to _protect men's natural rights_, but
instead of protecting the natural rights of the slaves, it gives
slaveholders license to wrest them from the weak by violence, protects
them in holding their plunder, and _kills_ the rightful owner if he
attempt to recover it.

This is the _protection_ thrown around the rights of American slaves
by the 'public opinion,' of slaveholders; these the restraints that
hold back their masters, overseers, and drivers, from inflicting
injuries upon them!

In a Republican government, _law_ is the pulse of its _heart_--as the
heart beats the pulse beats, except that it often beats _weaker_ than
the heart, never stronger--or to drop the figure, laws are never
_worse_ than those who make them, very often better. If human history
proves anything, cruelty of practice will always go beyond cruelty of
law.

Law-making is a formal, deliberate act, performed by persons of mature
age, embodying the intelligence, wisdom, justice and humanity, of the
community; performed, too, at leisure, after full opportunity had for
a comprehensive survey of all the relations to be affected, after
careful investigation and protracted discussion. Consequently laws
must, in the main, be a true index of the permanent feelings, the
settled _frame of mind_, cherished by the community upon those
subjects, and towards those persons and classes whose condition the
laws are designed to establish. If the laws are in a high degree cruel
and inhuman, towards any class of persons, it proves that the feelings
habitually exercised towards that class of persons, by those who make
and perpetuate those laws, are at least _equally_ cruel and inhuman.
We say _at least equally_ so; for if the _habitual_ state of feeling
towards that class be unmerciful, it must be unspeakably cruel,
relentless and malignant when _provoked_; if its _ordinary_ action is
inhuman, its contortions and spasms must be tragedies; if the waves
run high when there has been no wind, where will they not break when
the tempest heaves them!

Further, when cruelty is the _spirit_ of the law towards a proscribed
class, when it _legalizes great outrages_ upon them, it connives at,
and abets _greater_ outrages, and is virtually an accomplice of all
who perpetrate them. Hence, in such cases, though the _degree_ of the
outrage is illegal, the perpetrator will rarely be convicted, and,
even if convicted, will be almost sure to escape punishment. This is
not _theory_ b