Sumner on Fugitive Slaves (Slavery / Civil War)

                                      Sumner On Fugitive Slaves

We have no disposition to treat Mr Sumner, one of our senators in congress, otherwise than with the respect due to his station, to his learning and ability, and his private virtues. But with the party he has joined, and to which he gives an earnest and energetic support, we have not the least conceivable sympathy. We are, as our readers well know, utterly opposed to that party, not from sympathy with slavery, but from love of liberty and from devotion to the constitution. As the friend of social order, as the advocate of wise and practicable government, and as the defender, according to the measure of our poor ability, of genuine American republicanism, we are obliged to oppose with all our might the anarchical and despotic doctrines it holds and seeks to propagate, because those doctrines cannot prevail in this country without involving the subversion of constitutional government, the disruption of society, and the destruction of all possible guaranties of freedom, whether for white men or black men.

It is by no means our present purpose to discuss the question of slavery on its merits. We are personally, in feeling and principle, as much opposed to slavery in any and every form as Mr. Sumner and his party, and take as deep an interest as they in the real welfare of the negro race. We do not admit that free-soilers and abolitionists enjoy a monopoly of the love of liberty, or in interest of the slave population. We are men as well as they; we are human, with human understandings and human hearts, as well as they; and nothing human is more foreign to us than to them. We throw back upon them their charges against those who do not see proper to join them, and assure them that we are as far from conceding either their infallibility or their impeccability as they are from conceding ours. We recognize in no self-constituted party, sect, or association, the authority to declare the moral law binding in conscience. According to their own rule of private judgement, we stand on as high ground as they, and to deny to them the right to make those arrogant assumptions in which they so liberally deal. If private judgement is good for them, it is good for us, and our private judgement, since opposed to theirs, reduces it, even if theirs reduces ours, to zero. 

But we are not among those who say, Finis justificat media, or who under pretext to philanthropy hold themselves at liberty to trample down more good in going to their end than they could possibly secure by gaining it. It is never lawful to do evil that good may come. There is a wrong as well as a right way of seeking even lawful ends, and he may well distrust his intentions who seeks to realize them by means obviously unjust, imprudent, or rash. Men are held to prudent as well as just, and there is seldom gross imprudence where there is not some lack of a clear perception or a sincerely love of justice. The end proposed by abolitionists and free-soilers is the emancipation of the negro slaves in the United States. This end, in itself considered, is lawful; for all men, under the law of nature, are born free, and slavery is the normal condition of no man or race of men. The negro is a man, a man sprung from the same original stock from which the whites have sprung, and the same blood courses in his veins that courses through our own. He had the same first parents on earth, he has the same Heavenly Father, and the same Redeemer; he is placed under the same moral and religious law, and may aspire to the same heaven. We should belie our convictions as a man, and our faith as a Christian, were we to deny this, and we should disgrace our manhood, and sink into a miserable moral coward, were we to fear to assert it when or where its assertion is required. That negro slave is my brother. For him as well as for me Christ has died on the cross. He has an immortal soul as precious as my own, and he may reign with the saints in heaven, while I may be doomed to suffer eternally with the devil and his angels in hell. Nothing shall make us forswear the unity of the race, or fear to assert the common brotherhood of all men, white, red or black.

But what conclude from all this? That no man, in any circumstances whatever, can have a god title to the bodily services of another? By no means; for otherwise the father could have no property in the bodily services of his son, the master in those of his apprentice, the creditor in those of his debtor. Nothing can be concluded but that one cannot have the dominion of the soul or the conscience of another, that the property of the master extends only to the bodily services of his servant, and that he must leave him his moral freedom unabridged, and full liberty to obey in all things the natural and devine laws obligatory alike upon all men. The master may have property in the bodily services of the slave by various titles, among which is that of services rendered him, benefits conferred on him, care taken of him in his infancy, maintaining him, nursing him when sick, or making provision for him in old age. It may be in the actual state of things the best practicable condition of the slave that he should remain under the guardianship or as the ward of the master, who, in consideration of the right to his bodily services, shall take upon himself the whole charge of his care and maintenance, on the same principle that minors and persons not regarded as competent to manage for themselves are, even in the free states, placed by the law under guardians. In a state which authorizes slavery, or recognizes property in slaves, the master has a title, whatever it be as against the slave, that is good against the state. If the public has by its laws permitted slavery, recognized the master's title as good, it cannot in justice abolish it, without full indemnification. If the state has legalized a wrong, it may undoubtedly undo it, and is even bound to do so, but not at the expense of the individual citizen. The abolitionist therefore, who calls upon the public authorities to emancipate the slaves without just compensation to the masters, calls upon it to commit gross injustice. This should for ever shut the mouth of every abolitionist, for every one, without exception, we believe, holds that compensation would itself be a wrong, as it would recognize the title of the master.

