Page:Orange Grove.djvu/338

 existed in the land, but it never came home to his conscience in this light before. Like thousands of others he accepted the current phrase that this was the freest country on the face of the globe, the truth of which, tested by Massachusetts institutions, there seemed no reason to question. He returned to his Northern home, but it no longer wafted o'er his brow the free, pure air that inspired his childhood's boyish dreams. A deadly taint rested on all the superstructure to which he had formerly turned with reverence as the embodiment of human wisdom, extending its privileges for the benefit and protection of every child of the human family; and he saw Law, which was associated in his mind with the first principle of divine order, perverted to the vilest of purposes, while no one questioned the rightfulness of the foul work to which it was prostituted. He went into a searching examination of all the various channels of jurisprudence to which his native tongue gave access, and sought in vain for a vestige of the shadow of right to barter as merchandise a human being under any pretext whatever. Even Blackstone, the child and advocate of a monarchy, gave to Liberty the broadest interpretation that could be safely done in accordance with the reserved rights of the individual, and in no case were the latter to be given up except for the benefit of society, in which he would share as one of its members. Again and again did he reperuse those pages to trace there the principle that governs all history, and under the guidance of a new light, which the Law school of Cambridge could never yield, he gradually unfolded the divine plan by which,