GENERAL BENNETT.

Chief of the Mormon city of Nauvoo, Illinois.

I gave slavery a full and fair investigation years ago I swore in my youth that my hands should never be bound, my feet fettered, nor my tongue palsied-I am the friend of Liberty, universal liberty, both civil and religious. I ever detested servile bondage. I wish to see the shackles fall from the feet of the oppressed, and the chains of slavery broken. I hate the oppressor's grasp and the tyrant's rod; against them I set my brows like brass, and my face like steel; and my arm is nerved for the conflict.

Great God! has it come to this, that the free citizens of the sovereign state of Illinois, can be taken and immured within the walls of a Missouri penitentiary for twelve long years, for such a crime as God would regard as a virtue? Simply for pointing bondmen to a state of liberty and law!

WILLIAM DUNLAP.

Negro slavery, the curse of a portion of the United States of America, is a subject that cannot be passed over in silence by any historian of New-York; particularly when we reflect that its abolition has been one, and not the least efficient of the causes of the prosperity and greatness of the empire state.

In 1562, Sir John Hawkins, with the aid of Sir Lionel Duchet, Sir Thomas Lodge, and Sir William Winter, fixed the stigma' upon England, of introducing the slave trade, as a branch of commerce at this early period, among the inhabitants of that trading country. This trade in the blood, lives, and liberties of human beings, was then, and has since been excused, and attempted to be justified, by stating that the negrocs were benefitted by being kidnapped, chained, confined in floating prisons, of the most loathsome description, murdered if resisting, subjected to disease and death, to the cool mercantile calculation of the number per hundred to be thrown over-board, and to endless labor and stripes, on their arrival in America, inasmuch as the survivors were transported to a land where they would become civilized, and taught the lessons of christianity.

Such arguments reconciled princes and nations, to this most inhuman of all the practices which have disgraced civilized man. Such was the theory. In practice the negro was treated as a brute, and by law prohibited from being taught either in a school, or the church.

That guilt which the state of slavery engenders, is chargeable to the master of the slave. To possess unlimited power over a human being, makes the possessor a tyrant; he is corrupted by its influence, while the subject of his power is debased. The tyrant may be merciful and kind, and the slave may be grateful. It has been so in empires and in families: but when so, it is from causes adverse to ty ranny and slavery; their influence is ever the same.

The slave only works from the fear of punishment, and neglecte his labor as much as possible. When he refrains from exertion, he

only resumes a portion of that which has been forced from him Every traveller who passes from a state where labor is performed by freemen, for their own profit, into a state where it is performed by slaves, will at once be struck by the contrast on the face of every thing produced by labor. Another evil is, that employing slaves to work, makes labor disreputable. The white man prides himself upon his idleness.-History of New-York.

HORACE GREELY.

The supreme court of the United States has just pronounced the most important decision which has proceeded from its bench for many years-perhaps ever. In a case arising between Maryland and Pennsylvania, it has declared that the right of a slave-holder to capture, secure and return his fugitive slave, under the well known clause of the federal constitution, is absolute and illimitable-that the free states have no discretion as to its exercise, no protection against its abuse. All laws securing to the citizen of a free state claimed as a slave a trial by jury, all free state legislation designed to prevent abuses of the slave-holder's constitutional right of reclamation, are hereby declared null and void, and the trial by jury law of this state, as well as that of Pennsylvania, is henceforth a dead letter. This judgment was pronounced by Justice Story of Massachusetts, and concurred in by all the judges except John M'Lean of Ohio. Two or three of the justices read separate opinions, varying somewhat the grounds of the decision, but concurring, as we understand, in all the conclusions above recited.