But waiving this for the moment, we may oppose the free-soil and abolition movements on the ground that their complete success would, in the present state of things, prove a serious injury to the negro race on this continent. We have no great admiration for the so-called "patriarchal institution" of slavery, and we think that many ameliorations of it are not only possible, but imperatively demanded. But we must treat it as a practical question. The negroes are here, and here they will remain, unless exterminated; for the project of sending them all back to Africa is perfectly visionary. Now, no man of ordinary sense and judgement, with some little knowledge of the subject, can for a moment doubt that the best practical condition of the negro race here is, for the present at least, that of slavery, or that they should remain, as Mr. Calhoun liked best to express it, wards, under the guardianship of the masters. Our foreign friends may throw up their hands in holy horror at this statement, and declaim lustily against our American prejudices; but it is possible that we are as sincere friends of liberty as they are, and what we understand the question even better than they do. The most degraded race, morally and physically, among us, are the free negroes in the free states. The slaves, if emancipated, thrown upon their own resources, and compelled to provide for themselves, would very generally sink to the level of these free negroes. They would have all the responsibilities of freemen, and all the disadvantages of slaves, without any of the compensating advantages of either. The simple difference of color alone would suffice to keep them a distinct and degraded class, and therefore a dangerous class in the republic. you may tell us that this ought not to be so; but it is so, and you cannot make it otherwise. In Europe, where a black man is a sort of curiosity, the prejudice against color may not be very strongly manifested; but here it is, humanly speaking, invincible, and in none more so than in European settlers and northern abolitionists. Certainly, then, if emancipation, as there is every reason to believe, would prove a serious injury, a real calamity to the slaves, we show no lack of humanity in refusing to labor for it. The evils of slavery, as it exists amongst us, are moral, not physical. Physically considered, the negro slaves are in a better condition than any other class of simple laborers in the country. As a general thing, they are treated with humanity, are sufficiently fed and clothed, and not overworked. They are free from all care and anxiety as to their means of living, which is, for poor people, even in this land of plenty, no small thing; they are light hearted and merry, and the only class of labors we have ever seen in the country that have the heart to sing at their work, or that are not to much exhausted by the labors of the day to joining the evening dance and frolic. Their physical sufferings are nothing in comparison with those of free laborers at the North or on our numerous public works. But the moral evils connected with slavery are great. The principal of these are the lack of proper instruction, the want of respect paid to the sacrament of marriage, and separation of husband and wife, and parents and children. But these evils are not inherent in the system. They are abuses which might be corrected without weakening the system, or in the least impairing the value of the services of the slave to his master, and they probably would have been corrected to a considerable extent before this, if the movements of the abolitionists had not compelled the slave holding states to direct all their energy to the preservation of the system itself. These movements, being directed not to the amelioration of the institution, but to its destruction, have operated, and still operate, to make the lot of the slave much worse than it would otherwise be.

Thus far we have considered the abolition and free-soil movements solely as they affect the slave population; but we have no right to leave the white population of the country entirely out of the account. The freedom and well-being of the whites are as dear to humanity as the freedom and well-being of the blacks. Let slavery be as great an evil as it may, we have no right to abolish it by means that would inflict a still greater evil on the country at large. Of two evils we are bound to choose the least. It will not do to seek freedom for either white man or black, by means which destroy the very conditions of freedom. Freedom in our country, whether for black or white, depends on the maintenance of our constitutional order. The abolition and free-soil movements tend directly to destroy that order, for they are based on the denial of the political authority, all civil rights, and all political justice. If successful, they would render power arbitrary or null, destroy all the guaranties of freedom, and leave the whole population of the country a prey, now to despotism, and now to anarchy. So much on the general question. We can now easily dispose of the special question that of the rendition of absconding slaves, or the fugitive-slave law, which some of our citizens, not well knowing what they are about, are endeavoring to get repealed. It is always well to understand the state of the question before proceeding to dismiss it. If Mr. Sumner had taken this precaution, he would have saved himself and us a good deal of trouble. The constitution of the United States ordains, that "no person held to service or labor in one state under the laws there of, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from each service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service of labor may be due." The rule here is, that the civil constitution binds in all things not repugnant to natural justice or the law of God, declared by the competent tribunal. The rendition of the fugitive slave, then, is obligatory on us in conscience, unless to do so is repugnant to natural justice or to the law of God; neither of which can be pretended, for St. Paul sent back to St. Philemon his fugitive slave Onesimus.

