Because the advocates and defenders of this law have been compelled to place its defence upon the express ground that the commandments of men are of higher authority than the ordinances of God.
In Hooker’s sublime description of law, when understood in its generic sense, he says,—
“Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels, and men, and creatures, of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.”
Now, sir, with these glorious attributes of “law,” I say the Fugitive Slave law of the last session possesses not one quality in common, nor in similitude. To say that the seat of such a law is in the “bosom of God,” is the intensest blasphemy. To say that it is “the harmony of the world,” is to declare that the world is a sphere of ubiquitous and omnipotent wrong, uncheckered by any thought of justice, and devoid of any emotion of love. To say that “all things in heaven do homage” to such a law, is to affirm of the realms of light what is true only of the realms of darkness. The “least” do not “feel its care,” but tremble and wail beneath its cruelty; while the “greatest” and the strongest are “exempt from its power;” for they made it not for themselves but for others. To no class of “creatures,” rational or irrational, human or divine, can it prove to be the “mother of peace and joy;” but wherever it extends, and as long as it exists, it will continue to be an overflowing Marah of bitterness and strife.
As the great name of Hooker has been profanely cited in behalf of this law, I will close by quoting his distinction between those laws of human governments which ought to be obeyed, and those which ought not:—
——“which laws,” says he, “we must obey, unless there be reason showed which may necessarily enforce that the law of reason or of God doth enjoin the contrary.”
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Such also is the law in Louisiana. See Louis vs. Marot, 9 Louis. Rep. 473; Smith vs. Smith, 13 Louis. Rep. 441.
SPEECH
On the Fugitive Slave Law, delivered at Lancaster, Massachusetts, May 19, 1851, pending the Canvass for a Member of Congress for the Fourth Congressional District.