The time will yet come when the boast of our fathers will be made a practical verity also, and Court or Congress, in the spirit of this British judgment, will proudly declare that nowhere under the Constitution can man hold property in man.

For the Republic such a decree will be the way of peace and safety.

As Slavery is banished from the national jurisdiction, it will cease to vex our national politics.

Not in prejudice, but in the light of history and of reason, we must consider this subject.

But this is one of the myths or fables with which the supporters of Slavery have surrounded their false god.

No previous voice was heard to express desire for any provision on the subject.

I put aside, as equally fabulous, the common saying, that this provision was one of the original compromises of the Constitution, and an essential condition of Union.

It is true that there were compromises at the formation of the Constitution, which were the subject of anxious debate; but this was not one of them.

It was that hateful bargain by which Congress was restrained until 1808 from the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade, thus securing, down to that period, toleration for crime.

At a subsequent day Congress branded the slave-trade as piracy, and thus, by solemn legislative act, adjudged this compromise to be felonious and wicked.

But this draft, though from the flaming guardian of the slave interest, contained no allusion to fugitive slaves.

And yet in all these resolutions, plans, and drafts, seven in number, proceeding from eminent members and from able committees, no allusion is made to fugitive slaves.

At last, on the 28th August, as the Convention was drawing to a close, on the consideration of the article providing for the privileges of citizens in different States, we meet the first reference to this matter, in words worthy of note.

It is also certain, that, in Vermont, at the beginning of the century, a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State, on application for the surrender of an alleged slave, accompanied by documentary evidence, gloriously refused compliance…

The masterly subtlety with which it is drawn might challenge admiration, if exerted for a benevolent purpose; but in an age of sensibility and refinement, a machine of torture, however skilful and apt, cannot be regarded without horror.

I may seem to stand alone; but all the patriots and martyrs of history, all the Fathers of the Republic, are with me.

If there be any whose sympathies are not moved for the slave, who do not cherish the rights of the humble African, struggling for divine Freedom, as warmly as the rights of the white man, let him consider well that the rights of all are…

Whilst thus comprehensive in its provisions, and applicable to all, there is no safeguard of Human Freedom which the monster Act does not set at nought.

It commits this great question--than which none is more sacred in the law--not to a solemn trial, but to summary proceedings.

It authorizes judgment on ex parte evidence, by affidavit, without the sanction of cross-examination.

It denies the writ of Habeas Corpus, ever known as the Palladium of the citizen.

Contrary to the declared purposes of the framers of the Constitution, it sends the fugitive back "at the public expense.

If he dooms a man to Slavery, the reward is ten dollars; but saving him to Freedom, his dole is five.

But the Act itself contains a capital error on this very subject, so declared by the Supreme Court, in pretending to vest a portion of the judicial power of the Nation in State officers.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.