British newspapers were defiled with advertisements for runaway slaves, and with notices of negroes for sale." But Granville Sharp called the opinion in question. He examined with great care the British Constitution, and laws, and after seven years toil and arduous struggle, he succeeded in convincing the highest Court, and procured from Lord Mansfield, in 1772, the memorable decision, that so soon as a slave sets his foot on the soil of Great Britain, he is free. Is there not now as much respect for the rights of man in the free states of this republic, as there was in England sixty-eight years ago? Let it be ascertained by a fair trial. The recent decision of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts is a good omen. The Constitution of the republic opposed no barrier to any improvement in this respect our legislatures may see fit to make. And certainly the slave states have no reason to expect any favors from us in regard to their colored population, seeing they have uniformly set at nought the rights conferred upon our colored population, both by the state and national Constitutions. According to the Constitution of the Union, "citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states." But if citizens of Massachusetts-freemen-voters--who happen to be colored, go into one of the slave states, so far from being admitted to any privileges, they are forthwith subjected to all the disabilities and hardships of colored people there. No respect whatever is shown to them as the citizens of a sister state. They are treated with the utmost rigor-are thrown into prison, and sold into slavery. The southerners insist that they must do all this, in order to preserve their system of domestic servitude. Why should not we of the North do at least as much for the sake of freedom, as they do for slavery?— The Constitutions of the free states give no sanction to slavery. Our colored population can no more be deprived of their liberty than the white. If colored people come from the South to reside among us, why are they not at once entitled to all the privileges and immunities of colored people here? If so, they cannot be regarded by us as slaves one moment, without violating our own Constitution. Therefore, should men come and claim them as "chattels personal," let us tell them with an emphasis that will make them quake, that, among us a man may not hold his fellow

being as property, unless he can "show a title deed from the Creator." If they should come and claim them as persons held to serve or labor for them, let us demand proof of a contract made between the parties. The Constitution prescribes no process, by which fugitives from slavery may be re-taken from among us. Congress had no right to prescribe the law they did, in 1793, therefore it is not binding upon us. And let us see to it, in our several states, that the process by which such a fugitive may be recovered, shall be made as difficult as possible. Let us throw every impediment, every hindrance and perplexity in the way of such unrighteousness.

There is but one other passage in the Constitution which we have ever heard quoted to prove that the Constitution sanctions and upholds slavery. It is the 4th sect. of Article IV., viz:

66 "The United States shall guaranty to every state in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence."

No particular kind of domestic violence is here specified; and we see not therefore by what authority this expression is understood to mean the violent attempts of the slaves to emancipate themselves. Other kinds of domestic violence there may be, beside servile insurrections, requiring the interference of the United States forces. A gang of Irishmen and sailors may become so turbulent in their celebration of the 4th of July, or a mob of "gentlemen of property and standing" may grow so outrageous in their zeal against abolitionists, as to commit violence upon the dwellings and persons of their fellow citizens, and be wholly beyond the control of the constabulary force. In such an emergency the assistance of the military may be thought necessary. And this article empowers the legislature, or governor of a state to avail himself of the assistance of the United States' army, if any portion of it be stationed near at hand. Now, if a due respect for the liberty of speech,

* A resort to such assistance might be indispensably necessary. A gentleman intimated to the Mayor of Boston during one of the pro-slavery riots there in Oct. 1835, that it would be well for him to call out the military of the city. "I should call for them in vain, he replied, for many of the members of our militia companies are now active in the mob."

and the right peaceably to assemble, should ever again prevail in the northern states, and a determination should be shown by their executives to protect those rights, by a resort to the aid proffered by the Constitution in the article now under review, would our opposers be willing to allow to us, that the framers of our general government intended to uphold abolitionism, because they had provided thus to repress the violence of its enemies? We trow not. Much less shall we allow, that they meant to give support to the slave system, because under this article the military power of the Union may be called out to prevent its violent overthrow. The article was undoubtedly designed to offer the protection of the Union against insurrectionary movements of every kind. The Constitution provides other means for the redress of all grievances. The state wherein such protection may be needed, alone will be responsible for the application that is made of it. But we may fairly contend that it would be more congenial with the spirit of the men, who framed our Constitution (whatever may be the spirit of our own time) to apply the force of the nation to suppress violence against liberty, than violence in its behalf.

