ocrat an itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They
beheld it in 'the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made
him the very tool for their purpose. The little creature has struck at
the right of petition. A paltrier hand never struck at a noble right.
The Eagle Right of Petition, so loftily sacred in the eyes of the
Constitution that Congress can't begin to 'abridge' it, in its pride of
place, is hawked at by this crested jay-bird. A 'mousing owl' would have
seen better at midnoon than to have done it. It is an idiot blue-jay,
such as you see fooling about among the shrub oaks and dwarf pitch pines
in the winter. What an ignominious death to the lofty right, were it to
die by such a hand; but it does not die. It is impalpable to the
'malicious mockery' of such vain blows.' We are glad it is done--done by
the South--done proudly, and in slaveholding style, by the hand of a
vassal. What a man does by another he does by himself, says the maxim.
But they will disown the honor of it, and cast it on the despised 'free
nigger' North."

Or this description--not very flattering to the "Old Commonwealth"--of
the treatment of the agent of Massachusetts in South Carolina:--

"Slavery may perpetrate anything, and New England can't see it. It can
horsewhip the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and spit in her
governmental face, and she will not recognize it as an offence. She sent
her agent to Charleston on a State embassy. Slavery caught him, and sent
him ignominiously home. The solemn great man came back in a hurry. He
returned in a most undignified trot. He ran; he scampered,--the stately
official. The Old Bay State actually pulled foot, cleared, dug, as they
say, like any scamp with a hue and cry after him. Her grave old Senator,
who no more thought of having to break his stately walk than he had of
being flogged at school for stealing apples, came back from Carolina upon
the full run, out of breath and out of dignity. Well, what's the result?
Why, nothing. She no more thinks of showing resentment about it than she
would if lightning had struck him. He was sent back 'by the visitation
of God;' and if they had lynched him to death, and stained the streets of
Charleston with his blood, a Boston jury, if they could have held inquest
over him, would have found that he 'died by the visitation of God.' And
it would have been crowner's quest law, Slavery's crowners."

Here is a specimen of his g