REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE CITY OF BOSTON,
in reply to his
APOLOGY FOR VOTING FOR THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL.
BOSTON: WM. CROSBY & H. P. NICHOLS, 111 Washington Street. 1851.
CAMBRIDGE:
METCALF AND COMPANY,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.[Pg 3]
Sir;—
An English courtier procured a colonial judgeship for ayoung dependant wholly ignorant of law. The new functionary,on parting with his patron, received from him thefollowing sage advice,—"Be careful never to assign reasons,for whether your judgments be right or wrong, yourreasons will certainly be bad." You have cause to regretthat some friend had not been equally provident of yourreputation, and intimated that it was only expected of youto vote for Mr. Webster's measures, but by no means to assisthim in vindicating them. You did, indeed, vote preciselyas those who procured your nomination intendedyou should; yet, on your return home, you found yourname had become a byword and a reproach in your nativeState. Another election approached, but you declined submittingyour recent course to the judgment of the electors,and withdrew from the canvass. But although the peoplewere thus prevented from voting against you, they persistedin speaking and writing against you. Anxious torelieve yourself from the load of obloquy by which youwere oppressed, in an evil hour you rashly appealed to thepublic through the columns of a newspaper, and gave the"reasons" of your vote for the Fugitive Slave Law. Youhad a high and recent example of the kind of logic suitedto your case. You might have indulged in transcendental[Pg 4]nonsense, and talked about the climate, soil, and sceneryof New England and the wonders of physical geography,and, assuming that negroes were created free, you mighthave contended that, in voting for a law to catch and enslavethem, you had avoided the folly of reënacting thelaw of God. Reasons of this sort, you and others had declared,"had convinced the understanding and touched theconscience of the nation." Instead of following an exampleso illustrious and successful, you assign "reasons"so very commonplace, that the most ordinary capacity canunderstand them, and so feeble, that the slightest strengthcan overthrow them.
Your first "reason" is, that the delivery of fugitives isa constitutional obligation. By this you mean, that, byvirtue of the construction of a certain clause in the Constitutionby the Supreme Court, Congress has the power topass a law for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Well, Sir,does this constitutional obligation authorize Congress topass any law whatsoever on the subject, however atrociousand wicked? Had you voted for a law to prevent smuggling,in which you had authorized every tide-waiter toshoot any person suspected of having contraband goodsin his possession, would it have been a good "reason" forsuch an atrocity, that the collection of duties was "a constitutionalobligation"? You are condemned for votingfor an arbitrary, detestable, diabolical law,—one that tramplesupon the rights of conscience, outrages the feelingsof humanity, discards the rules of evidence, levels all thebarriers erected by the common law for the protection ofpersonal liberty, and, in defiance of the Constitution, andagainst its exp