t be a pretty spectacle?

"Propose to support that bill to the fullest extent, with
all its provisions! Ridiculous talk! Does Mr. Webster
suppose that such a law could be executed in Boston? that
the people of Massachusetts will ever return a single
fugitive slave, under such an act as that? Then he knows his
constituents very little, and proves that he needs
'Instruction.'

"Perpetuate Slavery, we cannot do it. Nothing will save it.
It is girt about by a ring of fire which daily grows
narrower, and sends terrible sparkles into the very centre
of the shameful thing. 'Joint resolutions' cannot save it;
annexations cannot save it--not if we reannex all the West
Indies; delinquent representatives cannot save it;
uninstructed senators, refusing instructions, cannot save
it, no, not with all their logic, all their eloquence, which
smites as an earthquake smites the sea. No, slavery cannot
be saved; by no compromise, no non-intervention, no Mason's
Bill in the Senate. It cannot be saved in this age of the
world until you nullify every ordinance of nature, until you
repeal the will of God, and dissolve the union He has made
between righteousness and the welfare of a people. Then,
when you displace God from the throne of the world, and
instead of His eternal justice, reenact the will of the
Devil, then you may keep Slavery; keep it for ever, keep it
in peace. Not till then.

"The question is, not if slavery is to cease, and soon to
cease, but shall it end as it ended in Massachusetts, in New
Hampshire, in Pennsylvania, in New York; or shall it end as
in St. Domingo? Follow the counsel of Mr. Webster--it will
end in fire and blood. God forgive us for our cowardice, if
we let it come to this, that three millions or thirty
millions of degraded human beings, degraded by us, must wade
through slaughter to their unalienable rights."[208]

[Footnote 208: 2 Occasional Speeches, 164, 165, and 172.]

Gentlemen, that speech was a "seditious libel" by construction!

On the 29th of May, I spoke at the New England Anti-Slavery
Convention, and said:--

"Let us not be deceived about the real question at issue. It
is not merely whether we shall return fugitive slaves
without trial by jury. We will not return them with trial by
jury! neither 'with alacr