ircuit
court room to lecture on the Roman Law. I came to contribute my two
mites of money, and receive his wealth of learning.

2. The next time, I came at the summons of Thomas Sims. For a creature
of the slave-power had spontaneously seized that poor and friendless
boy and thrust him into a dungeon, hastening to make him a slave,--a
beast of burthen. He had been on his mock trial seven days, and had
never seen a Judge, only a commissioner, nor a Jury; no Court but a
solitary kidnapper. Some of his attendants had spoken of me as a
minister not heedless of the welfare and unalienable rights of a black
man fallen among a family of thieves. I went to the court house.
Outside it was belted with chains. In despotic Europe I had seen no
such spectacle, save once when the dull tyrant who oppressed Bavaria
with his licentious flesh, in 1844 put his capital in a brief state of
siege and chained the streets. The official servant of the kidnapper,
club in hand, a policeman of this city, goaded to his task by Mayor
Bigelow and Marshal Tukey,--men congenitally mingled in such
appropriate work,--bade me "Get under the chain." I pressed it down
and went over. The Judges of our own Supreme Court, _they went
under_,--had gone out and in, beneath the chain! How poetry mingles
with fact! The chain was a symbol, and until this day remaineth the
same chain, untaken away in the reading of the fugitive slave bill;
and when the law of Massachusetts is read, the chain is also upon the
neck of that court! Within the court house was full of armed men. I
found Mr. Sims in a private room, illegally, in defiance of
Massachusetts law, converted into a jail to hold men charged with no
crime. Ruffians mounted guard at the entrance, armed with swords,
fire-arms, and bludgeons. The door was locked and doubly barred
besides. Inside the watch was kept by a horrid looking fellow, without
a coat, a naked cutlass in his hand, and some twenty others, their
mouths nauseous with tobacco and reeking also with half-digested rum
paid for by the city. In such company, I gave what consolation
Religion could offer to the first man Boston ever kidnapped,--consolations
which took hold only of eternity, where the servant is free from his
master, for there the wicked cease from troubling. I could offer him
no comfort this side the grave.

3. I visited the United States court a third time. A poor young man
had been seized by the same talons which subsequently griped Sim