Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/427

 people, whether out of their liberty or their property, hurts no man's reputation at New Orleans, — he lost his practice, and sunk pretty much to Mr Grip Curtis's level.

But within a year or two past, since the passage of the new fugitive slave act, by which the American Union has recently been saved from total destruction, these two worthy gentlemen having turned patriots and Union-saviors, have quite recovered themselves. Under the firm of Gilmore and Curtis, — and Mr Colter writes me that it is privately whispered that they have a judge as a secret partner, — they have established themselves at Philadelphia in a general slave catching and kidnapping business. Gilmore has obtained the appointment of a slave catching commissioner for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, and Mr Grip Curtis that of assistant to a deputy marshal, appointed for slave cases exclusively; and, of course, all three, commissioner, catchpole, and judge, play beautifully into each other's hands.

I need only add, that Montgomery follows with profit, at Liverpool, the mercantile pursuits to which he had been educated, and that a family of five beautiful and promising children, of which he and Eliza are the happy parents, does not afford much countenance to the nonsensical physiological theory that the mixed race is hybrid and sterile, under which certain American statesmen are endeavoring to find shelter against the growing inevitable danger by which their favorite system of slavery is threatened. .

In vain, Americans, do you seek to make nature a party to your detestable conspiracy against the rights of humanity, and your own flesh and blood. In vain do your laws proclaim that the children shall follow the condition of the mother. The children of free fathers are not thus to be cheated of their birthright. Day by day, and hour by hour, as the chain becomes weaker, so the disposition and the power to snap it become stronger. Day by day,