" 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
worse appear the better reason, still all honest minds have an
intuitive perception that no human enactment which violates God's
laws is worthy of respect. By what law of God can we justify the
treatment of Margaret Garner? the surrender of Sims and Burns? the
pitiless persecution of that poor little "famished hand"?
There is another consideration, which ought alone to have sufficient
weight with us to deter us from attempting to carry out this
tyrannical enactment.
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