bound by oath or affirmation to support” the constitution conferring this very guarantee.  Constitutions, and judicial decisions, and religious obligations are alike outraged by our State enactments against people of color.  There is scarcely a slave State in which a citizen of New York, with a dark skin, may visit a dying child without subjecting himself to legal penalties.  But in the slave States we look for cruelty; we expect the rights of humanity and the laws of the land to be sacrificed on the altar of slavery.  In the free States we had reason to hope for a greater deference to decency and morality.  Yet even in these States we behold the effects of a miasma wafted from the South.  The Connecticut Black Act, prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the instruction of any colored person from another State, is well known.  It is one of the encouraging signs of the times, that public opinion has recently compelled the repeal of this detestable law.  But among all the free States, OHIO stands pre-eminent for the wickedness of her statutes against this class of our population.  These statutes are not merely infamous outrages on every principle of justice and humanity, but are gross and palpable violations of the State constitution, and manifest an absence of moral sentiment in the Ohio legislature as deplorable as it is alarming.  We speak the language, not of passion, but of sober conviction; and for the truth of this language we appeal, first, to the Statutes themselves, and then to the consciences of our readers.  We shall have occasion to notice these laws under the several divisions of our subject to which they belong; at present we ask attention to the one intended to prevent the colored citizens of other States from removing into Ohio.  By the constitution of New York, the colored inhabitants are expressly recognized as “citizens.”  Let us suppose then a New York freeholder and voter of this class, confiding in the guarantee given by the Federal constitution removes into Ohio.  No matter how much property he takes with him; no matter what attestations he produces to the purity of his character, he is required by the Act of 1807, to find, within twenty days, two freehold sureties in the sum of five hundred dollars for his good behavior; and likewise for his maintenance, should he at any future period from any cause whatever be unable to maintain himself, and in default of procuring such sureties he is to be removed by the overseers of the poor.  The legislature well knew that it would generally be utterly impossible for a stranger, and especially a black stranger, to find such sureties.  It was the design of the Act, by imposing impracticable conditions, to prevent colored emigrants from remaining within the State; and in order more certainly to effect this object, it imposes a pecuniary penalty on every inhabitant who shall venture to “harbor,” that is, receive under his roof, or who shall even “employ” an emigrant who has not given the required sureties; and it moreover renders such inhabitant so harboring or employing him, legally liable for his future maintenance!!