n issue. By the tenth section, the claimant may go before
a judge or court in Texas, and there make proof by affidavit that _his_
slave has escaped. Whereupon, the court or judge is to certify that the
proof is satisfactory. A record of this satisfactory proof, together
with a description of the fugitive, is to be made, and a certified
transcript of this record, "being exhibited to any judge, commissioner,
or other officer authorized," &c., "_shall_ be held and taken to be full
and conclusive evidence of the fact of escape, and that the service or
labor of the person escaping is _due_ to the party in such record
mentioned." Here all defence is taken from the defendant. Should he
summon a host of witnesses to prove his freedom, not one could be heard;
should he offer a bill of sale from the claimant to another, it could
not be received; should he produce a deed of manumission, acknowledged
and certified in a Southern court, it would be waste paper. And thus a
man's freedom is to be sacrificed on an affidavit made a thousand miles
off. What, Sir, would you think of a law that would authorize the
seizure and sale of your property to satisfy a debt which any man in
California might think proper to swear, before a Californian judge, was
_due_ from you to him?

Such, Sir, is the _trial_ which you, the representative of Boston, a
descendant of the Pilgrims, and "a gentleman of property and standing,"
have accorded to the poor and oppressed. Did the Constitution require
such a prostitution of justice, such an outrage of humanity, at your
hands? I need not be told that some of your commissioners have not
construed your law as strictly as did the Detroit functionary. Thanks to
the force of public opinion, and to the zeal of some benevolent lawyers,
whose hearts were not padded with cotton, in some instances defendants
have been permitted to call witnesses in their behalf; and some regard
has been paid to the ordinary principles of justice. But in all such
instances, the spirit of the law and the intentions of its framers have
been frustrated.

And now let us listen to your "reason" for justifying all the atrocities
and abominations of your law. You gravely tell us, "The entire
population of the North has acquiesced in the law of 1793, without
thinking itself exposed to the charge of barbarity, and I have only to
say, that I do not think the charge any more just now." Certainly, Sir,
the young colonial judge could not have given