A people capable of originating and sustaining such a law as this, are not the people to whom we are willing to entrust our liberty at discretion.

What can we do?  What shall we do?  This is the great and important question:—­Shall we submit to be dragged like brutes before heartless men, and sent into degradation and bondage?—­Shall we fly, or shall we resist?  Ponder well and reflect.

A learned jurist in the United States, (Chief Justice John Gibson of Pennsylvania,) lays down this as a fundamental right in the United States:  that “Every man’s house is his castle, and he has the right to defend it unto the taking of life, against any attempt to enter it against his will, except for crime,” by well authenticated process.

But we have no such right.  It was not intended for us, any more than any other provision of the law, intended for the protection of Americans.  The policy is against us—­it is useless to contend against it.

This is the law of the land and must be obeyed; and we candidly advise that it is useless for us to contend against it.  To suppose its repeal, is to anticipate an overthrow of the Confederative Union; and we must be allowed an expression of opinion, when we say, that candidly we believe, the existence of the Fugitive Slave Law necessary to the continuance of the National Compact.  This Law is the foundation of the Compromise—­remove it, and the consequences are easily determined.  We say necessary to the continuance of the National Compact:  certainly we will not be understood as meaning that the enactment of such a Law was really necessary, or as favoring in the least this political monstrosity of the THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA—­surely not at all; but we speak logically and politically, leaving morality and right out of the question—­taking our position on the acknowledged popular, basis of American Policy; arguing from premise to conclusion.  We must abandon all vague theory, and look at facts as they really are; viewing ourselves in our true political position in the body politic.  To imagine ourselves to be included in the body politic, except by express legislation, is at war with common sense, and contrary to fact.  Legislation, the administration of the laws of the country, and the exercise of rights by the people, all prove to the contrary.  We are politically, not of them, but aliens to the laws and political privileges of the country.  These are truths—­fixed facts, that quaint theory and exhausted moralising, are impregnable to, and fall harmlessly before.