numberless Beatitudes of Humanity. Should you command me to be fined
and go to jail, I should take it very cheerfully, counting it more
honor to be inside of a jail in the austere silence of my dungeon,
rather than outside of it, with a faithless Jury, guilty of such
treason to their Country and their God. But, forgive me! you cannot
commit such a crime against Humanity. Pardon the monstrous figure of
my speech,--it is only conceivable, not also possible. These Judges
could do it--their speeches, their actions, that Charge, this
Indictment, proves all that--but you cannot;--not you. You are the
Representatives of the People, the Country, not idiotic in Conscience
and the Affections.

Gentlemen, I am a minister of Religion. It is my function to teach
what is absolutely true and absolutely right. I am the servant of no
sect,--how old soever, venerable and widely spread. I claim the same
religious Rights with Luther and Calvin, with Budha and Mohammed; yes,
with Moses and Jesus,--the unalienable Right to serve the God of
Nature in my own way. I preach the Religion which belongs to Human
Nature, as I understand it, which the Infinite God imperishably writes
thereon,--Natural Piety, love of the infinitely perfect God, Natural
Morality, the keeping of every law He has written on the body and in
the soul of man, especially by loving and serving his creatures. Many
wrong things I doubtless do, for which I must ask the forgiveness of
mankind. But do you suppose I can keep the fugitive slave bill, obey
these Judges, and kidnap my own Parishioners? It is no part of my
"Christianity" to "send the mother that bore me into eternal bondage."
Do you think I can suffer Commissioner Curtis and Commissioner Loring
to steal my friends,--out of my meeting-house? Gentlemen, when God
bids me do right and this Court bids me do wrong, I shall not pretend
to "obey both." I am willing enough to suffer all that you will ever
lay on me. But I will not do such a wrong, nor allow such wickedness
to be done--so help me God! How could I teach Truth, Justice, Piety,
if I stole men; if I allowed Saunders, Jeffreys, Scroggs, or Sharkey,
Grier, Kane, or in one word, Curtis, to steal them? I love my Country,
my kindred of Humanity; I love my God, Father and Mother of the white
man and the black; and am I to suffer the Liberty of America to be
trod under the hoof of Slaveholders, Slave-drivers; yes, of the
judicial slaves of slaveholders' slave-drivers? I w