For instance, according to a decision in Missouri, if a white person converses with a slave, the conversation, being otherwise admissible, may be proved by any other white person who heard it.

The actions, looks, and barking of a dog are admissible as natural evidence upon a question as to his madness.

So the squealing and grunts or other expression of pain made by a hog are admissible upon a question as to the extent of an injury inflicted on him.

They are not to be regarded merely as curiosities, for they are all adopted and enforced in the national courts; so that even the most brutal language becomes not merely the voice of the law, but the voice of the nation also.

Thus do decisions of courts, as well as statutes, conspire to exhibit this rule in revolting features.

It is true that the same laws profess to punish the murder of a slave as a capital offence, and also to punish severely any mutilation or other cruel treatment of him.

So long as the slave himself is not allowed to testify, so long the laws will be justly obnoxious to the charge of actually authorizing a white person to inflict any outrage upon him, even to the extent of taking life with impunity.

Every white person with only slaves about him, or, it may be, with only colored persons, slave or free, has a letter of license to commit any outrage which passion or wickedness may prompt.

Had South Carolina, at that early day, followed the suggestion of her own statute, she would have begun a career of civilization under which Slavery itself must have disappeared.

These statutes had their origin in no sentiment of justice or humanity, but, as appears in early declarations, in a desire to prevent the harboring of fugitive slaves, who might find asylum among those exclusively of their own color.

Free colored persons, under operation of this rule, are exposed to the same fearful wrongs.

A white person may treat them as he treats a slave, and they are absolutely without remedy.

It would be difficult to point out any law, the spawn of cruelty or tyranny, in ancient or modern times, exceeding in atrocity that by which a free population is thus despoiled of protection on account of color.

It was one of the boasts of Magna Charta that justice should be denied to no person,--“Nulli negabimus justitiam”; but under this rule it is denied to a whole race.

Crime, even against white persons in the presence of colored persons, must go unpunished.

And yet this proscription is adopted and enforced in the courts of the United States.

Even as applied to free colored persons, it must be considered as a relic of Slavery not yet removed out of sight.

That of Chicago, while saying nothing against the Rebellion, uses ambiguous language, interpreted differently by different persons; while that of Baltimore is so plain and unequivocal that it leaves no room for question.

The rule may also be treated as belonging to that system of evidence which, in defiance of reason, undertook to declare in advance that certain classes of witnesses were incompetent to testify,--or, in other words, that the court and jury…

The rule of exclusion, when founded on race or color, is something more than a rule of evidence from which justice may suffer.

The true reason may be traced to the unhappy prejudices engendered by Slavery, and to the policy of sustaining this wrong.

Indeed, it is hardly less essential to Slavery than the lash itself.

Such is the unquestionable suggestion of reason; nor can it make any difference that the witness is white or black.

The Chicago candidate has written a subtle letter, which is interpreted according to the desires of its readers,--some finding peace, and others finding war.

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