For, if unconstitutional, it is no law, and no justification of the restraint.

Is it not most clear that this assumes the very question in dispute, whether the law on which the certificate is founded be constitutional or not?

The statement may be all very true, if the law be constitutional; but suppose the law to be unconstitutional, would not the statement be superlatively absurd?

Yet whether the law be constitutional or not, is the very question to be determined.

There is, at the present time, a set of politicians amongst us, who are so alarmed at agitation that each one of them is a kind of Peter the Hermit, getting up a crusade to prevent it.

If the argument of the attorney-general be sound, then the whole “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus,” under any corrupt law that any corrupt Congress may pass, will consist in the privilege of applying to a court for the writ, and…

By the principles of the English law, the privilege of the habeas corpus attaches to all, whether bond or free.

I now proceed to lay open for the abhorrence of mankind other deformities of this most odious law.

In opposing a law, a distinction is to be made between the courts and the people; between the bench and the ballot-box.

It may be impolitic, unrighteous, atrocious; but if it be constitutional they must sustain it.

But before the tribunal of the people, a law may be impeached for any attribute of cruelty, oppression, or meanness.

I denounce the Fugitive Slave law for all these qualities.

In its scornful rejection of all those common-law principles of evidence which have been ratified by the wisdom of ages; in the “summary” and piratical haste of its proceedings, and in the indelible blood with which its judgments are…

Should the courts, hampered by previous decisions, and habituated to the spectacle and the support of a cruel institution, pronounce this law to be constitutional, such a judgment would give new force to every reason why the people should…

It is not enough that it should be declared void by the courts as against the fundamental law of the land; it deserves to be branded by the people as abhorrent to humanity, to civilization, and to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I will prove by a reference to the act itself that these atrocities are among its conspicuous features.

It is a right without which all trials are but mockery.

It is what even barbarians might be ashamed of.

It is offering bounties and premiums on villany, and turning the courts into brokers’ offices for perjury.

Under such a law, is there a single colored person at the north who can rise to his labor in the morning, or lie down to his repose at night, with any feeling of security that avarice and false swearing may not then be at work for his…

Who can wonder, if he is tormented in his nightly dreams by images of the man-stealer, in far off regions, plotting for his ruin?

Who can wonder if, in his city residence, he starts as he turns the corner of every street; or, in his rural home, if he shudders at the rustle of every leaf, lest some kidnapper should spring from his ambush to seize him?

That sense of personal security which every honest man is entitled to feel, this law abolishes.

The virtuous man cannot rely upon his government, nor the pious man upon his God, for earthly protection.

For him the Prince of Darkness has obtained the ascendency in the affairs of men, and offers impunity to guilt, while protection is withdrawn from innocence.