no man can be deprived of his liberty but by the judgment of his peers, were effectually pleaded. The early laws of the province prohibited slavery, and no subsequent legislation had sanctioned it; for, although the laws did recognize its existence, they did so only to mitigate and modify an admitted evil.

The present state constitution was established in 1780. The first article of the Bill of Rights prohibited slavery by affirming the foundation truth of our republic, that "all men are born free and equal." The supreme court decided in 1783 that no man could hold another as property without a direct violation of that article.

In 1788 three free black citizens of Boston were kidnapped and sold into slavery in one of the French islands. An intense excitement followed. Governor Hancock took efficient measures for reclaiming the unfortunate men. The clergy of Boston petitioned the legislature for a total prohibition of the foreign slave trade. The society of Friends, and the blacks generally, presented similar petitions; and the same year an act was passed prohibiting the slave trade and granting relief to persons kidnapped or decoyed out of the commonwealth. The fear of a burden to the state from the influx of negroes from abroad led the legislature, in connection with this law, to prevent

those who were not citizens of the state or of other states from gaining a residence.

The first case of the arrest of a fugitive slave in Massachusetts under the law of 1793 took place in Boston soon after the passage of the law. It is the case to which President Quincy alludes in his late letter against the fugitive slave law. The populace at the trial aided the slave to escape, and nothing further was done about it,

The arrest of George Latimer as a slave in Boston, and his illegal confinement in jail, in 1842, led to the passage of the law of 1843 for the "protection of personal liberty," prohibiting state officers from arresting or detaining persons claimed as slaves, and the use of the jails of the commonwealth for their confinement. This law was strictly in accordance with the decision of the supreme judiciary in the case of Prigg vs. The State of Pennsylvania, that the reclaiming of fugitives was a matter exclusively belonging to the general government; yet that the state officials might, if they saw fit, carry into effect the law of Congress on the subject, "unless prohibited by state legislation."

It will be seen by the facts we have adduced that slavery in Massachusetts never had a legal existence. The ermine of the judiciary of the Puritan state has never been sullied by the admission of its detestable claims. It

crept into the commonwealth like other evils and vices, but never succeeded in clothing itself with the sanction and authority of law. It stood only upon its own execrable foundation of robbery and wrong.

With a history like this to look back upon, is it strange that the people of Massachusetts at the present day are unwilling to see their time-honored defences of personal freedom, the good old safeguards of Saxon liberty, overridden and swept away after the summary fashion of "the fugitive slave bill;" that they should loathe and scorn the task which that bill imposes upon them of aiding professional slave hunters in seizing, fettering, and consigning to bondage men and women accused only of that which commends them to esteem and sympathy, love of liberty and hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to "constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved for trained bloodhounds? Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been, and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her greathearted founders, it is to be hoped that the executive and cabinet at Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning, some opportunity for conquering her prejudices before letting loose the dogs of war upon her. Let them give her time, and treat with forbearance her hesitation, qualms of conscience, and wounded pride. Her people, indeed, are

awkward in the work of slave catching, and, it would seem, rendered but indifferent service in a late hunt in Boston. Whether they would do better under the surveillance of the army and navy of the United States, is a question which we leave with the president and his secretary of state. General Putnam once undertook to drill a company of Quakers, and instruct them, by force of arms, in the art and mystery of fighting; but not a single pair of drab-colored breeches moved at his "forward march;" not a broad beaver wheeled at his word of command; no hand unclosed to receive a proffered musket. Patriotic appeal, hard swearing, and prick of bayonet had no effect upon these impracticable raw recruits; and the stout general gave them up in despair.. We are inclined to believe that any attempt on the part of the commander-in-chief of our army and navy to con-vert the good people of Massachusetts into expert slave catchers, under the discipline of West Point and Norfolk, would prove as idle an experiment as that of General Putnam upon the Quakers.

7

FAME AND GLORY.*

THE learned and eloquent author of the pamphlet lying before us with the above title belongs to a class, happily on the increase in our country, who venture to do homage to unpopular truths in defiance of the social and political tyranny of opinion which has made so many of our statesmen, orators, and divines the mere playthings and shuttlecocks of popular impulses for evil far oftener than for good. His first production, the True Grandeur of Nations, written for the anniversary of American inde pendence, was not more remarkable for its evidences of a highly cultivated taste and wide historical research than for its inculcation of a high morality — the demand for practical Christianity in nations as well as individuals. It burned no incense under the nostrils of an already inflated and vain people. It gratified them by no rhetorical falsehoods about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It did not apostrophize military heroes, nor

* An address before the Literary Society of Amherst College, by Charles Sumner.