. they are hereby authorized and
empowered, within their _counties respectively_," to appoint one or more
persons to execute their warrants. So it seems we are to have an
unlimited number of judges and executioners. These executioners,
expressly appointed to catch slaves, and of course among the most
worthless and degraded of the community, are one and all invested with
the power of a high sheriff to call out the _posse comitatus_, not
merely in his own county, but in every hamlet in the State, and require
"good citizens," under pain of fine and imprisonment, to join him in his
execrable hunt. Really, Sir, your "evidence" that the new law is more
favorable to the fugitive than the old one falls short of demonstration.

You thus apologize for not giving the alleged fugitive a trial by jury.
"There was no more trial by jury provided for under the old law than
under the new law. The claim of a jury trial is entirely _new_; never
thought of till modern discussions of the subject begun. For fifty-seven
years our fathers and we have been living under the laws which provided
no such thing, and now one which makes no such provision is denounced in
unmeasured terms as cruel and inhuman. Where have we all been living for
half a century?" Surely, Sir, it is a most logical reason for not
changing a wicked law, that it has been in force for fifty-seven years.
Strange that the legislators of Massachusetts did not perceive the force
of this reasoning when they abolished the laws for hanging witches and
whipping Quakers. Permit me, Sir, to ask, Where had _you_ been living
when _you_ declared it to be the _duty_ of Congress to give the fugitive
a trial by jury, although for fifty-seven years such a trial had been
denied him? You probably forgot, Sir, when giving the above "reason,"
that, not long before you took your seat in Congress, you had, as a
member of the Massachusetts Legislature, voted for the following
resolution, viz.:--"We hold it to be the duty of that body [Congress] to
pass such laws only in regard thereto as will be maintained by the
public sentiment of the free States, where such laws are to be enforced,
and which shall especially secure all persons, whose surrender may be
claimed as having escaped from labor and service in other States, the
right of having the validity of such claim determined by a jury in the
State where such claim is made." So it seems that, while in Boston, you
esteemed it the _especial duty_ of Cong