If the master has a title to the bodily services of his slave which is good in morals, as he certainly may have, he has the right in justice to recover his slave, the same has he would have in the case of any other species of property. In such case, the slave would himself be bound in conscience to return to his master, unless his master had forfeited his title by abusing it, by inhumanity, or the denial to his slave of his moral freedom. The master may forfeit his title, and in such case the slave is free from all obligations to him, on the same principle that the tyranny of the prince forfeits his title, and absolves his subjects from their allegiance. But in case there has been no abuse of the title, and there is no proximate danger to the soul of the slave, he would be bound to return, on the same principle that he who should entice away a slave from his master, or prevent the master from recovering him, would be held in justice to restitution. 

But if the master has no title in justice, or that is good as the slave, he nevertheless has a good title as against the state, and this title every American must concede. As it concerns the slaveholding states themselves there can be no doubt, for these states have certainly by their laws recognized and guarantied property in slaves. The citizen who has inherited his capital in slaves holds his property in them, as against the state, by as good a title as he holds or can hold any other species of property. The state is bound in justice to protect him in that property, although his title to it as against the slave is vicious. The state may, if the title is not good as against the slave, abolish it, and ought to abolish it, but it cannot do so without indemnifying the master; for it had recognized and guarantied an unjust title, that is its fault, and the maxim of law and morals, that no one cannot take advantage of his own wrong, is as applicable to the state as to the individual. The state, then, is bound to deliver up the slave, or to pay his ransom. The obligation of the state binds all its citizens, and they must either permit the master to recover his slave, or, like the state, pay his ransom. Such is the obligation in morals of the slaveholding states and their citizens to the master. 

Now, by ratifying or acceding to the constitution, which contains the provision we have cited, each state has recognized the master's title, and guarantied it so far as delivering up the slave on claim of the master is to guaranty it. To this extent, then, the title of the master, even though vicious as against the slave, is good against every state in the Union and the citizens thereof. The state has no option in the case. It must deliver up the slave when claimed by his owner, or pay his ransom. The citizen must do the same. If his conscience will not permit him, he must negotiate his freedom, which in all ordinary cases may be done at a reasonable price. But if it cannot, if the owner refuses to put his slave at ransom, or if the citizen is unable to pay it, he must permit the master to take him back, and submit to it as he is obliged to submit to a thousand other evils which he would, but cannot redress. 

But let us understand precisely what delivering up a fugitive slave means. Even if the master's title were good as against the slave, I am not bound to send him back, for I am not the keeper of his property. All I am bound to do is not to deprive him of his property, or to hinder him from recovering his man. My duty is simply that of non-intervention. It is the same under the constitution. We are sustained by the supreme court of the United States, when we say that the constitution does not impose on the state into which the slave escapes any obligation to send him back to the master, and therefore, of course, no obligation on its citizens to do it, or to aid or assist in doing it.The right secured to the master is the right to come and take his absconding slave where he can find him, and the duty imposed on the state and the citizens or subjects thereof is to suffer him to do it in all freedom and to interpose no obstacle, to offer no resistance of any kind to his doing it.The obligation is not to assist, but not to resist.

