id believe; for I think
every human being has a just claim to freedom, unless guilty of some
crime. The system of slavery is founded on the grossest and most
manifest injustice."

"It is sanctioned by the law of the land," answered the claimant; "and
you have no right to fly in the face of the laws."

Friend Hopper contented himself with saying, "If I have broken any law,
I stand ready to meet the consequences. But no law can make wrong
right."

The speculator spent several days in fruitless search after the
fugitive. When he had relinquished all hopes of finding her, he called
on Isaac T. Hopper and offered to manumit her for four hundred dollars.
He replied, "At one time, we would gladly have given that sum; but now
the circumstances of the case are greatly changed, and we cannot consent
to give half that amount." After considerable controversy he finally
agreed to take one hundred and fifty dollars. The money was paid, and
the deed of manumission made out in due form. At parting, the claimant
said, with a very bitter smile, "I hope I may live to see you south of
the Potomac some day."

Friend Hopper replied, "Thou hadst better go home and repent of sins
already committed, instead of meditating the commission of more."

When telling this story in after years, he was wont to say, "I am aware
that some will disapprove of the part I acted in that case; because they
will regard it as inconsistent with the candor which men ought always to
practice toward each other. I can only say that my own conscience has
never condemned me for it. I could devise no other means to save the
poor victim."

Before we decide to blame Friend Hopper more than he blamed himself in
this matter, it would be well to imagine how we ourselves should have
felt, if we had been witnesses of the painful scene, instead of reading
it in cool blood, after a lapse of years. If a handsome and modest woman
stood before us with her weeping little ones, asking permission to lead
a quiet and virtuous life, and a pitiless law was about to tear her from
husband and children and consign her to the licentious tyrant from whom
she had escaped, should we not be strongly tempted to evade such a law
by any means that offered at the moment?

It would be wiser to expend our moral indignation on statesmen who
sanction and sustain laws so wicked, that just and kind-hearted citizens
are compelled either to elude them, or to violate their own honest
convictions and t