But if any of them will tell me
that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse- would be any
worse- than to make him into a slave- than it was to enact the
Fugitive Slave Law- I will accuse him of foolishness, of
intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference.
The one is just as sensible a proposition as the other.
I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why,
one need not go out of his way to do that. This law rises not to the
level of the head or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt.
It was born and bred, and has its life, only in the dust and mire,
on a level with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, and does
not with Hindoo mercy avoid treading on every venomous reptile, will
inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under foot- and Webster, its
maker, with it, like the dirt- bug and its ball.
Recent events will be valuable as a criticism on the
administration of justice in our midst, or, rather, as showing what
are the true resources of justice in any community. It has come to
this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have
shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the
legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith
that justice will be awarded in such a case. The judge may decide this
way or that; it is a kind of accident, at best. It is evident that
he is not a competent authority in so important a case.
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