We have now examined, with what fairness our readers must judge, every passage in the Constitution of our country, that we have ever heard quoted as intended to uphold slavery. Whatever may be thought of our comments, the articles are what they are. They speak for themselves. It is impossible not to perceive the pains which the framers of these articles took to avoid any explicit recognition of slavery. The words slave and slavery do not once occur throughout the Constitution. And every article is so framed that it would be needed, even if there were no slaves in the land. Only six words in any of these articles would be so much as redundant, were slavery to be abolished, viz. "three-fifths of all other persons," Art. I. Sect. II. clause 3. And the force of these words, so long as they continue to have any force, as we have already shown, bears against the slave system and not in its favor.

It seems to us that the framers of our Constitution finding they had not the power to abolish slavery, were determined to do the next best thing-not commit the national government to its support. We beseech all who think otherwise, to review the whole subject, and carefully distin

guish between the Constitution, and the subsequent legislation of Congress, and the subservient procedure of some of the free states.

(To be continued.)

THE REV. F. A. COX, D.D. AND HIS AMERICAN APOLOGISTS.

IT is well known that the gentleman, whose name is placed at the head of this article, was invited by the managers of the American Anti-Slavery Society to take a part in the proceedings of their anniversary meeting in 1835, and that he declined doing so. The simple fact that a foreign clergyman objected to making a speech at a public meeting in New-York, is of itself a matter of no moment to the community, and affords no room for unfavorable imputations on his motives. The managers of our benevolent and religious institutions receive apologies without number, from ardent and devoted friends, for not appearing on the platform; yet in no other instance has an apology of this kind attracted public attention, and become the subject of newspaper discussion. The conduct of Dr. Cox, however, has called forth loud and repeated plaudits on this side of the Atlantic, and has on the other been canvassed at public meetings, and become the theme of severe animadversion. It is obvious therefore, that Dr. Cox's refusal must have been attended with some peculiar circumstances, involving considerations interesting not merely to his own reputation, but to the character and success of the anti-slavery cause. His reputation is to us of but little consequence, and we certainly feel no disposition either to assail or defend it, apart from its connection with the anti-slavery cause, and the injurious imputations cast upon that cause by himself and his apologists. It will be seen in the sequel that this gentleman's conduct, and the approval it has received from some of his reverend friends in the United States, involves the question whether the abolitionists of America are, or are not entitled to the open and avowed sympathy and co-operation of their fellow christians of other countries. If our investigations shall

place Dr. Cox in a most unenviable light, and throw ridicule on the plaudits of his friends, they will we trust, result in shewing the utter worthlessness of the opinions of these gentlemen so far as they are adverse to the demands of the Anti-Slavery Society, upon the countenance and support of christians of every name, and the friends of justice and humanity in every land.

Dr. Cox is a member of the "Board of Baptist Ministers in and near London." This body in December 1833, addressed a letter "to the pastors and ministers of the Baptist denomination, throughout the United States of America ;" exhorting them as christian ministers to protest against slavery as an "awful breach of the divine law," and to seek by all legitimate means its speedy and entire destruction. On the 25th Nov. 1834, this same Board, with Dr. Cox acting as its chairman, passed a resolution declaratory of its hope that such of their American brethren as concur in the opinions of the letter of 1833, will adopt every means consistent with christian principles to diffuse their sentiments, and thus "secure the immediate extinction of their slave system;" and this resolution was directed to be forwarded to the Baptist Board for Foreign Missions in the United States.

In 1834, the English "Baptist Union" appointed Doctors Hoby and Cox a deputation to visit the Baptist churches in the United States. As the mission of these gentlemen would necessarily cost money, the Union addressed a circular to their churches, calling on them for pecuniary contributions. To quicken the liberality of the Baptist churches toward the mission, they were told in the circular "we send our depu"tation to promote most zealously and to the utmost of their "ability, in the spirit of love, of discretion and fidelity, but "still most zealously, to promote the sacred cause of negro "emancipation."

In selecting Dr. Cox as one of their deputies, to promote the cause of negro emancipation, the Union may have been influenced by the zeal the reverend gentleman had already shewn in that cause, by accepting a seat in the committee of the "British and Foreign Society for the universal abolition of negro slavery and the slave trade." We have before us "The Abolitionist" for August 1834, a periodical published by this society, and bearing on its cover the name of Dr.