We may now understand the fugitive-slave law. This law does not confer on the master the right to come and take his slave, for that right he has under the constitution, nor does it impose on the state or its citizens any obligation to send back or restore the fugitive slave. It creates no positive rights, and the obligations it imposes are, in relation to the recovery of the slave, strictly negative. Its objects are two:- 1. To prevent the master, under the plea of recovering his slave, from taking back with him to servitude a man to whose services he has no claim under the laws of his state; and, 2. To prevent the state or its citizens, or any portion of them, from hindering him or interposing any obstacle to prevent him from coming and freely taking back with him the one to whose services he has such claim. The law aims ti enable the master to exercise his constitutional right against all opposition, and only that right. It imposes no active duty on the part of the state or of its citizens, except in case of resistance, and then to suppress the resistance, not to send back the slave to the servitude. The law is for strictly constitutional purposes,and, as experience proves that it is not more stringent than is absolutely necessary to effect its purpose, it is ridiculous, or worse, to pretend that it is unconstitutional. No law is or can be unconstitutional that is necessary to secure the exercise of an acknowledged constitutional right. The clamor set up against it, that it does not give the alleged slave the benefit of a jury, is, in our judgement, worthy of no attention, because the question at issue before the magistrates not that of freedom and slavery, as Mr, Sumner would persuade us, but simply whether the master has a claim under the laws of his state to the services of this man, say, Anthony Burns. There are but two questions for the magistrate to determine;-1. Has he who claims the man, as an absconding slave, a claim under the laws of his state; and, 2. Is this Anthony Burns the man to whom he has such claim? The record of the court of the slaveholding state answers the first question, and evidence of identity settles the second. There is no sitting in judgement on the claim, any further than to see that it is made under the laws of the state from which the alleged master and alleged fugitive come. Judgement on the claim itself can be rendered only in the courts of the state, where the alleged slave has the benefit of a jury secured to him. But as there is no trial on the claim before the magistrate, but a simple inquiry as to the fact that the claim is made under the laws of that state, Virginia for instance, the proceedings are ministerial, not judicial, and the introduction of a jury would be an unheard-of anomaly. Why not insist on a jury in the case of the rendition of absconding apprentices, or of fugitive from justice? The demand for a jury is not, when made by a lawyer, honest, because he knows that the proper matter for a jury does not come before the magistrate, and can be an issue only before the courts the state from which the slave has escaped, where only "the great question of human freedom, " as Mr. Sumner calls it, can be tried. The only thing a jury could do, and the only thing, we suspect, that a jury is desired for, is to interpose an additional obstacle to the exercise of his constitutional right by the master.

We can now appreciate Mr Sumner's defense of himself. He was asked, by Mr. Butler of South Carolina, if, in case congress should repeal the fugitive-slave law, "Massachusetts would execute the constitutional requirements, and send back to the south absconding slaves? Mr. Sumner answered, "Do you ask if I would send back a slave?" Mr. Butler replied, " Why, yes." Mr Sumner answered, " Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Taken literally, Mr. Sumner's answer, though not marked by proper senatorial courtesy, is defensible, and we could say as much ourselves; for neither in morals nor under the constitution are we bound to send back absconding slaves. This has been settled, we suppose, by the supreme court of the United States, in its decision affirming the constitutionality of the fugitive-slave law of 1793. We understand the delivering up to be a passive, not an active, delivering up, and consider that the constitution recognizes and guaranties the right of the master to recover or take back his slave, but does not impose upon the state or the citizens thereof the active duty of sending him back. Judge Butler must permit us to say that his question was framed without sufficient regard to the precise obligation in the case. He should have said, "I would like to ask the senator if congress should repeal the fugitive-slave law, would Massachusetts comply with the requirements of the constitution and leave the master free to take back to the south his absconding slave?"

Mr. Sumner. Do you ask, if I will suffer, as depends on me, the master to take back his slave?

Mr. Butler. Why, yes.

Mr. Sumner. Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing? Now, if the question had been put in this form and Mr. Sumner had answered as we have here supposed, his answer would unquestionably have been indefensible, and in direct conflict with his oath to support the constitution. But as the question was put, he escapes the charge of declaring his willingness to perjure himself, at least in so many words. But his answer is evasive, almost a verbal quibble, and his defense of it is by no means successful, or creditable to a senator in congress. Mr. Sumner defends himself on the ground that, in swearing to support the constitution, he swears simply to support it as he understands it, not as others understand it, and cites General Jackson as his authority. But this ground of defense, if taken without any qualification, is untenable. That every public officer, in the discharge of his official duties, is, to a certain extent, free to interpret for himself the constitution imposing them, we do not deny; but this is only in those cases where his duty is not defined by law, and the meaning of the constitution has not been judicially settled. But even here he is bound to understand the constitution in its plain, obvious, or natural sense, and is never at liberty to understand it in some out-of-the-way sense, in a non-natural or an arbitrary sense of his own. But will Mr. Sumner maintain that, as a citizen, as a lawyer, or as a senator, in swearing to support the constitution, he does not swear to support it as authoritatively defined by the proper tribunal? We grant that he does not swear to support the constitution as interpreted by the private judgement of individuals, for his private judgment of individuals, for his private judgment is to be regarded as the equal of theirs; we grant that where the meaning is doubtful, and is an open question, he is free to follow his own judgment, that is, his own honest judgment, which must be judgment, not caprice; but will he venture to say that he does not, according to the honest intent of his oath, swear to support the constitution or to understand the constitution as interpreted by the Supreme court of the United States, declaring its meaning on the points formally brought before it for adjudication? Will he say, that the sense of the constitution thus declared does not bind him as a citizen, as a lawyer, and as a senator? If so, will he tell us where in our political system is lodged the supreme judicial authority? What is the province of the supreme court, or the value of its decisions? In every government there is lodged somewhere a supreme judicial authority, whose decisions in the civil order are final. In our political system this authority is separated from the legislative power, and also from the executive, and is vested in a distinct department, called the judiciary. In every question of a judicial nature, the judiciary is supreme, the highest civil authority in the land, and the meaning of the constitution as involved in a legislative or executive act is by its own nature a judicial question, and comes within the legitimate province of the judiciary, unless expressly excepted by the Constitution, as perhaps it is in cases of impeachment, when the judicial functions are by express constitutional provision transferred to the senate. The constitution says: "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law or equity,arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States"

