Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/229

TOOMBS that this was a constitutional obligation. How is it now? The North sought to evade it; following the instincts of their natural character, they commenced with the fraudulent fiction that fugitives were entitled to habeas corpus, en- titled to trial by jury in the State to which they fled. They pretended to believe that our fugi- tive slaves were entitled to more rights than their white citizens; perhaps they were right, they know one another better than I do. You may charge a white man with treason, or felony, or other crime, and you do not require any trial by jury before he is given up ; there is nothing to determine but that he is legally charged with a crime and that Le fled, and then he is to be de- livered up upon demand. White people are de- livered up every day in this way ; but not slaves. Slaves, black people, you say, are entitled to trial by jury: and in this way schemes have been in- vented to defeat your plain constitutional ob- ligations. Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligations and the duties of the federal government. I am content and have ever been content to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection, while I do not believe it was a good compact, and while I never saw the day that I would have voted for it as a proposi- tion de novo, yet I am bound to it by oath and by that common prudence which would induce men to abide by established forms rather than to rush into unknown dangers. I have given 219