the largest liberty
of speech and action, at the bar, in the press, and in the forum,
carrying those ideas to an extent to which, I confess, with my
comparative conservatism, I have not always seen my way clear to follow.
Therefore, I shall look for as large a liberty as the case will allow me
in addressing myself to this court; in bringing forward all
considerations, in suggesting all possible motives, in commenting upon
all the circumstances that lie about this cause. At the same time I
shall expect from the person who sits clothed with the authority of an
Executive whose will is as powerful as that of any sovereign in
Christendom, except the Czar of the Russias--I shall expect from him no
unnecessary interruptions, no extraordinary appeals, no traveling out of
the usual course of a simple judicial proceeding.

Why is it that the defendant stands here at this bar a prisoner? How is
this extraordinary spectacle to be accounted for? I beg leave to submit
that the whole history is simply this. There has been a law passed in
the year 1850, by the Congress of the United States, which subjects
certain persons, if they be fugitive slaves, or whether they be or not,
subjects them to be arrested and brought into Court, to have the
question of their liberty and that of their seed forever, tried by a so
called judicial tribunal. Those persons are mostly poor. They belong to
an oppressed class. They are the poor plebeians, while we are the
patricians of our community. They are of all the people in the world
those who most need the protection of courts of justice. I think the
court will agree with me that if there is a single duty within the range
of the duties of a counsellor of this court which it is honorable for
him to perform, and in the performance of which he ought to have the
encouragement of the court, it is when he comes forward voluntarily to
offer his services for a man arrested as a fugitive slave. Therefore it
is that I think it somewhat unfortunate the District Attorney should
have thought it necessary to arrest counsel. If there be a person
against whom no intimidation should be used, it is the counsel for a
poor, unprotected fugitive from captivity.--The question is, whether a
man and his posterity forever, the fruit of his body, shall be slave or
free. It is to be decided on legal principles. If there is a case in the
world that calls for legal knowledge and ability--that calls for
counsellors to come in and lab