Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/95

84 just now we are concerned with a terrible fact. On Thursday of, intelligence was received in England that by a decision of the Canadian judges we were to be made the agents of the Southern Slave-holders in the United States. The Fugitive Slave Law was to be applied to us. The infamous decision in the Dred Scot case was to apply to us. The municipal regulations connected with slavery, which hold good not in all, but in some of the United States, were to apply to us. The famous boast that English soil would never more be outraged by the footsteps of a slave—because with his first gulp of English air the slave was free—is now to be a boast indeed, unless order be taken in the matter. The British nation will answer the challenge, and lift up the gauntlet which has been cast down before them, as with one voice and with one hand. Come what may—this thing shall not be. This is no dispute about a boundary, or an Oregon question, or a fishery, or a distant islet; but in it is involved a principle which is more precious in our eyes than fortune or life. British hands must never wield the scourge, or knot the halter for torture, or stay the slave who has endeavoured to escape from his hard bondage, even if, peradventure, he has shed human blood in the attempt to recover his freedom. Upon such a point we will have no half-measure or compromise—it must not be. What is it to us if a slave-owner, or his agent, who throws himself across the path of a fugitive slave, and compels the unfortunate man to slay him in self-defence, has been stricken to the earth? There let him lie. His blood does not cry to us for vengeance. It is not for us to appease the ghost of him who would have hunted his fellow-man to destruction, because he tried to escape from bonds and torture.

The decision of the Canadian judges is technically wrong, as well as an outrage and a blasphemy against that great common law of Nature which existed before statutes were passed, or treaties agreed upon between nations. Even if the choice were forced upon us of whether we must violate the national faith, or sin against that great canon of Nature which obtained the force of law when man and his fellow first drew the breath of life upon this earth, let our choice be for the lesser, not for the greater crime. As matters stand we are not driven into such a strait. We have bound ourselves by treaty with the United States to give them back their murderers—amongst other offenders—in return for our own; but the question remains—who is a murderer? We are not bound to accept the definition of the United States Courts upon such a point. We are ready to give up all persons who would be considered murderers in the dominions subject to British rule, and in return we only ask for the extradition of those who would be regarded as murderers in the United States, as well as in all civilised nations. We deny the right of the United States to screw up a minor offence, or indeed an act which in no wise bears the character of murder at all, to the degree of a capital crime, and then to force their arbitrary definition upon our acceptance. As our judges read over the affidavits and depositions from which they are called upon to infer the probable guilt of the prisoner, they must read them over, not piecemeal, but from the first word to the last. They must consider whether the offence charged would have amounted to the crime of murder in the dominions of Great Britain. Here are the very words of the treaty, and of the Canadian statute upon which Chief Justice Robinson grounded the decision which, unfortunately, was adverse to Anderson, the fugitive slave. “If a person be charged with the commission of murder, piracy, arson, robbery, or forgery within the United States of America, and ‘charged upon such evidence of criminality as according to the law of the place where the fugitive or person so charged shall be found would justify his apprehension and commitment for trial, if the crime or offence had been there committed,’ he may be apprehended, and his case is to be heard, and considered. If, on such hearing, the evidence be deemed sufficient by law to sustain the charge according to the laws of this province,” the fugitive is to be given up with the usual solemnities, and in the usual way. Such being the law—here are the facts. On the 28th of September, 1853, in Haward county, in the state of Missouri, the coloured man Anderson—so it was charged—wilfully, maliciously, and ferociously stabbed and killed one Seneca T. P. Digges. Anderson was a runaway slave, Digges was endeavouring to arrest him, and it is not contended that Anderson could have escaped capture at the hands of Digges otherwise than by striking him down. We pass over all technical objections to the contents of the depositions, although in the opinion of Mr. Justice Lean—one of the judges who considered the case—these were sufficient to warrant the prisoner’s discharge. Assuming that Digges held a lawful warrant, or was properly authorised by the law of the United States, to arrest Anderson, and that Anderson slew him whilst endeavouring to effect his escape, this would be a primâ facie case of murder. But as the judges read on they would find that Anderson was a runaway slave; and as, according to the law of the place in which he had been found—namely, Canada—the existence of slavery was not recognised, his apprehension was unlawful. The prosecution was, above all things, bound to show that the apprehension, or intended apprehension, was lawful, and according to law—which, in Anderson’s case, by British law and the law of Canada, it clearly was not. If we once permit ourselves to be ousted from this view, any foreign nation with which we may have an extradition treaty may foist on us twenty arbitrary definitions of the crime of murder, and compel us to be the reluctant instruments of their tyranny.

What would become of the political refugees on our shores if this adverse doctrine should prevail? Great Britain would soon be found emulous of the recent infamy of Saxony. After all, it is less disgraceful to give up a Hungarian refugee to the tender mercies of the Austrian Emperor and his police, than to deliver a fugitive slave into the hands of a Missouri slave-owner. We await in extreme anxiety the arrival of the next mail that we may know if the appeal in Anderson’s case has been allowed.