e a marshal or commissioner
for being a little slow to catch a slave. Men will talk loud
in public meetings, but they have some conscience after all,
at home. And though they howl down the 'Higher law' in a
crowd, yet conscience will make cowards of them all, when
they come to lay hands on a Christian man, more innocent
than they, and send him into slavery for ever! One of the
commissioners of Boston talked loud and long, last Tuesday,
in favor of keeping the law. When he read his litany against
the law of God, and asked if men would keep the 'Higher
law,' and got 'Never' as the welcome, and amen for
response--it seemed as if the law might be kept, at least by
that commissioner, and such as gave the responses to his
creed. But slave-hunting Mr. Hughes, who came here for two
of our fellow-worshippers, in his Georgia newspaper, tells a
different story. Here it is from the 'Georgia Telegraph,' of
last Friday. 'I called at eleven o'clock at night, at his
[the commissioner's] residence, and stated to him my
business, and asked him for a warrant, saying that if I
could get a warrant, I could have the negroes [William and
Ellen Craft] arrested. He said the law did not authorize a
warrant to be issued: that it was my duty to go and arrest
the negro without a warrant, and bring him before him!' This
is more than I expected. 'Is Saul among the prophets?' The
men who tell us that the law must be kept, God willing, or
against His will--there are Puritan fathers behind them
also; Bibles in their houses; a Christ crucified, whom they
think of; and a God even in their world, who slumbers not,
neither is weary, and is as little a respecter of parchments
as of persons! They know there is a people, as well as
politicians, a posterity not yet assembled, and they would
not like to have certain words writ on their tomb-stone.
'Traitor to the rights of mankind,' is no pleasant epitaph.
They, too, remember there is a day after to-day; aye, a
forever; and 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto one of
the least of these my brethren, ye have not done it unto
me,' is a sentence they would not like to hear at the day of
judgment."[214]

[Footnote 214: 2 Parker's Occasional Sermons, pp. 298-300, 301, 302,
304, 305.]

Gentlemen, you see by the faces of this Honora