a blow at the domestic slave trade; and the result was, that he was prosecuted civilly and criminally; he was thrown into prison; he was mulcted in heavy damages in a libel suit; he went to prison, and there remained until the northern colonizationists paid his fine and set this young liberator free. He returned to the North, but the doors of the churches that were open to his teachings before, were rusted and fixed on their hinges when he went back to denounce the cruelty of slavery and the slave trade. He announced his intention to speak on Boston Common, as at least one place under the broad canopy of heaven in which he could give utterance to his conscientious convictions of truth; but he found that northern sentiment was as unwilling to be disturbed upon this slavery question, nay, more so, than southern opinions. But this man, gentle, loving, peaceable, truthful, just, but inflexible, was resolved not to be put down, North or South, and the result was the publication of this paper, the first number of which I hold in my hand, and in which he announces his intention to prosecute this war upon slavery to the end.

"I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." That is from the first number of the Liberator, published in 1831, by William Lloyd Garrison. It has sometimes seemed to me that that man was sent from heaven in answer to the poet's prayer, and to meet the time's necessity:

"We need, methinks, the prophet heroes still,
Saints true of life, and martyrs strong of will,
To tread the land even now, as Xavier trod
The streets of Goa, barefoot, with his bell
Proclaiming freedom in the name of God,
And startling tyrants with the fear of hell."

Hon. C. B. Sedgwick, 1860.

NORTHERN SENTIMENT ON THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.

LET me assure gentlemen, that they deceive themselves if they suppose that there is any real difference in sentiment among northern people in relation to this law. All parties wink at its evasion, and all sympathy is with the fugitive who proves, by a successful flight, that there is enough man in him to make an earnest effort for freedom. He who can suppress such sympathy, and on the requisition of the mar

shal under the fifth section, attempts to show that he is a good citizen by "aiding and assisting in the prompt and efficient execution of this law, whenever his services are required," ought himself to be a slave.

The gentleman from Virginia* tried to frighten Republicans from voting for Governor Pennington for Speaker, by saying he was in favor of the law. I presume he is, theoret ically that he is a law and order man, and has a general notion that laws should be obeyed. It would have staggered me if I had fully believed the charge; for I hold that any man who really approves the law of 1850, and believes in it, is only fit to hold some very mean position in the gift of a certain gentleman in sables, whose name should not be mentioned to ears polite. But I remember a conversation one morning in which he had told me of a chained coffe of twenty-five human beings who, driven by armed and brutal drivers, had passed within sight and hearing of this hall that morning for a southern market. There was but little said between us-language can do no justice to such a subjectbut I looked into his eye, and I marked the compressed lip and heaving chest, which gave evidence to me of a human heart within; and I thought, as I gave him my vote that if one of those purchased slaves should escape the chain, and the rifle, and the blood-hounds, and the hunters, and the marshals and commissioners, and, guided by the light which yet emanates from the battle-fields of the revolution, cross the brave little state of New Jersey, and should make his way to that stately and hospitable mansion upon the heights of Newark, and should ask for food and shelter, and recite the story of his wrongs, I did think and believe, and I do still think and believe, that he would interpose the "broad seal” of his humanity between him and the fugitive slave bill. I think I can hear him repeat, as he blesses the stranger at parting, warmed, and fed, and clothed, and having scrip for his journey, the hospitable lines of the poet:

"And stranger is a holy name;

Guidance and rest, and food and fire
In vain he never must require."

I am not, sir, a believer in the doctrine that a bad, infamous, and unconstitutional enactment-I cannot call it law— should be obeyed until it is repealed. I have not so learned the true spirit and theory of free and democratic government. No citizen would ever be sustained in any factious resistance

Mr. Garnett.

to just and equal laws upon any light and trivial ground of inconvenience, or even unavoidable and unintentional hardships; but where a real question of personal and civil rights and liberty is involved, or the rights of conscience are invaded, it is the duty of the citizen to resist. In a question. of right and conscience the individual citizen is the final judge, and not the government or any branch thereof, executive, judicial, or legislative. If the encroachments of the government are generally tyrannous and oppressive, so that they become intolerable, there is the well-established remedy in the people-the right of revolution. If the tyranny does not reach the whole state, nor call for that last resort of an oppressed people, but only is directed at a sect, a class, or even an individual, there is the equally clear and indisputable right of peaceful resistance short of revolution. So the Friend resists the law compelling him to bear arms, and the Catholic the test oaths. By suffering the penalties of an unjust and wicked law, public attention is called to injustice, and the wholesome truth is taught that

"Firm endurance wins at last
More than the sword."

