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best library in this County. Most surely, sir, you have read history to little purpose if you do not know that slavery was not abolished in Massachusetts by legislation, and that not an hour was allowed those who held slaves in that State in which they might sell or run them off.” “This is a precious piece of nonsense you are relating,” said ——, “who does not know that Massachusetts was once a slave State, and that it is now one of the free States?” “True,” said Samuel, “but there was no gradual emancipation nor selling of slaves, and there was no legislation about it. When Massachusetts became a State, and the people of the State adopted a constitution, the preamble, or, as they called it, their bill of rights, was copied almost verbatim from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, which declares, briefly, that all men have equal rights, and have equal right to protection in the enjoyment thereof. As soon as the constitution was adopted by the people, a gentleman residing in Hampden Co., who could not have been a Democrat of your stamp, though he held nine or ten slaves, said to his foreman, a very intelligent slave, “Thomas, I think you are legally entitled to freedom. I have thought about it a long time, especially since we have declared our independence, and are sacrificing thousands of lives and millions of property in defense of the principles that we publish to the world as our excuse for so doing; and now our State having embodied the same principle into the constitution as the fundamental law of the State, you are as much entitled to freedom as I am. To test this question, I wish you to employ counsel and bring a suit against me in the Supreme Court for illegally holding you in slavery, urging your claim under the bill of rights in the constitution. You will need money to retain a lawyer, and here are a hundred dollars which you can use for that purpose.” I need not