And now, sir, the rule is commended to us.  The good citizen, who sees before him the shivering fugitive, guilty of no crime, pursued, hunted down like a beast, while praying for Christian help and deliverance, and then reads the requirements of this Act, is filled with horror.  Here is a despotic mandate “to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law.”  Again let me speak frankly.  Not rashly would I set myself against any requirement of law.  This grave responsibility I would not lightly assume.  But here the path of duty is clear.  By the Supreme Law, which commands me to do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian Law of Brotherhood, by the Constitution, which I have sworn to support, I AM BOUND TO DISOBEY THIS ACT.  Never, in any capacity, can I render voluntary aid in its execution.  Pains and penalties I will endure, but this great wrong, I will not do.  “Where I cannot obey actively, there I am willing to lie down and to suffer what they shall do unto me”; such was the exclamation of him to whom we are indebted for the Pilgrim’s Progress while in prison for disobedience to an earthly statute.  Better suffer injustice than do it.  Better victim than instrument of wrong.  Better even the poor slave returned to bondage than the wretched Commissioner.

There is, sir, an incident of history which suggests a parallel, and affords a lesson of fidelity.  Under the triumphant exertions of that Apostolic Jesuit, St. Francis Xavier, large numbers of Japanese, amounting to as many as two hundred thousand,—­among them princes, generals, and the flower of the nobility,—­were converted to Christianity.  Afterwards, amidst the frenzy of civil war, religious persecution arose, and the penalty of death was denounced against all who refused to trample upon the effigy of the Redeemer.  This was the Pagan law of a Pagan land.  But the delighted historian records, that from the multitude of converts scarcely one was guilty of this apostasy.  The law of man was set at naught.  Imprisonment, torture, death, were preferred.  Thus did this people refuse to trample on the painted image.  Sir, multitudes among us will not be less steadfast in refusing to trample on the living image of their Redeemer.

Finally, Sir, for the sake of peace and tranquility, cease to shock the Public Conscience; for the sake of the Constitution, cease to exercise a power nowhere granted, and which violates inviolable rights expressly secured.  Leave this question where it was left by our fathers, at the formation of our National Government,—­in the absolute control of the States, the appointed guardians of Personal Liberty.  Repeal this enactment.  Let its terrors no longer rage through the land.  Mindful of the lowly whom it pursues, mindful of the good men perplexed by its requirements, in the name of Charity, in the name of the Constitution, repeal this enactment, totally and without delay.  There is the example of Washington, follow it.  There also are words of Oriental piety, most touching and full of warning, which speak to all mankind, and now especially to us:  “Beware of the groans of wounded souls, since the inward sore will at length break out.  Oppress not to the utmost a single heart; for a solitary sigh has power to overturn a whole world.”