And so I contend that no citizen in a republic discharges his duty who fails to bring an infamous law into public odium and disgrace, and steadfastly to resist its encroachments. So old Eleazer taught, when he refused to eat the flesh abhorred by his conscience and his religion, or even to seem to eat it; and rather than submit to the law which demanded it, went manfully to the torment, lest he should bring reproach upon his gray hair, and the excellency of his ancient and honorable years; and so he died, leaving a notable example of courage, not to young men only, but to all generations. This was the teaching of Milton, and Hampden, and Sidney, and in our own age and land, of Otis and Adams, and the patriots and martyrs of the revolution. And I regard it as a sign of the degeneracy of the times, that the test of good citizenship in a free government has come to be blind and unresisting submission to judicial or legislative, any more than to executive tyranny; and "if this be treason, make the most of it." Hon. Charles B. Sedgwick, 1860.

THE NORTH, NOT THE SOUTH, ASK LEGISLATIVE AID.

THE Senator from Ohio says that the non-slaveholding States desire nothing from this Government, but the records of this country sustain precisely the reverse of this statement. If the South has, as he alleges, governed this country, she has served it with unselfish devotion. You may repeal, obliterate, burn up every law in the whole eleven volumes of your laws, and not a human being in my State would be affected a single farthing in his industrial pursuits, in his material interests; and the statement is generally true of every State from this to the Rio Grande. I have for fifteen years been an humble representative of the people of Georgia in your national councils, and no man in Georgia has ever asked me, or petitioned you through me or others, as far as I know, to seek the aid of your laws in his industrial pursuits; they have sought no protection against competition at home or abroad for their industry of any kind. They have toiled in their fields and workshops; in the forest and at their firesides; in their mines and at their forges; in winter and summer, without seeking or desiring at your hands any aid to put their burden on other people's backs. They have sought no exclusive privileges, no protection, no bounties, at your hands. They have paid their taxes, fought the battles of their country, and claim only at your hands the peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of their own honest toil.

But this has not been the case with the people of the nonslaveholding States. From 1789 to this day, a continual, incessant cry has come up to the Capitol from them for protection, prohibition, and bounties. Give, give, give, has been the steady cry of New England; the middle States of the North have been equally urgent. The fisherman has asked for bounties on his fish; the ship-builder for prohibition against foreign competition; the ship-owner for navigation laws; the manufacturer, the artisan, and the worker in mines, has clamored for protection against "the pauper labor of Europe." The Government has listened, and granted their requests. And your statute books are filled with enactments responding to their cries. There has been scarcely a blow struck in any pursuit throughout the non-slaveholding States-in her mines, her forges, her workshops, and her manufactories of all kinds -for the last forty years, which has not been fostered and invigorated by a bounty, a prohibition, or protection of from fifteen to one hundred per cent. on its products. Nineteen twentieths of the whole legislation of Congress is for and on

account of non-slaveholding States. We have asked none, sought none. My business here, and that of my colleagues from the South, has been chiefly to mitigate your exactions. Day after day are we reminded of the strong declaration of a distinguished representative from South Carolina, that neither he nor his constituents ever felt the Federal Government except by its exactions. Apart from the protection which the very fact of living in a powerful Government gives us against foreign aggression, our portion of the benefits of the Federal Government are difficult to estimate. We have not generally complained of this inequality; our pursuits were different; we were content that the great interests of the country were benefited, though to a large extent at our cost. As countrymen, we listened kindly to your petitions to protect you against your foreign competitors. We had none; we had not been taught to consider ourselves as aliens in your part of a common country. This has changed. The fault lies not at our door. Hon. Robert Toombs, 1860.

DRED SCOTT DECISION.

SIR, if there ever was a "holding" on earth that would warrant a man in saying that he held it in utter contempt, it is what is called the Dred Scott decision; so manifestly a usurpation of power, so manifestly done in order to give a bias to political action, that no man, though he be a fool, can fail to see it.

What was the case? An old negro, whom age had rendered valueless, happens to fall in the way of the politicians at a period when it was thought exceedingly desirable that the question of congressional authority over slavery in the Territories shall be tried, and Dred Scott prosecutes for his liberty in the Federal courts; and, by the way, after he had prosecuted his case through, and his liberty was denied him by the court, I believe, the very next day, the master gave him his liberty. He had served the purposes of the politicians, and they ought to have given him a pension for life for having been the John Doe of the transaction. I do not know of what authority the case may be, but its getting-up looks to me exceedingly suspicious. There was a concurrence of circumstances that very rarely happen of themselves. Old Dred Scott sued for his freedom, and a plea was put in that he, being a descendant of an African, and his ancestors slaves, he could not sue in that court; he had no right to be