Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/390

380 and he was especially severe in his denunciation of the English philanthropist, George Thompson, the “foreign hireling,” as Clay called him, who had come to America “in order to propagate his opinions and doctrines with regard to the subversion of one of the institutions of this country.” But he evidently made it the main object of his speech to persuade his Southern friends that, after all, the fugitive-slave law was, on the whole, faithfully executed in the Free States, and that, therefore, there was no just reason for complaint or apprehension. He passed in review several cases in which fugitive slaves had been returned without difficulty. In fact, he knew of but this one instance of obstruction. “I heard,” said he, “with great regret the remarks made by the Senator from Virginia [who had complained], because I do not coincide with him in the facts upon which his remarks were founded, and I think they may have a tendency to produce ill effects where there is already too much disposition in the public mind to be operated upon disadvantageous to the Union.”

Anxiously he admonished his Southern friends not to be too exacting. They could really not expect to recover the runaways without some trouble and expense. As all laws were occasionally evaded, so would this be, especially as it was a law “to recover a human being who owes service as a slave to another,” and as, “besides the aid and the sympathy which he will excite from his partic-