eed to
accomplish an agreeable purpose? The purpose of that law is
to enable three hundred thousand slaveholders to retake on
our soil the men they once stole on other soil! Most of the
city churches of the North seem to think that is a good
thing. Very well; is it worth while for fifteen million
freemen to transgress the plainest of natural laws, the most
obvious instincts of the human heart, and the plainest
duties of Christianity, for that purpose? The price to pay
is the religious integrity of fifteen million men; the thing
to buy is a privilege for three hundred thousand
slaveholders to use the North as a hunting field whereon to
kidnap men at our cost. Judge you of that bargain."

"I adjure you to reverence a government that is right,
statutes that are right, officers that are right; but to
disobey every thing that is wrong. I intreat you by your
love for your country, by the memory of your fathers, by
your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and holy
love of God which Jesus taught, and you now feel."[216]

[Footnote 216: 2 Parker's Occasional Sermons, p. 392-394.]

You will say all this is but indispensable duty; but the judge who
hanged a man for treason because he promised to make his son "heir to
the Crown"--meaning the "Crown Tavern" that he lived in--would
doubtless find treason in my words also.

On the 12th of April, 1852, I delivered an address to commemorate the
first anniversary of the Kidnapping of Thomas Sims, and said:--

"But when the rulers have inverted their function, and
enacted wickedness into a law which treads down the
unalienable rights of man to such a degree as this, then I
know no ruler but God, no law but natural Justice. I tear
the hateful statute of kidnappers to shivers; I trample it
underneath my feet. I do it in the name of all law; in the
name of Justice and of Man; in the name of the dear God."

"You remember the decision of the Circuit judge,--himself
soon to be summoned by death before the Judge who is no
respecter of persons,--not allowing the destined victim his
last hope, 'the great writ of right.' The decision left him
entirely at the mercy of the other kidnappers. The
Court-room was crowded with 'respectable people,' 'gentlemen
of property and standing:' they received the decision with
'applaus