inflicted on the guilty,
is its injustice when inflicted on the innocent; this terrible penalty
is inflicted on two million seven hundred thousand, innocent persons
in the Southern states.

4. _Self-preservation and self-defence_, are universally regarded as
the most sacred of human rights, yet the laws of slave states punish
the slave with _death_ for exercising these rights in that way, which
in others is pronounced worthy of the highest praise.

5. _The safeguards of law are most needed where natural safe-guards
are weakest._ Every principle of justice and equity requires, that,
those who are totally unprotected by birth, station, wealth, friends,
influence, and popular favor, and especially those who are the
innocent objects of public contempt and prejudice, should be more
vigilantly protected by law, than those who are so fortified by
defence, that they have far less need of _legal_ protection; yet the
poor slave who is fortified by _none_ of these _personal_ bulwarks, is
denied the protection of law, while the master, surrounded by them
all, is panoplied in the mail of legal protection, even to the hair of
his head; yea, his very shoe-tie and coat-button are legal protegees.

6. The grand object of law is to _protect men's natural rights_, but
instead of protecting the natural rights of the slaves, it gives
slaveholders license to wrest them from the weak by violence, protects
them in holding their plunder, and _kills_ the rightful owner if he
attempt to recover it.

This is the _protection_ thrown around the rights of American slaves
by the 'public opinion,' of slaveholders; these the restraints that
hold back their masters, overseers, and drivers, from inflicting
injuries upon them!

In a Republican government, _law_ is the pulse of its _heart_--as the
heart beats the pulse beats, except that it often beats _weaker_ than
the heart, never stronger--or to drop the figure, laws are never
_worse_ than those who make them, very often better. If human history
proves anything, cruelty of practice will always go beyond cruelty of
law.

Law-making is a formal, deliberate act, performed by persons of mature
age, embodying the intelligence, wisdom, justice and humanity, of the
community; performed, too, at leisure, after full opportunity had for
a comprehensive survey of all the relations to be affected, after
careful investigation and protracted discussion. Consequently laws
must, in the main, be a true index of