divine law. The law is evidently constitutional, and is necessary to carry out an express and imperative provision of the constitution, which ordains (Art. IV. Sect. 2), that "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." This is imperative, and with regard to its meaning there is no dis agreement. By this the slaveholders have the right to claim: their fugitive slaves in the non-slaveholding states, and the non-slaveholding states are bound to deliver them up, wher claimed. For the purpose of carrying out this constitutional provision, congress passed a law, in 1793, which has proved ineffectual, and it has passed the recent law, more stringent in its provisions, and likely to prove efficient, for the same purpose. We can see nothing in the law contrary to the constitution, and, as high legal authority has pronounced it constitutional, we must presume it to be so. Nobody really regards it as unconstitutional, and the only special objection to it is, what is no objection at all,-that it is likely to answer its purpose. Now as the law is necessary to secure the fulfilment of the obligations imposed by the constitution, and as our church has never decided that to restore a fugitive slave to its owner is per se contrary to the law of God, we are bound to obey the law, and could not, without resisting the ordinance of God and purchasing to ourselves damnation, refuse to obey it. This settles the question for us.

As to Protestants who allege that the law is contrary to the law of God, and therefore that they cannot with a good conscience obey it, we have very little in addition to say. There are no principles in common between them and us, on which the question can be decided. We have shown them that they are bound to obey the civil law till they can bring a higher authority than the state, and a higher than their own private judgment, to set it aside as repugnant to the law of God. This higher authority they have not, and therefore for them there is no higher law. Will they allege the Sacred Scriptures? That will avail them nothing till they show that they have legal possession of the Scriptures, and that they are constituted by Almighty God a court with authority to interpret them and declare their As this is what they can never do, we cannot argue

sense.

the Scriptural question with them. We will only add, that there is no passage in either the Old Testament or the New that declares it repugnant to the law of God, or law of eternal justice, to deliver up the fugitive slave to his master; and St. Paul sent back, after converting him, the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master Philemon. This is enough; for St. Paul appears to have done more than the recent law of congress demands; he seems to have sent back the fugitive without being requested to do so by his owner; but the law of congress only requires the fugitive to be delivered up when claimed by his master. It will not do for those who appeal to the Sacred Scriptures to maintain either that St. Paul was ignorant of the law of God, or that he acted contrary to it. This fact alone concludes the Scriptural question against them.

But we have detained our readers long enough. We have said more than was necessary to satisfy the intelligent and the candid, and reasoning is thrown away upon factionists and fanatics, abolitionists and philanthropists. There is no question that the country is seriously in danger. What, with the sectionists at the North and the sectionists at the South, with the great dearth of true patriots, and still greater dearth of statesmen, in all sections of the Union, it will go hard but the Union itself receive some severe shocks. Yet we trust in God it will be preserved, although the American people are far from meriting so great a boon. After the humiliation of ourselves, and prayer to God, we see nothing to be done to save the country, but for all the friends of the Union, whether heretofore called Whigs or Democrats, to rally around the Union, and form a grand national party, in opposition to the sectionists, factionists, and fanatics, of all complexions, sorts, and sizes. It is no time now to indulge old party animosities, or to contend for old party organizations. The country is above party, and all who love their country, and wish to save the noble institutions left us by our fathers, should fall into the ranks of one and the same party, and work side by side, and shoulder to shoulder, for the maintenance of the Union and the supremacy of law. of law. We see strong indications that such a party is rapidly forming throughout the country, and we say, let it be formed, the sooner the better. Let the party take high conservative ground, against all sorts of radicalism and ultraism, and inscribe on its banner, THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION, AND THE SUPREMACY OF LAW,

and it will command the support, we doubt not, of a large majority of the American people, and deserve and receive, we devoutly hope, the protection of Almighty God, who, we must believe, has after all great designs in this country. Above all, let our Catholic fellow-citizens in this crisis be faithful to their duty, even though they find Mr. Fillmore's administration and our Protestant countrymen madly and foolishly hostile to them; for on the Catholic population, under God, depend the future destinies of these United States. The principles of our holy religion, the prayers of our church, and the fidelity to their trusts of the Catholic portion of the people, are the only sure reliance left us.

THE FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAW.*

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for July, 1851.]

