And who will be bold enough to say that a trial and judgment by him, delivering up the respondent to bondage, would not be the exercise of “judicial power” in a controversy between “a state and a citizen of another state”?
Mann questions the legitimacy of judicial power exercised under the Fugitive Slave Law.
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My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor.
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the claims of justice and mercy left among us.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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