Come hither, St. Dominic! come, Torquemada!—Fathers of the Inquisition! Merciless monsters, seek your equal here! No; pass by! You are no companions for such men as these! You were the servants of atheistic popes, of cruel kings. Go to, and get you gone. Another time I may have work for you,—not now; lie there and persevere to rot. You are not yet quite wicked and corrupt enough for this comparison. Go, get ye gone, lest the sun turn back at sight of ye!
Come up, thou heap of wickedness, George Jeffries!—thy hands deep purple with the blood of thy murdered fellow men! Ah, I know thee! awful and accursed shade! Two hundred years after thy death, men hate thee still, not without cause! Let me look upon thee! I know thy history. Pause and be still, while I tell it to these men.
Brothers, George Jeffries "began in the sedition line." "There was no act, however bad, that he would not resort to to get on." "He was of a bold aspect, and cared not for the countenance of any man." "He became the avowed, unblushing slave of the court, and the bitter persecutor and unappeasable enemy of the principles he had before supported." He "was universally insolent and over-bearing." "As a judge, he did not consider the decencies of his post, nor did he so much as affect to be impartial, as became a judge." His face and voice were always unamiable. "All tenderness for the feelings of others, all self-respect were obliterated from his mind." He had "a delight in misery, merely as misery," and "that temper which tyrants require in their worst instruments." "He made haste to sell his forehead of brass and his tongue of venom to the court." He had "more impudence than ten carted street-walkers;" and was appropriately set to a work "which could be trusted to no man who reverenced law, or who was sensible of shame." He was a "Commissioner" in 1685. You know of the "Bloody assizes" which he held, and how he sent to execution three hundred and twenty persons in a single circuit. "The whole country was strewed with the heads and limbs of his victims." Yet a man wrote that "A little more hemp might have been usefully employed." He was the worst of the English judges. "There was no measure, however illegal, to the execution of which he did not devotedly and recklessly abandon himself." "During the Stuart reigns, England was cursed by a succession of ruffians in ermine, who, for the sake of court favor, wrested the principles of law, the precepts of religion, and the duties of humanity; but they were all greatly outstripped by Jeffries." Such is his history.
Come, shade of a judicial butcher! Two hundred years thy name has been pilloried in face of the world, and thy memory gibbeted before mankind! Let us see how thou wilt compare with those who kidnap men in Boston! Go seek companionship with them! Go claim thy kindred, if such they be! Go tell them that the memory of the wicked shall rot,—that there is a God; an Eternity; ay! and a Judgment too! where the slave may appeal against him that made him a slave, to Him that made him a man.
What! Dost thou shudder? Thou turn back? These not thy kindred! Why dost thou turn pale, as when the crowd clutched at thy life in London Street? It is true, George Jeffries, and these are not thy kin. Forgive me that I should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek companionship with such—with Boston hunters of the slave! Thou wert not base enough! It was a great bribe that tempted thee! Again I say, pardon me for sending thee to keep company with such men! Thou only struckst at men accused of crime; not at men accused only of their birth! Thou wouldst not send a man into bondage for two pounds! I will not rank thee with men who, in Boston, for ten dollars, would enslave a negro now! Rest still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St. Dominic, and sleep, O Torquemada! in your fiery jail! Sleep, Jeffries, underneath "the altar of the church" which seeks with Christian charity to hide your hated bones.
"But," asks a looker-on, "What is all this for?" Oh! to save the Union. "A precious Union which needs a saving such as this! And who are to rend the Union asunder?" Why, men that hate slavery and love freedom for all mankind. "Is this the way to make them love the Union and slavery, and hate freedom for all mankind?" We know none better. "What sort of a measure is this fugitive slave law?" Oh! it is a "peace measure." Don't you see how well it works? how quiet the city? in the country not a mouse stirring? There will not be a word against the peace measure in all New England on this Fast Day. Blessed are the peace-makers, saith Lord! "But you have great warrant for such deeds?" Oh yes, the best in the world,—the example of Washington. He also "saved the Union." "So men blaspheme."
Let me tell you a little of that great man. Shortly after the passage of the law of 1793, a favorite female slave of Washington's wife ran away from the President of the new republic, and went into New Hampshire. She lived at Portsmouth. Washington wrote to Mr. Whipple, a United States' marshal, I think, or, at any rate, an officer of the United States, saying that he should like to have the woman sent back to him, if it could be done without tumult, and without shocking the principles and the feelings of the people. He added that the slave was a favorite of his wife. Mr. Whipple wrote back, and said,—It cannot be done without tumult, nor without shocking the principles and feelings of the people. Washington said no more! The woman died at a great age, a few years ago, at Portsmouth. That was the example of Washington,—the man who at his death freed his slaves! Would to God he had done it before! But they that come at the eleventh hour shall never be cast out from my charity.
See what is the consequence of this measure! See what has been the condition of Boston for the past week! Read the mingled truth and lies in the newspapers; look at men's faces in the street; listen to their talk; see the court-house in chains; see one hundred policemen on guard, and three companies of military picketed in Faneuil Hall; behold the people shut out from the courts—I will not say of justice! See the officers of Massachusetts made slave-hunters—against the law; constitutional rights struck down—against the law; sheriffs refusing to serve writs—against the law; see the great civil rights our fathers gained five hundred years ago, the trial by jury, by our "peers," by the "law of the land," all cloven down; the writ of "personal replevin" made null—no sheriff daring to execute a law made to suit such a case as this, made but eight years ago! Where is your high Sheriff? Where is your Governor? See the judges of Massachusetts bend beneath that chain; see them bow down, one by one, and kneel, and creep, and cringe, and crouch, and crawl, under the chain! Note the symbol! That was the chain on the neck of the Commonwealth, visible on the necks of the judges as they entered the Bastile of Boston,—the Barracoon of Boston! A few years ago, they used to tell us, "Slavery is an abstraction;" "we at the North have nothing to do with it," Now liberty is only an abstraction! Here is a note just handed me in the pulpit:—
"Marshal Tukey told me this morning, that his orders were not merely to keep the peace, but to assist the United States' marshal in detaining and transporting the slave; that he knew he was violating the State law, as well as I did; but it was not his responsibility, but that of the Mayor and Aldermen. I thought you might like to know this."