"Slaves, obey your masters," "a comfortable
Scripture" truly; a beatitude for the stealers of men!

Gentlemen of the Jury, that was the language of Mr. Peleg Sprague at
the time when the State of Georgia offered $5,000 for the head of Mr.
Garrison; when the Governors of Virginia and other Slave States, sent
letters to the Governor of Massachusetts asking for "penal statutes"
to prohibit our discussion in Boston; it was the very year that a mob
of "Gentlemen of Property and Standing" in Boston broke up a meeting
of women assembled to endeavor to abolish Slavery. Gentlemen of the
Jury, Mr. Sprague had his reward--he sits on the bench to try me for a
"misdemeanor"--"obstructing, resisting, and opposing an officer of the
United States," "while in the discharge of his duty" to steal a man in
Boston, that his "owner" might sell him in Richmond. The "chief
commandment" of the New Testament is, "Slaves, obey your masters;" on
that commandment he would now hang all the law, and the Abolitionists.

It would take a long time to tell the dark, sad tale of the trial of
the Shadrach Rescuers; how the Judge constructed and charged the Jury;
how he constructed his "law." It was the old story of the Stuart
despotism, wickedness in the name of the law and with its forms.
Gentlemen, in that trial you saw the value of the jury. The Judges of
Massachusetts went under the chain which the kidnappers placed about
the Court House in 1851. The Federal Judges sought to kidnap the
citizens of Boston and to punish all such as opposed man-stealing. The
Massachusetts Judges allowed the law, which they had sworn to execute,
to be struck down to the ground; nay, themselves sought to strike it
down. The Federal Judges perverted the law to make it an instrument of
torture against all such as love mankind. But the jury held up the
Shield of Justice, and the poisoned weapons of the court fell blunted
to the ground. The government took nothing by that motion--nothing but
defeat. There was no conviction. One of the jurors said, "You may get
one Hunker on any panel; it is not easy to get twelve. There was no
danger of a conviction." But still it is painful to think in what
peril our lives and our liberties then were.

(5.) At length came the "Burns case." You know it too well. On the
night of Wednesday, May 26, 1854, in virtue of Commissioner Loring's
warrant, Anthony Burns was arrested on the charge of burglary, and
thrust into jail. The next morning he wa