, with those who
have fallen into so wild an absurdity.

It is true, there is "a popular belief"--nay, there is a deep-rooted
national conviction--that the Government of the United States is bound
to protect the institution of slavery, in so far as this may be done by
the passage of a Fugitive Slave Law. This national conviction has spoken
out in the laws of Congress; it has been ratified and confirmed by the
judicial opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as
by the decisions of the Supreme Courts of the three great
non-slaveholding States of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania.
But no one, so far as we know, has ever deduced this obligation to
protect slavery, in this respect, from the absurd notion that "it is a
national institution." No such deduction is to be found in any of the
arguments of counsel before the courts above-mentioned, nor in the
opinions of the courts themselves. We shrewdly suspect that it is to be
found nowhere except in the fertile imagination of Mr. Sumner.

We concede that slavery is _not_ "a national institution." In combating
this position, Mr. Sumner is merely beating the air. We know that
slavery is not national; it is local, being confined to certain States,
and exclusively established by local or State laws. Hence, Mr. Sumner
may fire off as much splendid rhetoric as he pleases at his men of
straw. "Slavery national!" he indignantly exclaims: "Sir, this is all a
mistake and absurdity, fit to take a place in some new collection of
'Vulgar Errors' by some other Sir Thomas Browne, with the ancient but
exploded stories that the toad has a stone in its head and that
ostriches digest iron." These may be very fine embellishments; they
certainly have nothing to do with the point in controversy. The question
is not whether slavery is a national institution, but whether the
National Government does not recognize slavery as a local institution,
and is not pledged to protect the master's right to reclaim the fugitive
from his service. This is the question, and by its relevancy to this
question the rhetoric of Mr. Sumner must be tried.

We do not say it has no such relevancy. Mr. Sumner beats the air, it is
true, but he does not beat the air in vain. His declamation may have no
logical bearing on the point in dispute, but, if you watch it closely,
you will always find that it is most skillfully adapted to bring the
prejudices and passions of the reader to bear on that point.