. Law was instituted to protect the
weak from the strong; this Act delivers the weak completely into the
arbitrary power of the strong, "Law is a rule of conduct, prescribed
by the supreme power, commanding what is right, and forbidding what
is wrong." This is the commonly received definition of law, and
obviously, none more correct could be substituted for it. The
application of it would at once annul the Fugitive Slave Act, and
abolish slavery. That Act reverses the maxim. It commands what is
wrong, and forbids what is right. It commands us to trample on the
weak and defenceless, to persecute the oppressed, to be accomplices
in defrauding honest laborers of their wages. It forbids us to
shelter the homeless, to protect abused innocence, to feed the
hungry, to "hide the outcast." Let theological casuists argue as
they will, Christian hearts _will_ shrink from thinking of Jesus as
surrendering a fugitive slave; or of any of his apostles, unless it
be Judas. Political casuists may exercise their skill in making the
worse appear the better reason, still all honest minds have an
intuitive perception that no human enactment which violates God's
laws is worthy of respect. By what law of God can we justify the
treatment of Margaret Garner? the surrender of Sims and Burns? the
pitiless persecution of that poor little "famished hand"?

There is another consideration, which ought alone to have sufficient
weight with us to deter us from attempting to carry out this
tyrannical enactment. All history, and all experience, show it to be
an immutable law of God, that whosoever injures another, injures
himself in the process. These frequent scuffles between despotism
and freedom, with despotism shielded by law, cannot otherwise than
demoralize our people. They unsettle the popular mind concerning
eternal principles of justice. They harden the heart by familiarity
with violence. They accustom people to the idea that it is right for
Capital to own Labor; and thus the reverence for Liberty, which we
inherited from our fathers, will gradually die out in the souls of
our children. We are compelled to disobey our own consciences, and
repress all our humane feelings, or else to disobey the law. It is
a grievous wrong done to the people to place them between these
alternatives. The inevitable result is to destroy the sanctity of
law. The doctrine that "might makes right," which our rulers consent
to teach the people, in order to pacify slaveh