m being kidnapped,
defending them with a word in Faneuil Hall!

"No tyranny so secure,--none so intolerable,--none so dangerous,--none
so remediless, as that of Executive Courts." "This is a truth all
nations bear witness to--all history confirms." These were the words
of Josiah Quincy, Jr., in 1772.--Gentlemen, in 1855 you see how true
they are! "So sensible are all tyrants of the importance of such
courts--that to advance and establish their system of oppression,
_they never rest until they have completely corrupted or bought the
judges of the land_. I could easily show that the most deep laid and
daring attacks upon the rights of a people might, in some measure, be
defeated, or evaded by upright judicatories; bad laws with good judges
make little progress."[205]

[Footnote 205: Quincy's Quincy, 68.]

But Gentlemen,--when the fugitive slave bill is "_law_," when the
judges are selected for their love of Slavery and their hatred of
freedom--men who invent Scripture to justify bondage, or who as
Lawyers beseech the courts to establish Slavery in Massachusetts; who
declare it is not immoral, that it may be the duty of Massachusetts to
interfere actively and establish slavery abroad, nay, that there is no
morality but only legality, the statute the only standard of right
and wrong--what are you to expect? What you see in Philadelphia, New
York; aye, in Boston at this hour. I will add with Mr. Quincy, "Is it
possible this should not rouse us and drive us not to desperation but
to our duty! The blind may see; the callous must feel; the spirited
will act."[206]

[Footnote 206: Gazette, Feb. 10, 1772.]

It would be just as easy for the Judge to make out divers other crimes
from my words, as to construct a misdemeanor therefrom. To charge me
with "treason," he has only to vary a few words and phrases; to cite
Chase, and not Judge Parker, and to refer to other passages of
Kelyng's Reports. James II.'s judges declared it was treason in the
seven Bishops to offer their petition to the King. Mr. Webster said,
it is only the "clemency of the Government which indicted the Syracuse
rescuers for misdemeanors and not for a capital crime!" How easy for a
fugitive slave bill judge to hang men for a word against his brother
kidnapper--if there were no jury; if, like the New York sheriff in
1735, he could order "his own negro" to do it! Here is a remarkable
case of constructive crime, worthy of this Honorable Court. It is the
famous