“I was interrupted, in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained, it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention.
“In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over, and looking up, I saw it was a starling, hung in a little cage. ‘I can’t get out, I can’t get out,’ said the starling.
“I stood looking at the bird, and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side which they approached, with the same lamentation of its captivity,—‘I can’t get out,’ said the starling. God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get at the door. It was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.
“The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and, thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient. I fear, poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. ‘No,’ said the starling, ‘I can’t get out. I can’t get out,’ said the starling.
“I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened.”
And then he bursts out into that apostrophe to Slavery, which has thrilled the hearts of all his readers in times past, and will continue to thrill the heart of every reader in all time to come:—
“Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, still thou art a bitter draught! and, though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. ’Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, Liberty, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so till Nature herself shall change. No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron. With thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.”
Had Sterne released that bird, and sent it abroad to rejoice in its native fields of air, would his myriads of readers, who have been delighted at the story, have convicted him of stealing?
Now for the application. These slaves, by the law of nature, were as free as you or I. By the law and force of man, they have been subjected to bondage. If the prisoner took them, and took them either to sell them or to use them himself, then he took them, in the language of the law, for the felonious purpose of converting them to his own use; and such taking would be larceny according to the law. But if he took them for the purpose of carrying them to a free state, and of thus restoring them to their natural liberty, then he did not intend to convert them to his own use, and is not guilty of stealing.
There is another view of this case. The harshest doctrines in favor of slavery only claim, that a master has a right to the services of his slave. He has not a right to his flesh and bones, so that he can cut up the former for dog’s meat, and grind the latter for compost. To constitute larceny, then, of this kind of property, the prisoner must have deprived the master of the services of his slaves, with the intent, with the felonious intent, to use those services himself, or to sell them to another, which would be the most effective act of use. But no evidence of any such intent has been adduced in this case. I therefore maintain, that neither of the three ingredients necessary to constitute the offence of larceny has been proved by the government.