If you resort to the alleged legal obligation to return fugitives,
it has more plausibility, but has it in reality any firm foundation?
Americans boast of making their own laws, and of amending them
whenever circumstances render it necessary. How, then, can they
excuse themselves, or expect the civilized world to excuse them, for
making, or sustaining, unjust and cruel laws? The Fugitive Slave Act
has none of the attributes of law. If two highwaymen agreed between
themselves to stand by each other in robbing helpless men, women
and children, should we not find it hard work to "conquer our
prejudices" so far as to dignify their bargain with the name of
_law_? That is the light in which the compact between North and
South presents itself to the minds of intelligent slaves, and we
should view it in the same way, if we were in their position. Law
was established to maintain justice between man and man; and this
Act clearly maintains injustice. 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