Grand-Jury," fit passenger for fitting carriage! The same tree bore the Judge's blossom in June, and the Attorney's fruit in October, both reeking out the effluvia of the same substance. But neither Attorney nor Judge dares accuse me of ill-will which would harm another man, or of selfishness that seeks my own private advantage. No, Gentlemen of the Jury, I am on trial for my love of Justice; for my respect to the natural Rights of Man; for speaking a word in behalf of what the Declaration of Independence calls the "self-evident" Truth, that all men have a natural, equal, and unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. I am charged with words against what John Wesley named, the "Sum of all Villanies," against a national crime so great, that it made freethinking Mr. Jefferson, with all his "French Infidelity," "tremble" when he remembered "that God is just." I am on trial for my manly virtue, — a Minister of the Christian Religion on trial for keeping the Golden Rule! It is alleged that I have spoken in Boston against kidnapping in Boston; that in my own pulpit, as a minister, I have denounced Boston men for stealing my own parishioners; that as a man, in Faneuil Hall, the spirit of James Otis, of John Hancock, and three Adams's about me, with a word I "obstructed" the Marshal of Boston and a Boston Judge of Probate, in their confederated attempts to enslave a Boston man. When the Government of the United States has turned kidnapper, I am charged with the "misdemeanor" of appealing from the Atheism of purchased officials to the Conscience of the People; and with rousing up Christians to keep the golden rule, when the Rulers declared Religion had nothing to do with politics and there was no Law of God above the fugitive slave bill!

Such are the acts charged. Gentlemen of the Jury, you are summoned here to declare them a Crime, and then to punish me for this "offence!" You are the Axe which the Government grasps with red hand to cleave my head asunder. It is a trial where Franklin Pierce, transiently President of the United States, and his official coadjutors, Mr. Caleb Cushing, Mr. Benj. R. Curtis, and Mr. Benj. F. Hallett, are on one side, and the People of the United States on the other. As a Measure, your decision may send me to jail for twelve months; may also fine me three hundred dollars. To me personally it is of very small consequence what your verdict shall be. The fine is nothing; the imprisonment for twelve months- Gentlemen, I laugh at it! Nay, were it death, I should smile at the official gibbet. A verdict of guilty would affix no stain to my reputation. I am sure to come out of this trial with honor-it is the Court that is sure to suffer loss at least shame. I do not mean the Court will ever feel remorse, or even shame, for this conduct; I am no young man now, I know these men,—but the People are sure to burn the

brand of shame deep into this tribunal. The blow of that axe, if not parried, will do me no harm.

But it is not I, merely, now put to trial. Nay, it is the unalienable Rights of Humanity, it is truths self-evident. For on the back of that compliant Measure, unseen, there rides a Principle. The verdict expected of you condemns liberal institutions: all Religion but priestcraft- the abnegation of religion itself; all Rights but that to bondage the denial of all rights. The word which fines me, puts your own purse in the hands of your worst enemies; the manywarded key which shuts me in jail, locks your lips forever-your children's lips forever. No complaint against oppression hereafter! Kidnapping will go on in silence, but at noonday, not a minister stirring. Meeting-houses will be shut; all court houses have a loaded cannon at their door, chains all round them, be stuffed with foreign soldiers inside, while commissioners swear away the life, the liberty, and even the Estate of the subjected "citizens." All Probate Judges will belong to the family of man-stealers. Faneuil Hall will be shut, or open only for a "Union Meeting," where the ruler calls together his menials to indorse some new act of injustice, — only creatures of the Government, men like the marshal's guard last June, allowed to speak words paid for by the People's coward sweat and miserable blood. The blow which smites my head will also cleave you asunder from crown to groin.

Your verdict is to vindicate Religion with Freedom of Speech, and condemn the stealing of men; or else to confirm Kidnapping and condemn Religion with Freedom of Speech. You are to choose whether you will have such men as Wendell Phillips for your advisers, or such as Benjamin F. Hallett and Benjamin R. Curtis for your masters, with the marshal's guard, for their appropriate servants. Do you think I doubt how you will choose?