This tremendous decision brings the great question of freedom or slavery home to all our doors. There is not a man in the free states who is not affected by it-whose personal liberty is not invaded and endangered by it. The constitution knows no distinction of white, black and intermediate colored persons; it says nothing expressly of slaves; it speaks only of persons held to labor or service in one state escaping into another. Now if a negro may be apprehended in this city and carried by mere force to Virginia, to some one who claims him as an escaped slave or servant, then any of us-then Gov. Seward, Justice Thompson, or Justice Story, may be so taken. Where is the safeguard against abuse? Where the protection to freemen? The N. Y. State law of 1840, extending the right of trial by jury to persons claimed as fugitives from labor or service,' afforded such protection. By that law a slave-holder was required to prove his property in a man or woman claimed by him, as much as in a horse or monkey. Even before the passage of that law, a slaveholder was always required to verify his legal right before a justice of the peace, who approved it or set the arrested person at liberty.The Tribune, March 12, 1842.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

The Pennsylvania case, lately decided by the supreme court of the United States, has excited very justly, the alarm and animadversion of every legal mind. Once give the power to a man to seize a fellow-man, and bind him into slavery without responsibility anywhere, and the government of the United States turns the community into one of kidnappers and robbers. A man appears in New-York, seizes a man and carries him into Maryland, and sells him as a slave or murders him. This man is indicted and apprehended if he can be found; if not, there is an end to the matter. The law might be applied to Justice Story himself, in his proper person, under the idea that he was a person held to labor or service in another state, under the constitution itself and had escaped therefrom.

If nothing more could have been done in the late Pennsylvania case, when before the supreme court of the United States, the judges of that court, belonging to the free states, ought to have solemnly protested against such a decision, for their own personal safety.

The very idea of an irresponsible man, without morals, character, house, home or location, habitation or name, coming into the state of New-York, and making an affidavit that any person is held to service or labor in another state, be he white, black, or red; and on such an affidavit, reeking as it may be with falsehood, perjury, and every abomination, and on such a proceeding as this, or upon no proceeding at all-that a citizen of this state may be seized, kidnap. ped, and hurried away from his wife, children, and family, into a distant country, there to be consigued to slavery, or murdered at the tender mercies of their conspirators, strikes the mind with horror, and it cries out with feelings of indignation, that this is the offspring of sin and death. A law of such a character as this, is the law of barbarians. It is not the law of a people who have declared to the world, that all mankind have certain inalienable rights, amongst which are the rights of liberty, security and happiness. There is no security in such laws as these, of happiness, or liberty under them. Supposing a white man is carried away under this law of seizure, without a trial by jury? it is true that in most of the slave-holding states his color is prima facic, a declaration that he is free; but suppose he is unfortunately tinctured with the Indian, New South Wales or Negro blood, he is declared by his color to be prima facie a slave, and must prove his freedom, while he is locked up in prison. He is first deprived of liberty unjustly, and then prevented by the same law from proving his liberty, because a slave cannot appear in a court of justice; being treated not as a person, but as a dead chattel. The system of selling men for prison fees, is one that deserves the detestation of all righteous men. First, commit the greatest outrage upon a man that can be, without murdering and maiming him, lock him up in prison, prevent him from proving his freedom, and then sell him because he has no proof of his freedom-we have grounds to fear that some persons have been seized north of Mason and Dixon's line, and then carried south of it and treated in this manner by some gambling, disappointed, unprincipled negro-catcher, merely to make a

raise of a small sum of money, to squander in dissipation upon the sale of his victim. There is no other way than to try the question by a jury, in the first instance, when the man is seized, and the questions to be tried are: 1st. Is the man complained of, the same indi vidual he is charged to be? 2d. Is he a person that owes labor or service in another state, under the laws thereof, and escaped there. from? This provision in the act of congress applies to all persons white, black and red, and wherever the right of trial by jury is secured to one color of persons in the state, it is to all others.-NewYork Evening Post, May, 1842.

CHARLES KING.

