No lover of liberty can read them without having their atrocious character burned into his mind ineffaceably.

This enactment, too, is no theoretic affair; it is no dead letter on the statute book.

It is a living monster, uncaged and turned loose amongst us, to rob and devour at its will.

Now, I have two objections to this law, which absolve me from all obligations to execute it, or, in any way or manner, to assist in executing it.

First, I believe it to be contrary to the law of God, which, God helping me, shall be the rule of my conduct, though I should scatter political treasons as the autumn wind scatters leaves.

In his dread description of the judgment day, Jesus Christ makes the distinction between saints and sinners to turn upon the fact, whether they have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and visited those who were sick and in prison.

And who so hungry as those who do not own, and cannot own a morsel of bread?

And what confinement was ever so hopeless as southern slavery, what prison was ever so deep as that prison-house which holds three millions of our fellow-beings within its melancholy walls,--them and their posterity forever?

He that refuses the common acts of hospitality to these victims, when fleeing from their bondage, denies his Lord and Master.

He that refuses them, disobeys every precept of the Savior, and has no more right to call himself a Christian, than has the Fejee islander, when he rises from his cannibal banquet.

And next, I hold this law to be contrary to the constitution of the United States, and therefore of no binding force upon my conscience or my conduct.

I take the Quaker ground upon this subject; I will not assist to execute it, though I shall suffer it to execute itself on me.

I never feel so confident of my conclusions as when strong men have taken the opposite side, and have failed to sustain it.

The discussion may be dry, but it will not be uninteresting; for it involves matters as important as the liberty of the body and the liberty of the will, and the liberty and life of the human soul.

Who could have imagined, eight months ago, that a ministerial proceeding could put a citizen beyond remedy or reach of our courts?

I now come to a position in the commissioner’s argument which is not only transparently fallacious, but is contradicted by himself, in the same opinion, again and again.

And how does he answer the first one, which, at a blow, unseats him from his usurped bench?

If the trial of the issue, “fugitive slave or not,” be, “in the strictest sense,” “within the express delegation of judicial power given” by the constitution, then this ministerial commissioner cannot exercise it, and Congress cannot…

The act which, in the first part of the opinion, was acknowledged to belong, “in the strictest sense,” to the “judicial power,” has now ceased to be “any thing more than a summary ministerial proceeding.

Great Britain, having no written constitution, the current of its legislative enactments and its judicial decisions makes its constitution.

But we have a written constitution, and therefore are not to tolerate a law, (as in the case of this Fugitive Slave law,) which is repugnant to its fundamental provisions.

By this constitution, all legislative powers therein granted are vested in Congress; executive power in a President, and judicial power in the courts.

In both these constitutions, the three functions of government, namely, to legislate, to adjudicate, and to execute, are expressly recognized; and the whole of their distinctive powers are lodged in separate departments.

Such an officer, under either constitution, would be a monster; he would hold the same relation to their legitimate functionaries that Caliban does to the human race; and, if created for executing the Fugitive Slave law, that half devil…

The sublime power of a court becomes nothingness, and is ridiculous, if its decrees cannot be executed to the very death of the party against whom they are made.