we distinctly affirm.  After the independence of this country had been achieved, the voice of God exhorted the people, saying, “Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassion every man to his brother:  and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.  But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear; yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone.”  “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord.  Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”

Whatever doubt may have rested on any honest mind, respecting the meaning of the clause in relation to persons held to service or labor, must have been removed by the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Prigg versus The State of Pennsylvania.  By that decision, any Southern slave-catcher is empowered to seize and convey to the South, without hindrance or molestation on the part of the State, and without any legal process duly obtained and served, any person or persons, irrespective of caste or complexion, whom he may choose to claim as runaway slaves; and if, when thus surprised and attacked, or on their arrival South, they cannot prove by legal witnesses, that they are freemen, their doom is sealed!  Hence the free colored population of the North are specially liable to become the victims of this terrible power, and all the other inhabitants are at the mercy of prowling kidnappers, because there are multitudes of white as well as black slaves on Southern plantations, and slavery is no longer fastidious with regard to the color of its prey.

As soon as that appalling decision of the Supreme Court was enunciated, in the name of the Constitution, the people of the North should have risen en masse, if for no other cause, and declared the Union at an end; and they would have done so, if they had not lost their manhood, and their reverence for justice and liberty.

In the 4th Sect. of Art.  IV., the United States guarantee to protect every State in the Union “against domestic violence.”  By the 8th Section of Article 1., congress is empowered “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.”  These provisions, however strictly they may apply to cases of disturbance among the white population, were adopted with special reference to the slave population, for the purpose of keeping them in their chains by the combined military force of the country; and were these repealed, and the South left to manage her slaves as best she could, a servile insurrection would ere long be the consequence, as general as it would unquestionably be successful.  Says Mr. Madison, respecting these clauses:—­