It must be obvious to the most careless observer, that the horror which used to thrill through all sound hearts at the bare inention of disunion can no longer be excited. We have heard so much and so often from the south-upon the slightest occasion-of threats of sepa ration, of calculating the value of the union, and of the south's ability to exist by herself and for herself that the north has been forced, as it were, to reflect upon what would be the issue of such a breaking up of our republic; and, sooth to say, reflection has brought the conviction to very, very many minds, that if calculation of sectional pride and power must determine this great political and social problem-the north-the free states-the horticultural, manufactur ing and commercial states, would gain power, wealth, and importance by cutting loose from the weaker and dependent south, now admitted to an equality with them.

This conviction of reason, moreover, is, in some ardent minds, exasperated almost into a passionate desire, by the insolence and intolerance of the slave representatives in congress.

It is to feelings of this sort that we are to ascribe in part the petition presented by Mr. Adams, which has occasioned the violent debate in the house, asking for a dissolution of the union, rather than longer submission to unequal, oppressive, overbearing legislation, dictated by southern interest, and carried by the cohesion of the com. mon bond of slavery.

And what was thus formally embodied by these petitioners, is floating loosely and largely among the elements that go to make up public opinion in the north. Repulsed at first because of the loyalty to the union, which enters into the education and hopes, as it were, of every northern man-it comes again and again, at such successive manifestations of southern intolerance, to force an entrance, and at each attempt finds resistance more and more feeble.-N. Y. American.

JOHN NEAL.

I am opposed to the annexation of Texas or any other state or territory in which slavery exists, to the United States; believing slavery to be one of the greatest afflictions that a people, or any portion of a people, can labor under.

I myself am not an abolitionist, in the common meaning of the

term-in other words, I am not a friend to immediate, universal, and unconditional emancipation; but that, like the great majority of those with whom I associate, or correspond, either at home or abroad, either in New-England or at the south, I recognize the existence of slavery as a curse-a curse at all times, and under all circumstances: that in common with multitudes of our generous brethren at the south, I find such to have been the settled opinion of our country at the forming of our constitution: that I see no reason for abandoning that opinion, and as little for adopting that which has lately been promulgated at the south-namely that slavery there is a blessing; and that, therefore, I am so far an abolitionist as to hope for the final emancipation of every human being-and I will even add the sooner the better provided that emancipation be effected legally, peaceably, and with the consent of all parties interested. This, I believe, may be had in time; and had even from the slave-holders of the south.

WILLIAM LEGGETT.

The opinions of the southern people themselves, with respect to the perfect right which every American citizen possesses, to discuss the subject of slavery, have undergone a world-wide change in the course of a few years. If they will look into the writings of Jefferson and Madison, they will find that those great men, though southerners and slaveholders, not only did not claim any such right of interdicting the subject as is now set up, but exercised it very freely themselves. If they will turn to the record of the debate which took place in congress in 1790, on the question of committing the memorial of the Society of Friends against the slave-trade, they will find that Mr. Madison explained the obligations of the federal compact, in a very different manner from that which it is the fashion of the present day to interpret them. They will find that, in the review which he entered in'o of the circumstances connected with the adoption of the constitution he very clearly showed that the powers of congress were by no means as limited as it is now contended that they are. They will find that, in speaking of the territories of the United States, he expressly declared, from his knowledge, as well of the sentiments and opinions of the members of the convention, as of the true meaning and force of the terms of the

compact, that there " congress have certainly the power to regulate the subject of slavery." It is fortunate that Madison and Jefferson did not live to this day, or they would have been denounced as abolitionists, fanatics, and incendiaries, and every thing else that is bad. Lieutenant Governor Robinson would no doubt have honored them with a place in his message, as ring-leaders of his "organized band of conspirators."

But though Madison and Jefferson are gone, the spirit which animated them still glows in many a freeman's bosom; while one spark of it remains, the South will storm and rave in vain, for it never can induce the northern states to give up freedom for the sake of union; to give up the end for the sake of the means; to give up the substance for the sake of the shadow.-The Plain dealer.