exceedingly brief, as we are sick of his
sophisms, and long to be delivered from the pursuit of them.

He encounters, at the outset, "a difficulty" in the legislation of the
Congress of 1793 and in the decision of the Supreme Court of the United
States." But "on examination," says he, "this difficulty will
disappear." Perhaps difficulty so great never vanished so suddenly from
before any other man.

The authority of the Congress of 1793, though it contained so many of
the most distinguished framers of the Constitution, is annihilated by a
few bold strokes of Mr. Sumner's pen. One short paragraph, containing
two ineffably weak arguments, does the business.

The first of these arguments is as follows: "The act of 1793 proceeded
from a Congress that had already recognized the United States Bank,
chartered by a previous Congress, which, though sanctioned by the
Supreme Court, has been since in high quarters pronounced
unconstitutional. If it erred as to the bank, it may have erred also as
to fugitives from labor." We cannot conceive why such an argument should
have been propounded, unless it were to excite a prejudice against the
Congress of 1793 in the minds of those who may be opposed to a National
Bank. For if we look at its conclusion we shall see that it merely aims
to establish a point which no one would deny. It merely aims to prove
that, as the Congress of 1793 was composed of fallible men, "so it may
have erred!" We admit the conclusion, and therefore pass by the inherent
weaknesses in the structure of the argument.

His second argument is this: "But the very act contains a capital
error[217] on this very subject, so declared by the Supreme Court, in
pretending to vest a portion of the judicial power of the nation in
state officers. _This error takes from the act all authority as an
interpretation of the Constitution_. I DISMISS IT." This passage,
considered as an argument, is simply ridiculous. How many of the best
laws ever enacted by man have, in the midst of much that is as clear as
noonday, been found to contain an error! Should all, therefore, have
been blindly rejected? As soon as the error has been detected, has any
enlightened tribunal on earth ever said, "I dismiss" the whole?

By such a process we might have made as short work with Mr. Sumner's
speech. If, after pointing out one error therein, we had dismissed the
whole speech as worthless, we should have imitated his reasoning, and in
our conclusi