himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe; in all countries, and at all times. No human laws have any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately from this original." And again, "Those rights which God and nature have established, and which are therefore called 'natural rights,' such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws, to be more effectually vested in every man, than they are. Neither do they receive any additional strength, when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act, that amounts to forfeiture." Introduction, Section 2.
"Law favoreth life, liberty and dower. Law regards the person above his possessions—life and liberty most," &c. Principia Legis and Equitatis, p. 56.
Such are the glorious foundations of British, eternal and universal law. Such are the principles which, without partiality and without hypocrisy, yield "glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will, to man." Such are the principles, which an American, cast away upon the shores of Morocco, would wish to find prevailing there. Such are the principles, without which, all boasts of liberty, are but a lie; a triumph of licentiousness over freedom; the boast of the strong, and the bane of the weak! Such are the principles, the universal prevalence of which, would make the world a moral Eden—the rejection of which, keeps it a little hell; especially where freemen hold slaves; for of all governments, an oligarchy is the worst. It consists of a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand tyrants, instead of one. It is "diffusing tyranny every where." It is "bringing despotism home to every man's door." It involves the greatest deliberateness and desperation of iniquity, both with law and without law, which it is possible for power to perpetrate against weakness. And this enormous concatenation of all possible wickedness, is at its climax, when the oligarchs, the petty despots, the plantation tyrants most boast of freedom!! Witness Sparta and Athens, and republican Rome, in ancient times—in modern, witness the colonies of France, Holland and England. At this moment, see especially the United States; and at their apex, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Missisippi and Louisiana.
NO. 2.
In the year 1824, a little band of refugee slaves, that is, of guiltless British subjects, who had fled in peace, from the the most iniquitous
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