THIS singular sermon was called forth under the excitement occasioned by the arrest in this city, last April, of a fugitive slave, named Sims, and the determination to give him up to his owner in Savannah, Georgia. Two attempts had been previously made here to execute the recently amended fugitive-slave law, but without success. In the first case, that of Crafts and his wife, the officers did not succeed in making an arrest, and the fugitives, it is supposed, were shipped off by their free-soil or abolition friends to England; in the second case, that of Shadrach, an arrest was, indeed, made, but the fugitive was rescued from the custody of the United States marshal by a mob, and probably made his escape to Canada. In the case of Sims, better precautions had been taken against a rescue by a mob, whether black or white, and on the day this sermon was preached, it was highly probable that the law would be executed, and the fugitive given up to his master.

This probability threw all our free-soilers into a perfect frenzy. They called public meetings, harangued the mob, made the most inflammatory appeals to passions already

*The Chief Sins of the People: a Sermon delivered at the Melodeon, Boston, on Fast Day, April 10, 1851. By REV. THEODORE PARKER. Boston: 1851.

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greatly excited, and would, most likely, have attempted another rescue by force, if the vigilance of the police, and the military under arms and advantageously posted, had not made it pretty evident that it could not be done without serious inconvenience. Every method, short of physical violence, to intimidate the authorities, and to induce them to desist from the performance of their duties, was resorted to, and all that rare professional ability, craft, cunning, and unscrupulousness could do to evade the law was done; but all in vain. On the day of our annual state fast, though the case was not yet decided, the friends of the Union, the supremacy of law, and social order, began to breathe more freely, and felt it to be reasonably certain that at length something would be done towards wiping out the disgrace which our city had incurred from the fanatics she had madly cherished in her bosom. The fanatics were disappointed, and deeply mortified, and Mr. Parker availed himself of the occasion of the fast to pour out their wrath and bitterness, as well as his own, in the sermon before us, which is equally remarkable for bad taste, bad temper, bad logic, bad religion, and bad morals. It professes to treat of the chief sins of the people, but finds the chief of these to be suffering the law to be executed.

We are not called upon to discuss the merits or demerits of slavery as an abstract question. If slavery did not exist in this country, we should oppose by all lawful means in our power its introduction; but it is here, one of the elements of American society, and directly or indirectly connected with the habits and the interests of the whole American people, and the only question for the moralist or the statesman is, How shall it be dealt with? Even supposing it to be evil, and only evil, the question as to the treatment of it where it exists is very different from the question of introducing it where it does not exist. To suffer a wrong to remain is not always to commit a wrong; for often in the complicated affairs of this world it is impossible to remove a long or widely existing evil, without causing a still greater evil. Be it that slavery is as great an evil as free-soilers pretend, it by no means follows that they are bound, or even free, to bring the political or social power of the country to bear on its abolition. Undoubtedly, we are never to do wrong that good may come, and if slavery is evil, and only evil, no advantages likely to result from it can ever justify us in introducing it; but of two evils we must choose the least,

and when slavery cannot in all human probability be abolished without producing a greater evil, we are not even free to abolish it, and must tolerate it till it can be abolished without such result.

In this world, we must, to a greater or less extent, tolerate even moral wrong. It is a great moral evil that in the spiritual field the cockle should spring up to choke the wheat, and yet our Lord commands us to let both grow together, lest in attempting to root up the cockle we root up also the wheat with it. Infidelity, heresy, irreligion, are sins, and very grievous sins, and yet it is not lawful to extirpate them by fire and sword. The magistrate may, undoubtedly, repress their violence, and protect Christain faith and social order from their disorderly conduct; but their extirpation must be the work of the missionary, not of the magistrate, -for faith and obedience must be voluntary, a free-will offering to God. There were zealous disciples of our Lord, who would have called down fire from heaven to consume his adversaries; but he rebuked them. "Ye know not of

what spirit ye are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls, but to save." To a greater or less extent, we must tolerate sin, not in ourselves assuredly, but in others, and bear with transgressors, even as God bears with them. We must respect their free will, leave them the responsibility of their own misdeeds, because this is what God himself does, and because to attempt to root out all sins by violence, whether physical or social, for there is a social as well as a physical violence, would in the end only render matters infinitely worse, by destroying virtue itself. We cannot make this world a paradise, and all its inhabitants saints, as foolish Puritans dream. As long as man retains free will, there will be abuses, there will be wrongs and outrages, and the sooner we come to this conclusion, and conform ourselves to it, the better will it will be for all concerned, and the more real progress will there be made in virtue.

We have no quarrel with free-soilers for being hostile to slavery. We have as little sympathy with any species of slavery as they have, and perhaps as deep and as true a devotion to freedom. They are far from monopolizing all the love of freedom and all the hatred of slavery in the community. "Brave men lived before Agamemnon," and love of freedom and hatred of slavery were born before Gerritt Smith, Robert Rantoul, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, or Abby Folsom, and would suf