a. At first, when
they carried a fugitive slave from Boston, they thought it was a
difficult thing to do it. They had to get a Mayor to help them; they
had to put chains round the Court House; they had to call out the
'Sims Brigade'; it took nine days to do it. Now, they are so confident
that we are subjects of Virginia, that they do not even put chains
round the Court House; the police have nothing to do with it. I was
told to-day that one of the officers of the city said to twenty-eight
police-men, 'If any man in the employment of the city meddles in this
business, he will be discharged from service, without a hearing.'
[Great applause.] Well, gentlemen, how do you think they received
that declaration? They shouted, and hurrahed, and gave three cheers.
[Renewed applause.] My friend here would not have had the honor of
presiding over you to-night, if application had been made a little
sooner to the Mayor. Another gentleman told me that, when that man
(the Mayor) was asked to preside at this meeting, he said that he
regretted that all his time to-night was previously engaged. If he had
known it earlier, he said, he might have been able to make
arrangements to preside. When the man was arrested, he told the
Marshal he regretted it, and that his sympathies were wholly with the
slave. [Loud applause.] Fellow-citizens, remember that word. Hold your
Mayor to it, and let it be seen that he has got a background and a
foreground, which will authorize him to repeat that word in public,
and act it out in Faneuil Hall. I say, so confident are the slave
agents now, that they can carry off their slave in the daytime, that
they do not put chains round the Court House; they have got no
soldiers billeted in Faneuil Hall, as in 1851. They think they can
carry this man off to-morrow morning in a cab. [Voices--'They can't do
it.' 'Let's see them try.']

"I say, there are two great laws in this country. One is the slave
law. That is the law of the President of the United States; it is the
law of the Commissioner; it is the law of every Marshal, and of every
meanest ruffian whom the Marshal hires to execute his behests.

"There is another law, which my friend, Mr. Phillips, has described in
language such as I cannot equal, and therefore shall not try; I only
state it in its plainest terms. It is the Law of the People when they
are sure they are right and determined to go ahead. [Cheers and much
confusion.]

"Now, gentlemen, there was a