acter. Any free citizen with a dark skin, may be arrested on
pretence of being a fugitive slave, and committed to the UNITED STATES'
PRISON, and unless within a certain number of days he proves his
freedom, while immured within its walls, he is, under authority of
Congress, sold as a slave for life. Do you ask why? Let the blood mantle
in your cheeks, while we give you the answer of the LAW--"to pay his
jail fees!!"

[Footnote A: Twelve hundred negroes are thus advertised for in the
National Intelligencer of the 28th of March last. The negroes wanted are
generally from the age of ten or twelve years to twenty-five, and of
both sexes.]

On the 11th of January, 1827, the Committee for the District of
Columbia, (themselves slaveholders) introduced a bill providing that the
jail fees should hereafter be a county charge. The bill did not pass;
and by the late resolution, a statute unparalleled for injustice and
atrocity by any mandate of European despotism, is to be like the law of
the Medes and Persians, that altereth not, since no proposition for its
repeal or modification can be entertained.

The Grand Jury of Alexandria presented the slave trade of that place, as
"disgraceful to our character as citizens of a free government," and as
"a grievance demanding legislative redress;" that is, the interposition
of Congress--but one hundred and seventeen men have decided that there
shall be "no action whatever" by Congress in relation to slavery.

In March, 1816, John Randolph submitted the following resolution to the
House of Representatives: "_Resolved_, That a Committee be appointed to
inquire into the existence of an _inhuman_ and illegal traffic of
slaves, carried on in and through the District of Columbia, and to
report whether any, and what measures are necessary for putting a stop
to the same." The COMPACT had not then been formed and the resolution
_was adopted_. Such a resolution would _now_ "be laid on the table," and
treated with silent contempt.

In 1828, eleven hundred inhabitants of the District presented a petition
to Congress, complaining of the "DOMESTIC SLAVE-TRADE" as a grievance
disgraceful in its character, and "even more demoralizing its influence"
than the foreign traffic. The petition concluded as follows: "The people
of this District have within themselves no means of legislative redress,
and we therefore appeal to your Honorable body as the _only one_ vested
by the American Constitution with power