character."[115]

[Footnote 115: The above extracts are from Judge Woodbury's charge to
the Grand-Jury, in Circuit Court of United States, at Boston, taken
from the _Evening Traveller_, copying the reprint of Boston Daily
Advertiser, of October 25, 1850.]

He then tells them that _no feeling of Humanity_ must be allowed to
prevent them from executing any law which the court declares to them,
"whether the statute is a harsh one, is not for us to determine."[116]
_A cruel law is to be enforced as vigorously as a humane one_; an
_unjust law_ as a _just one_; a statute which aims to defeat the
purpose of Law itself, just as readily as one which aims to secure the
dearest rights of humanity. If the statute is notoriously wicked, as
in the case supposed, then the Judge says: "It is to be observed that
this statute [the fugitive slave bill] subjects no person to arrest
who was not before liable to be seized and carried out of the State;"
"Congress has enacted this law. _It is imperative, and it will be
enforced._ Let no man mistake the mildness and forbearance with which
the criminal code is habitually administered, [as in cases of engaging
in the slave-trade] for weakness or timidity. _Resistance [to the
fugitive slave bill] must make it sternly inflexible._" "As great
efforts have been made to convince the public that the recent law [the
fugitive slave bill] cannot be enforced with a good conscience, but
may be conscientiously resisted ... I deem it proper to advert,
briefly, to _the moral aspects_ of the subject." "The States without
the constitution would be to each other foreign nations." "Those,
therefore, who have the strongest convictions of the _immorality of
the institution of slavery_, are not thereby authorized to conclude
that the _provision for delivering up fugitive slaves is morally
wrong_, [that is, if it be wrong to hold man in bondage, it is also
not wrong,] or that our Fathers ... did not act wisely, justly, and
humanely in acceding to the compacts of the Constitution." "Even those
who go to the extreme of condemning the Constitution and the laws made
under it, as _unjust and immoral_, cannot ... justify resistance. In
their view, such laws are inconsistent with the justice and
benevolence and against the will of the Supreme Lawgiver, and they
emphatically ask, '_Which shall we obey, the law of man, or the Will
of God?_' I answer, 'OBEY BOTH!' The _incompatibility_ which the
question assumes [between