Already a power of iniquity clutches at your children's throat; stabs at their life at their soul's life. I stand between the living tyrant and his living victim; aye, betwixt him and expected victims not yet born,—your children, not mine. I have none to writhe under the successful lash which tyrants now so subtly braid therewith, one day, to scourge the flesh of well-descended men. I am to stand the champion of human Rights for generations yet unborn. It is a sad distinction! Hard duties have before been laid on me, none so obviously demanding great powers as this. Whereto shall I look up for inspiring aid? Only to Him who gave words to the slow tongue of Moses and touched with fire Esaias' hesitating lips, and dawned into the soul of tent-makers and fishermen with such great wakening light, as shining through them, brought day to nations sitting in darkness, yet waiting for the consolation. May such

Truth and Justice enable me also, to speak a testimony unto the Gentiles; He who chose the weak things, to bring to nought the mighty, may not despise such humble services as mine.

Gentlemen of the Jury, my ministry deals chiefly with the Laws of God, little with the statutes of men. My manhood has been mainly passed in studying absolute, universal truth, teaching it to men, and applying it to the various departments of life. I have little to do with courts of law. Yet I am not now altogether a stranger to the circuit court room of the United States, having been in it on five several occasions before.

1. A Polish exile, -a man of famous family, ancient and patrician before Christendom had laid eyes on America, once also of great individual wealth, a man of high rank alike acquired and inherited, once holding a high place at the court of the Czar,- became a fugitive from Russian despotism, seeking an asylum here; he came to the circuit court room to lecture on the Roman Law. I came to contribute my two mites of money, and receive his wealth of learning.

2. The next time, I came at the summons of Thomas Sims. For a creature of the slave-power had spontaneously seized that poor and friendless boy and thrust him into a dungeon, hastening to make him a slave, a beast of burthen. He had been on his mock trial seven days, and had never seen a Judge, only a commissioner, nor a Jury; no Court but a solitary kidnapper. Some of his attendants had spoken of me as a minister not heedless of the welfare and unalienable rights of a black man fallen among a family of thieves. I went to the court house. Outside it was belted with chains. In despotic Europe I had seen no such spectacle, save once when the dull tyrant who oppressed Bavaria with his licentious flesh, in 1844 put his capital in a brief state of siege and chained the streets. The official servant of the kidnapper, club in hand, a policeman of this city, goaded to his task by Mayor Bigelow and Marshal Tukey,men congenitally mingled in such appropriate work, — bade me "Get under the chain." I pressed it down and went over. The Judges of our own Supreme Court, they went under, - had gone out and in, beneath the chain! How poetry mingles with fact! The chain was a symbol, and until this day remaineth the same chain, untaken away in the reading of the fugitive slave bill; and when the law of Massachusetts is read, the chain is also upon the neck of that court! Within the court house was full of armed men. I found Mr. Sims in a private room, illegally, in defiance of Massachusetts law, converted into a jail to hold men charged with no crime. Ruffians mounted guard at the entrance, armed with swords, fire-arms,

and bludgeons. The door was locked and doubly barred besides. Inside the watch was kept by a horrid looking fellow, without a coat, a naked cutlass in his hand, and some twenty others, their mouths nauseous with tobacco and reeking also with half-digested rum paid for by the city. In such company, I gave what consolation Religion could offer to the first man Boston ever kidnapped, consolations which took hold only of eternity, where the servant is free from his master, for there the wicked cease from troubling. I could offer him no comfort this side the grave.