&c. Now in every one of these cases there may arise the question of the constitutionality of the law under which the case is brought, and the judiciary has, as a matter of course, supreme jurisdiction of that question, as long as the constitution remains what it is, and its decision is final, and ends all litigation. So at least we understand the matter. Does the senator mean to deny this, and to maintain that the question, though a res adjudicata, is still an open question, and that with regard to it the civil conscience remains free? If so we should like to know by what right the judgment of the court can in any case be pleaded, or how any case can ever be settled or a sentence of the court be regarded as the sentence of the law.

The act of congress, if unconstitutional, is null and void, is no law at all. It is impossible, therefore, to decide whether it is law or not without deciding the question touching its constitutionality. If then the supreme court has not jurisdiction of this question, it can decide no case, and can perform no judicial act, that is to say, is no court at all, and if its decision is not conclusive on the constitutionality of the law, it cannot be on the matter in issue under it. The consequence would be, that there is, under our system, no supreme judicial power, no provision for terminating litigation, or coming to a final decision in any case whatever.

There can be no final award, and no judgment that can be enforced; which would be simply tantamount to no government at all. If there is no authority to determine the law, there can be no judgement, and we are as if we had no law at all. If there be such authority, it must be binding, not only upon every private citizen, but also upon every public officer, and the true sense of the oath to support the constitution is to support it as authoritatively defined or declared by the supreme judiciary, or as subject to the interpretation of the supreme court of the United States.

To take Mr. Sumner's ground, if that be really his ground, that each public officer is his own judge of the meaning of the constitution, is to clothe each public officer with supreme judicial authority in his own case, which were a supreme absurdity. To compel a man to swear to support the constitution as he sees proper, in the exercise of this supreme judicial authority, to interpret it for himself, is nonsense, for such an oath binds him to nothing, and leaves him as free as before taking it. If the man interprets the oath for himself, and there is no authority but his own private judgment to declare its sense, how would you ever be able to convict a man of perjury? or how would you ever be able to bring his oath home to his conscience? Moreover, if the constitution may be interpreted by each individual for himself, it can be practically only the private judgment of each individual. It has no practical significance beyond that judgment.By what right then do you call it a constitution, or a fundamental law of the state?

Mr. Sumner in his defense appeals to the law of humanity as superior to the constitution. Be it so. But that is to appeal from the civil constitution to the principles of natural justice. We allow the appeal, and we maintain that no oath does or can bind anyone to do anything against natural justice, for such oath is unlawful, and the oath to support the constitution is taken with the limitation, in so far as not repugnant to natural justice, or the law of God, authoritatively declared by the proper tribunal, for the individual has under the superior no more than under the inferior law supreme judicial functions in his own case. But in the case of the fugitive-slave law, this appeal will not avail him. Grant for the sake of the argument, that the master has in natural justice no title to the services of the slave, as against the slave himself, yet he has a good title as against the state, or the Union, under the constitution which recognizes and guarantees it. The constitution recognizes the title, and as against it the title is sacred in natural justice. The state may declare that to be property which is not and cannot be so in natural justice, but the state cannot take advantage, as we have said, of its own wrong, and therefore as against it the claim of the proprietor is as much a claim in natural justice as though the property itself had been property under the same natural justice. Grant the justice to the slave requires his liberation, justice to the proprietor requires that he shall not be liberated without indemnification. It is idle, then, to appeal to the law of natural justice against the master, for justice in his case is justice as much as in the case of the slave, and the superior law itself commands you either to deliver up to him his slave who has taken refuge with you, or, if your conscience or your humanity will not allow you to do that, to pay his ransom. The appeal to the law of conscience is good, but it cannot be made as an excuse for doing injustice, or withholding justice.

