ave failed to
offer the shadow of a vindication.

A Virginian comes to Boston, and there seizes one of the inhabitants as
his slave. The man claimed declares the claim to be false and
fraudulent. Here, then, is an issue both of law and of fact between two
men equally entitled to the protection of law; for the man claimed is on
every presumption of law and justice to be regarded as free, till the
contrary is proved. The issue between these two men is, I have said, one
of fact and of law. Is the person seized the man he is said to be? This
is a question of fact. Admitting his identity, is he a slave, and, if
so, does he belong to the claimant? These are both questions of law,
resting upon facts to be proved. Those familiar with the reports of
Southern courts know that the title to slaves is a frequent matter of
litigation, involving intricate questions respecting the validity of
wills, the construction of deeds, the partition of estates, and the
claims of creditors. By carrying a slave into a free State, the owner
forfeits his title to him while there, and cannot reclaim him; and hence
the acts of the claimant himself may be involved in the issue. And now,
Sir, I ask, have you ever known, or can you conceive of, any issue at
law respecting the title to property so awfully momentous to a defendant
as the one we are considering? Were your son or daughter the defendant
in such an issue, would you not rejoice to purchase a favorable judgment
by the contribution of the last cent of your great wealth? Let us, then,
proceed to inquire what provision _you_, in the fear of God and the love
of justice and humanity, have made for the trial of this tremendous
issue,--an issue on the result of which all the hopes of a fellow-man
for the life that is, and for that which is to come, are suspended.

In the first place, What is the pecuniary value of the plaintiff's claim
to _himself_?--for it would be an insult to humanity to estimate in
dollars and cents the blessings of liberty and of the conjugal and
parental relations to the unhappy defendant. You have yourself fixed the
value of the plaintiff's claim at _one thousand dollars_. So far, then,
the issue is, by your own showing, within the constitutional guarantee
of trial by jury in all suits at common law where the matter in
controversy is of the value of _twenty_ dollars. But is the claim made
by the plaintiff "a suit at common law"? What is a _suit_? The Supreme
Court thus answers