3. I visited the United States court a third time. A poor young man had been seized by the same talons which subsequently griped Sims in their poison, deadly clutch. But that time, wickedness went off hungry, defeated of its prey; "for the Lord delivered him out of their hands," and Shadrach escaped from that Babylonish furnace, heated seven times hotter than its wont: no smell of fire had passed on him. But the rescue of Shadrach was telegraphed as "treason." The innocent lightning flashed out the premeditated and legal lie,"it is levying war!" What offence it was in that Fourth One who walked with the Hebrew children, "making their good confession," and sustained the old Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, I know not. But the modern countrymen of the African Shadrach, charged with some great crime, were haled into this court to be punished for their humanity! I came to look on these modern Angels of the Deliverance, to hear counsel of Mr. Dana, then so wise and humane, and to listen to the masterly eloquence which broke out from the great human heart of my friend, Mr. Hale, and rolled like the Mississippi, in its width, its depth, its beauty, and its continuous and unconquerable strength.

4. The fourth time, a poor man had been kidnapped, also at night, and forced into the same illegal jail. He sat in the dock an inno

cent man, to be made into a beast. The metamorphosis had begun; he was already in chains and his human heart seemed dead in him; sixty ruffians were about him, aiding in this drama, hired out of the brothels and rum-shops for a few days, the lust of kidnapping serving to vary the continual glut of those other and less brutal appetites of unbridled flesh. While that "trial" lasted, whoredom had a Sabbath day, and brawlers rested from their toil. Opposite sat the Boston Judge of Probate, and the Boston District Attorney, - the Moses and Elias of this inverted transfiguration; there sat the marshal, two "gentlemen" from Virginia, claiming that a Boston man was their beast of burthen, owing service and labor in Richmond; two "lawyers," "members of the Suffolk bar," pistols in their coats, came to support the allegation and enforce the claim. Honorable men stood up to defend him. There is one of them, to defend

me [Charles M. Ellis.] You know very well the rest of that sad story, the mock trial of Anthony Burns lasted from May 25th till June 2d. I was here in all the acts of that Tragedy. My own life was threatened; friend and foe gave me public or anonymous warning. I sat between men who had newly sworn to kill me, my garments touching theirs. The malaria of their rum and tobacco was an offence in my face. I saw their weapons, and laughed as I looked those drunken rowdies in their coward eye. They touch me!

5. The fifth time I came here at the summons of an officer of this court, very politely delivered, let me say it to his credit,-indicted and arrested for a "misdemeanor." I gave bail and withdrew.

6. The sixth time, - Gentlemen,-it is the present, whereof I shall erelong have much to say.

At the first visit I found only scholarly and philanthropic gentlemen, coming out of sympathy with a Polish exile, a defeated soldier of freedom, from his broken English to learn sound Roman Law. On each of the other visits I have been in quite different company. I have invariably met this Honorable Court, its kinsfolk and its most intimate friends, some member of the family of the distinguished Judge, now fitly presiding over this trial.

1. It was Mr. George T. Curtis, the only brother of the honorable Justice now on the bench,-born of the same mother and father,—who had the glory of kidnapping Mr. Sims; it was he who seized Shadrach, and gave such witness against one of the Angels of the Deliverance, and then came back and enlarged his testimony; it was he who declared the rescue an act of "treason;" he who hung the court house in chains, and brought down the pliant neck of the Massachusetts Judges beneath that symbolic line of linked fetters long drawn out. To what weak forces will such necks bow when slavery commands!

2. It was the honorable Judge now on the distinguished bench who tried men for the rescue of Shadrach. How he tried them is well known.

3. It was Edward G. Loring, another of this family so distinguished, who kidnapped Mr. Burns and held him in irons; he whose broom swept up together the marshal's guard; he who advised Mr. Burns's counsel to make no defence,-"put no obstructions in the way of his going back, as he probably will;" he who, in the darkness of midnight, sought to sell his victim, before he had examined the evidence which might prove him a free man; he who delivered him up as a slave, against evidence as against law.

4. Another of the same family, William W. Greenough, brotherin-law of Hon. Judge Curtis, was one of the grand-jury which