ch they consider parallel to ours, and
for permitting which they charge us with inconsistency. But the
question really is, whether Massachusetts can join hands and
strength with South Carolina, for the express and avowed purpose of
sustaining Slavery. This she does in the Constitution. For he who
swears to support an instrument of twelve clauses, swears to support
one as well as another,--and though one only be immoral,--still he
swears to do an immoral act. Now, my conviction is, "which fire will
not burn out of me," that to return fugitive slaves is sin--to
promise so to do, and not do it, is, if possible, baser still; and
that any conjunction of circumstances which makes either necessary,
is of the Devil, and not of God.

OBJECTION XIV.

Duty requires of a non-voter to quit the country, and go where his
taxes will not help to build up slavery.

ANSWER. God gave me my birth here. Because bad men about me
"play such tricks before high Heaven, as make the angels weep," does
it oblige me to quit? I have as good right here as they. If they
choose to leave, let them--I Shall remain. 'Twould be a pretty thing,
indeed, if, as often as I found myself next door to a bad man, who
would bring up his children to steal my apples and break my windows,
I were obliged to take the temptation away by cutting down all my
apple trees and moving my house further west, into the wilderness.
This would be, in good John Wesley's phrase, "giving up all the good
times to the devil," with a witness.

OBJECTION XV.

"Society has the right to prescribe the terms, upon the expressed or
implied agreement to comply with which a person may reside within
its limits."

ANSWER. This principle I utterly deny. All that Society has a right
to demand is peaceful submission to its exactions:--_consent_ they
have neither the power nor the right to exact or to imply. Twenty
men live on a lone island. Nineteen set up a government and say,
every man who lives there shall worship idols. The twentieth submits
to all their laws, but refuses to commit idolatry. Have they the
_right_ to say, "Do so, or quit;" or, to say, "If you stay, we
will consider you as impliedly worshipping idols?" Doubtless they
have the _power_, but the majority have no _rights_, except those
which justice sanctions. Will the objector show me the justice of
his principle? I was born here. I ask no man's permission to remain.
All that any man or body of men have a right to infer fr