Gentlemen of the Jury, as I just now gave you some passages from Mr. Hallett's speech on that occasion, allow me now to read you some extracts from Mr. Curtis's address. The general aim of the speech was to reconcile the People to kidnapping; the rhetorical means to this end were an attempt to show that kidnapping was expedient; that it was indispensable; that it had been long since agreed to; that the Slaves were foreigners and had no right in Massachusetts. He said:—
"We have come here not to consider particular measures of government but to assert that we have a government, not to determine whether this or that law be wise or just, but to declare that there is law, and its duties and power."
"Every sovereign State has and must have the right to judge what persons from abroad shall be admitted."
"Are not these persons [fugitive slaves] foreigners as to us—and what right have they to come here at all, against the will of the legislative power of the State. [Massachusetts had no legislation forbidding them!] And if their coming here or remaining here, is not consistent with the safety of the State and the welfare of the citizens may we not prohibit their coming, or send them back if they come?" "To deny this is to deny the right of self-preservation to a State.... It ... throws us back at once into a condition below the most degraded savages who have a semblance of government." "You know that the great duty of justice could not otherwise be performed, [that is without the fugitive-from-labor clause in the Constitution]; that our peace at home and our safety from foreign aggression could not otherwise be insured; and that only by this means could we obtain 'the Blessings of Liberty' to the people of Massachusetts and their posterity." "In no other way could we become an example of, and security for, the capacity of man, safely and peacefully and wisely to govern himself under free and popular institutions."
So the fugitive slave bill is an argument against human depravity, showing the capacity of man to govern himself "safely and peacefully and wisely."
He adds, as early as 1643 the New England colonies found it necessary "to insert an article substantially like this one," for the rendition of fugitive servants, and in 1789 the Federal government demanded that the Spaniards should surrender the fugitive slaves of Georgia. Injustice, Gentlemen, has never lacked a precedent since Cain killed Abel. Mr. Curtis continues:—
"When I look abroad over 100,000 happy homes in Massachusetts and see a people, such as the blessed sun has rarely shone upon, so intelligent and educated, moral, religious, progressive, and free to do every thing but wrong—I fear to say that I should not be in the wrong to put all this at risk, because our passionate will impels us to break a promise our wise and good fathers made, not to allow a class of foreigners to come here, or to send them back if they came."
So the refusal to kidnap Ellen and William Craft came of the "passionate will" of the people, and is likely to ruin the happy homes of a moral and religious people!
"With the rights of these persons I firmly believe Massachusetts has nothing to do. It is enough for us that they have no right to be here. Whatever natural rights they have—and I admit these natural rights to their fullest extent—this is not the soil on which to vindicate them. This is our soil, sacred to our peace, on which we intend to perform our promises, and work out for the benefit of ourselves and our posterity and the world, the destiny which our Creator has assigned to us."
Gentlemen of the Jury, it is written of that Creator that He is "no Respecter of Persons;" and "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." The "Our Creator" of Mr. Curtis is also the Father of William and Ellen Craft; and that great Soul who has ploughed his moral truths deep into the history of mankind, represents the final Judge of us all as saying to such as scorned his natural Law of Justice and Humanity, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these ye did it not to me."