Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury. “Is nothing meant,” it gravely asks, “but the substitution of the verdict of a jury for the decision of a judge.” Nothing but—what? “The verdict of a jury for the decision of a judge,” that is, of a commissioner! And are the persons who prepared that address so nearly stone blind as not to recognize the infinite difference between the verdict of a jury and the decisions of such commissioners as Messrs. Ingraham, Smith, and Nelson? Ingraham, of Philadelphia, sent a man into bondage whom the alleged claimant refused to receive as soon as he saw him, knowing that all his family, and all his slaves, and all his neighbors would see that he had no right to him. Smith, of Buffalo, gave a certificate to carry Daniel into slavery, when not a single item, or particle, or tittle of legal and admissible evidence was before him as proof, as was afterwards shown by Judge Conkling, of the United States court. Nelson, of New York, forced the facts in Bolding’s case to bring them within the law which he himself had laid down, as much as ever a fraudulent book-keeper forced balances to cover an embezzlement. Sims, instead of having common-law notice and time to send for evidence, was seized at night on a false and trumped-up charge of stealing. Daniel was knocked down by the claimant’s agent with a club, tumbled and tortured upon a hot stove, his scalp torn open, and then compelled to go to trial, while, as described by an eye witness, “he sat dozing, unable to talk with his counsel, with the blood slowly oozing out of his mouth and nostrils.” Hamlet, Long, and Bolding were sprung upon as remorselessly as a tiger springs upon a lamb, and carried to trial without being allowed to go to their respective homes to bid farewell to their families. An alleged slave has lately been taken from Pennsylvania who was seized in the night, tried in the night, and carried away on the same night, without any opportunity for preparation, for counsel, or for defence. The kidnapper, Alberti, now lies in a Pennsylvania prison for carrying away a mother and her child; but the mother and the child are now groaning under the lash of a southern taskmaster. Had this villain, Alberti, and his accomplices been detected while the victims were still in their hands, I suppose he would have carried them before Mr. Commissioner Ingraham, and had the wrong legally rectified,—the blackness of the crime judicially washed white. These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the claims of justice and mercy left among us. And yet the writer of this address and the committee that offered it, ask us whether all we mean is the substitution of the verdict of a jury for the decision of a commissioner. I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.
And now, fellow-citizens, if, in addition to having our northern freemen kidnapped in southern ports, and imprisoned and sold into bondage; if, in addition to fighting for foreign territory to be added to the domain of slavery; if, in addition to being taxed, in sums of millions and tens of millions, to fortify the slave power;—if, in addition to all this, we are to be deprived and defrauded of that noble and venerable institution, the trial by jury,—an institution sanctified by the blood of martyrs, hallowed by the prayers of sainted patriots, held sacred by all good men, and taught to their children like the living oracles of God;—if this attempt is to be made, as the late Whig address foreshadows,—then I say, a more flagrant case of apostasy is nowhere to be found on the records of any history, sacred or profane, since Satan broke into paradise and Websterized our first parents.
I shall advert to but one more point in the address. It speaks of the “pitiable humbug of ballot envelopes.” Now, gentlemen, I may be all wrong on this subject. My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor. Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE! Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance. A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates. It may be very well for an opulent man, one of vast fortune, who is dependent on nobody, and so cares for nobody, who goes quarterly and takes his thousands of dollars for rents or dividends; it may be very well for him to laugh at the secret ballot, and call it a “humbug;” but let us look at the other end of the scale. Let us look in the thousands of day-laborers, of workmen on corporation grounds, of dependent clerks, of subordinates at custom-houses and other public offices, and so forth, who have no capital but their industry, no resources but their daily earnings, who have an aged mother or dependent sisters to support, or a family of children to be fed, clothed, and educated; who may be turned out even of the humble tenements where they live, as winter is coming on; who may be refused promotion or advancement in their work and in their wages; and in regard to some of whom the wolf of hunger sits growling at the door; let us look at these, I say, and then answer the question, whether they ought not to be protected in voting according to their judgment and conscience. The liberty of voting includes all other liberties. The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.
I do not desire this secret ballot law for myself. I like to lay my ballot in the box, face upwards, looking heavenward; looking the Paul Prys who hover round, full in the eye; but I am willing and glad to put that ballot in an envelope, in order to protect my poor neighbor, the bread of whose mouth, the shelter of whose family, and the education of whose children, may depend upon the vote he gives. Ay, I go further. I should think that any high-minded man, any man having proper sensibilities respecting his relations to his social inferiors, would rejoice in such a law as this; because it would take away all ground of accusation or imputation that he would do so unrighteous and dastardly a deed as to invade a dependant’s right of voting as it might seem to him good.
Gentlemen, it is said, in one of the Springfield resolutions, that the last legislature cost the state an extra fifty thousand dollars. Whether it did or not is not of any very vast importance; though I confess I have a great respect for Poor Richard’s economy, and would save all that I could. But does not the very mention of this sum of fifty thousand remind one of another sum, almost precisely the same, which was spent last year on one of Mr. Sumner’s predecessors in the senatorial office? And if it cost fifty thousand dollars for a ticket to pass Mr. Webster out of the Senate, it was surely worth as much for a ticket to pass Mr. Sumner in.
Gentlemen, I close by remarking that it is in view of these great questions of human freedom,—in view of the solemn responsibility in which we stand to our country and to posterity, that we have assembled here to-day. May this meeting prove to be a concentration of rays of scattered light and wisdom, meeting and burning in a focus, and then sending back illumination and cheering to all the parts of our beloved commonwealth. If, in my humble way, I can do any thing to promote so glorious an object, my services are at your disposal.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Seneca. [The passage is quoted in the Dedication, pp. ix., x.]
Transcriber’s Notes
Page [24]: “chaper 41,” changed to “chapter 41,”