rom justice, or be found in another
State, shall, on demand of the Executive authority of the
State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to
the State having jurisdiction of the crime."

It has never been pretended that Congress has any power to act in
such cases. There is no clause _delegating any power to the United
States_; consequently, all proceedings on the subject have been left
to the several States.

The fourth compact is:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of
any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such
service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due."

If the framers of the Constitution had meant that Congress should
have power to pass a law for delivering up fugitives "held to
service or labor," they would have inserted a clause _delegating
such power_, as they did in the compact concerning "public acts and
records." The Constitution does _not_ delegate any such power to the
United States. Consequently, Congress had no constitutional right to
pass the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the States are under no
constitutional obligation to obey it.

The Hon. Horace Mann, one of Massachusetts' most honored sons, in
his able speech on this subject in Congress, 1851, said:--"In view
of the great principles of civil liberty, out of which the
Constitution grew, and which it was designed to secure, my own
opinion is that this law cannot be fairly and legitimately supported
on constitutional grounds. Having formed this opinion with careful
deliberation, I am bound to speak from it and to act from it. I have
read every argument and every article in defence of the law, from
whatever source emanating. Nay, I have been more anxious to read the
arguments made in its favor, than the arguments against it; and I
think I have seen a sound legal answer to all the former." * * *
"It is a law that might be held constitutional by a bench of
slaveholders, whose _pecuniary interests_ connect them directly with
slavery; or by those who have surrendered themselves to a
pro-slavery policy from _political hopes_. But if we gather the
opinions of unbiassed and disinterested men, of those who have no
_money_ to make, and no _office_ to hope for, through the triumph of
this law, then I think the preponderance of opinion is decidedly
agai