Does Mr. Sumner concede that the master has a title to the services of the slave which he as a citizen of Massachusetts or as a senator in congress is bound to recognize and respect? If not, he denies the authority of the constitution, and has no right to hold his seat in the senate. If he does, he must concede the master has the right in morals to claim his slave where he can find him, and that he cannot be deprived of him without injustice, save on the condition of full indemnification; for private property is sacred in natural justice. No reasonable man can deny that the title of the master under the constitution is valid, and that congress is bound to protect him in the enjoyment of it. Congress had then the right, and it was its duty, to pass the fugitive-slave law, and resistance to that law is a crime, and, if an organized, deliberate, determined, and preserving resistance, it is treason, whatever to the value of the master's title is against the slave.

This conclusion rests, it will be seen, on the principle that every title to property, whether originally vicious or not, recognized and guarantied by the state, as good as between the holder and the state, and cannot be lawfully suppressed by the state without indemnification. The several states in acceding to the constitution of the United States have recognized and guarantied the title of the master to the services of his slave. If the slave absconds, it is not the duty of any one of the free states, or any citizen thereof, to hunt him out and restore him to his owner, for the guaranty extends only to delivering him up, that is, permitting him to be taken and carried back on the claim of the master. If the state refuses to do this, it is the right and the duty of congress to compel it to do it or to pay the slave's ransom, because the constitution is the supreme law of the land. If a portion of the citizens oppose the master in the exercise of his right to recover his property, they disturb the peace, they do an illegal act, and either the state or the union has the right to use force to suppress the opposition, and preserve the peace, and both are bound to do it. In the fugitive-slave law the Union takes this duty on itself, and leaves the state to aid or not, as it sees proper. Now under this law every citizen is liable to be called on to assist, not in restoring the slave, but in suppressing the opposition to the exercise by the master of his constitutional right to take his slave. The law does not require me to send back or to aid in sending back the slave, but it does call upon me not to hinder, and may call upon me to aid in preventing lawless abolitionists from hindering, his being taken back. If Mr. Sumner had paid attention to this, he would have spared the heroics with which his speeches so abound.

With the regard  to the memorial for the repeal of the fugitive-slave law, we have not much to say. It was got up in a moment of excitement, and we have no doubt that most of those who signed it are before this heartily ashamed of having done so. The repeal of the fugitive-slave law could have only one meaning, that of practically expunging from the constitution the clause which requires fugitive slaves to be delivered up, and to petition for it is simply to petition to be released from a duty imposed by the constitution; for nobody is such a fool as to suppose that, without that or some other law equally offensive to the anti-slavery feeling of the free states, a single absconding slave would ever be recovered. The simple question raised by the memorial then, is, Will we stand by the constitution as it is, or will we not? For ourselves, we raise no such question. We shall stand by the constitution, and as far as depends on us keep our plighted faith, and when our conscience becomes so tender on the subject that we feel it necessary to interpose and prevent and prevent the master from recovering his property, we will do so only by purchasing the slave's freedom, or paying his ransom. This we find is the course that the church has always pursued. It is the morality which we have learned from her, the morality of common sense.

We have nothing to say here of the question debated in the senate as to the comparative strengths or merits in past or present times of the different sections of the Union. We have no occasion to defend the North, and we shall not volunteer a defense of the South, unless we see that she needs it. We cannot conclude these remarks without expressing our gratification at finding the national administration finally taking a decided stand in defense of the fugitive-slave law. On the question, notwithstanding certain questionable manoeuvres in the beginning, we are happy to see that it stands firm, and is likely to secure the confidence of a large portion of the Union. Many of its appointments have been bad, many of the doctrines it has put forth are highly objectionable, but it will come out much better than we at one time feared, and we shall be much disappointed if it does not prove to be the strongest and upon the whole the most popular administration the country has had since General Jackson's time. All our readers know that we are of no party, not neutral indeed, but independent. What we ask is an honest and intelligent administration of the government according to the constitution. Beyond that, we care not whether it is administered by Whig or Democrat. But one thing is certain, a Democratic administration will generally be stronger than a Whig administration, and posses to a fair greater extent the confidence of the American people, therefore is more able to repress evil and do good. We think we hazard little in saying, that the measures of the present administration which its opponents think they can use with killing effect against it will turn out to have contributed greatly to its strengths. The Nebraska bill will prove popular, and if it frees Central America from British protection, we can assure its party a long lease of power.