a reason less logical or
satisfactory. You must be an inattentive observer of passing events, if
you are ignorant that the law of 1793 has again and again been denounced
as iniquitous, that some of the States have prohibited their officers
from assisting in its execution, that numberless petitions have been
presented to Congress for its repeal, and that you yourself, instead of
acquiescing in it, solemnly declared it to be the duty of Congress so
far to alter the law, as to grant the alleged fugitive a trial by jury.
Yet the law of 1793, wicked as it was, was justice and mercy compared
with yours. The trials under that were almost invariably before judges
of the State courts, not appointed like your commissioners for the vile
and only purpose of reducing their fellow-men to bondage. There judges
were not confined to _ex parte_ evidence, were not compelled to receive
"as full and conclusive" affidavits made in distant States, and by
unknown persons. For the most part, they honestly endeavoured, by a
patient investigation according to the ordinary rules of evidence, and
by holding the plaintiff to strict legal proof, to supply the want of a
jury.

David Paul Brown, Esq., of Philadelphia, in a letter of last November,
affirms that for the last thirty years he has been engaged as counsel in
almost every important fugitive case brought before the judges and
courts of Philadelphia, and he tells us, "thanks to those upright and
impartial and independent judges by whom the rights of the parties were
finally determined," he knows of no instance in which a colored person
was, in his opinion, wrongfully surrendered. But he adds, "I have known
HUNDREDS who have been illegally and unjustly claimed." This experienced
lawyer, commenting on your law, justly says it allows "_ex parte_
testimony to be received against the alleged fugitive, which, upon no
principle known to the common law, could be received upon the claim to
a horse or a dog." About four weeks after the date of this letter, Mr.
Brown was called to defend an alleged fugitive "illegally and unjustly
claimed," not before one of the "upright and impartial and independent"
Pennsylvania judges, but before one of your ten-dollar slave-catching
judges. I beg you to mark the result.

On the 21st of December, a colored man was arrested in the street in
Philadelphia, without warrant, and accused of stealing chickens. He was
thrust into a carriage, driven to the State-House, carried