opened wide to every servant who_ had any cause whatever for
complaint; if he was unhappy with his master, all he had to do was to
leave him, and _no man_ had a right to deliver him back to him again,
and not only so, but the absconded servant was to _choose_ where he
should live, and no Jew was permitted to oppress him. He left his
master just as our Northern servants leave us; we have no power to
compel them to remain with us, and no man has any right to oppress
them; they go and dwell in that place where it chooseth them, and live
just where they like. Is it so at the South? Is the poor runaway slave
protected _by law_ from the violence of that master whose oppression
and cruelty has driven him from his plantation or his house? No! no!
Even the free states of the North are compelled to deliver unto his
master the servant that is escaped from his master into them. By
_human_ law, under the _Christian Dispensation_, in the _nineteenth
century we_ are commanded to do, what _God_ more than _three thousand_
years ago, under the _Mosaic Dispensation, positively commanded_ the
Jews _not_ to do. In the wide domain even of our free states, there is
not _one_ city of refuge for the poor runaway fugitive; not one spot
upon which he can stand and say, I am a free man--I am protected in my
rights as a _man_, by the strong arm of the law; no! _not one_. How
long the North will thus shake hands with the South in sin, I know
not. How long she will stand by like the persecutor Saul, _consenting_
unto the death of Stephen, and keeping the raiment of them that slew
him. I know not; but one thing I do know, the _guilt of the North_ is
increasing in a tremendous ratio as light is pouring in upon her on
the subject and the sin of slavery. As the sun of righteousness climbs
higher and higher in the moral heavens, she will stand still more and
more abashed as the query is thundered down into her ear, "_Who_ hath
required _this_ at thy hand?" It will be found _no_ excuse then that
the Constitution of our country required that _persons bound to