n public life, give great weight to his
opinions, made a speech at a Whig Convention in Boston, 1854, from
which I extract the following:--"The circumstances in which the
people of Massachusetts are placed are undeniably insupportable.
What has been seen, what has been felt, by every man, woman and
child in this metropolis, and in this community? and virtually by
every man, woman and child in Massachusetts? We have seen our Court
House in chains, two battalions of dragoons, eight regiments of
artillery, twelve companies of infantry, the whole constabulary
force of the city police, the entire disposable marine of the United
States, with its artillery loaded for action, all marching in
support of a Praetorian Band, consisting of one hundred and twenty
friends and associates of the U.S. Marshal, with loaded pistols and
drawn swords, and in military costume and array; and for what
purpose? _To escort and conduct a poor trembling slave from a Boston
Court House to the fetters and lash of his master!_

"This scene, thus awful, thus detestable, every inhabitant of this
metropolis, nay, every inhabitant of this Commonwealth, may be
compelled again to witness, at any time, and every day in the year,
at the will or the whim of the meanest and basest slaveholder of the
South. Is there a man in Massachusetts with a spirit so low, so
debased, so corrupted by his fears, or his fortune, that he is
prepared to say this is a condition of things to be endured in
perpetuity by us? and that this is an inheritance to be transmitted
by us to our children, for all generations? For so long as the
fugitive-slave clause remains in the Constitution, unobliterated, it
is an obligation perpetual upon them, as well as upon us.

"The obligation incumbent upon the Free States _must be obliterated
from the Constitution, at every hazard_. I believe that, in the
nature of things, by the law of God, and the laws of man, _that
clause is at this moment abrogated, so far as respects common
obligation_. In 1789, the Free States agreed to be field-drivers and
pound-keepers for the Slaveholding States, within the limits, and
according to the fences, of the old United States. But between that
year and this A.D. 1854, the slaveholders have broken down the old
boundaries, and opened new fields, of an unknown and indefinite
extent.[1] They have multiplied their slaves by millions, and are
every day increasing their numbers, and extending their field into
the wil