wyers say--that
slavery might, by legal comity, exist in Massachusetts--that slaves
were property by the law of nations; and that an ownership which is
legal in the West Indies continued in Boston, at least so far as to
leave the right to seize and carry away.

Mr. Charles P. Curtis had already appeared as counsel for a
slave-hunter in 1832, and had succeeded in restoring a slave child,
only twelve or fourteen years of age, to his claimant who took him to
Cuba with the valuable promise that he should be free in the Spanish
West Indies.[184]

[Footnote 184: Daily Advertiser, Dec. 7th, 1832. Mr. Sewall, the early
and indefatigable friend of the slave, asked the Court to appoint a
guardian _ad litem_ for the child, who was not 14, who should see that
he was not enslaved. But the slaveholder's counsel objected, and the
Judge (Shaw) refused; yet to his honor be it said in a similar case in
1841, when Mr. Sewall was counsel for a slave child under the same
circumstances, he delivered him to a guardian appointed by the Probate
Court. 3 Metcalf, 72.]

In the Med case Mr. Benjamin R. Curtis made a long and elaborate
argument to show that "a citizen of a slaveholding State, who comes to
Massachusetts for a temporary purpose of business or pleasure and
brings his slave as a personal attendant, may restrain that slave for
the purpose of carrying him out of the State and returning him to the
domicil of his owner." To support this proposition, he made two
points:--

"1. That this child by the law of Louisiana is _now_ a slave."

"2. That the law of Massachusetts will so far recognize and give
effect to the law of Louisiana, as to allow the master to exercise
this restricted power over his slave." That is, the power to keep her
here as a slave, to remove her to Louisiana, and so make her a slave
for ever and her children after her.

To prove this last point he says by quotation, "we always _import_,
together with their persons, _the existing relations of foreigners
between themselves_." So as we "import" the natural relation of
husband and wife, or parent and child, in the Irish immigrants, and
respect the same, we ought equally to import and respect the unnatural
and forcible relation of master and slave in our visitors from Cuba or
Louisiana.

"It will be urged," he said, "that though we claim to
exercise only a qualified and limited right over the slave,
namely the right to remove him from the State, yet if