but merely giving him up, to enable that point to be tried
elsewhere.[186] But, spite of this opinion, public justice and the
Vigilance Committee forced the (Southern) slave-hunters to flee from
Boston, after which, Mr. and Mrs. Craft left America to find safety in
England, the evident rage and fierce threats of the disappointed
Boston slave-hunters making it unsafe for them to remain.

[Footnote 186: On this see Hildreth's Despotism, 262, 280.
Commissioner Loring considers that the fugitive slave bill
commissioners have "_judicial_ duties." Remonstrance to General Court,
2.]

8. After the failure of this attempt to arrest Mr. Craft, Thomas B.
Curtis got up a "Union Meeting" at Faneuil Hall, November 26,
1850.[187] The call was addressed to such as "regard with disfavor all
further popular agitation" of the subject of Slavery. Thomas B. Curtis
called the meeting to order: William W. Greenough, from the "Committee
of Arrangements," presented the resolutions, which you have already
heard.[188] It was said at the time that they were written, wholly or
in part, by Mr. Benjamin R. Curtis, who moved their adoption and made
a long and elaborate speech thereon.

[Footnote 187: See Mr. Curtis's letter in Daily Advertiser of February
7, 1855.]

[Footnote 188: See above, p. 148, 149.]

Gentlemen of the Jury, as I just now gave you some passages from Mr.
Hallett's speech on that occasion, allow me now to read you some
extracts from Mr. Curtis's address. The general aim of the speech was
to reconcile the People to kidnapping; the rhetorical means to this
end were an attempt to show that kidnapping was expedient; that it was
indispensable; that it had been long since agreed to; that the Slaves
were foreigners and had no right in _Massachusetts_. He said:--

"We have come here not to consider particular measures of
government but to assert that we have a government, not to
determine whether this or that law be wise or just, but to
declare that there is law, and its duties and power."

"Every sovereign State has and must have the right to judge
_what persons from abroad_ shall be admitted."

"Are not these persons [fugitive slaves] foreigners as to
us--and what right have they to come here at all, _against
the will of the legislative power of the State_.
[Massachusetts had no legislation forbidding them!] And if
their coming here or remaining here, is not consistent with