Maryland, which should take it out of the
category requiring those who have benefitted
by a certain thing taking care of that thing
when it becomes to be useless ?
Now, how came slavery ever to exist in
Maryland? I answer, precisely as it came to
exist everywhere else. The decision of the
greatest and best men probably who have
ever adjudicated these cases are—I read now
from Lord Mansfield:
" The state of slavery is of such a nature
that it is incapable of being introduced on
any reasons, moral or political; but only
positive law, which preserves its force long
after the reasons, occasion, and time itself
from whence it was created, is erased from
memory, Its so odious that nothing can be
suffered to support it, but positive law."—
Lofft's Reports, Easter Term, 12 George III,
K. B., page 19
And yet wherever slavery has existed in
this country certainly, and I think I am justi-
fied in saying elsewhere, it has commenced
and grown to alarming proportions in de-
spite of positive law. if gentlemen will look
over the statutes of the several States in this
country where slavery has existed, they will
find that the first enactments on the subject
are, not authorizing slaves to be held, but
regulating slavery as an existing institution ;
and that, in many cases, where it is expressly
prohibited at that very time upon the statute
book.
The gentlemen from Anne Arundel (Mr.
Miller) in discussing certain propositions yes-
terday, said that at the time of the adoption
of the constitution of the United States,
slavery was recognized in the constitutions of
all the States. Why, sir, the entire reverse
is the fact. And when his attention was
called to the matter, and the question was
asked, be at once changed his ground, and
said correctly that slavery existed as a fact ;
and precisely there is the whole difference,
whether slavery existed as a matter of fact,
or existed as a matter of law, I say that its
introduction was nowhere by law, neither in
Maryland nor elsewhere. In Massachusetts,
to which State the gentleman referred, the old
original ''Body of Liberties"—a document
almost as famous as the magna charta of
England—the old Body of Liberties State—
" There shall never be any bond slavery,
villeinage, or captivity amongst us, unless if
be lawful captives taken in just wars, and
such strangers as willingly sell themselves or
are sold to us."
" Willingly" there covering both cases
They recognize simply the two grounds of
slavery; namely the ground of contract, and
the ground of captivity in war. And then
the next sentence is :
" And these shall have all the liberties and
Christian usages which the law of God, es-
tablished in Israel concerning such persons
doth morally require. This exempts none |
from servitude who shall be judged thereto
by authority."
And the same language runs through all
that Body of Liberties. This is their fugitive
slave law:
"If any servants shall flee from the ty-
ranny and cruelty of their masters to the
house of any freeman of the same town, they
shall be there protected and sustained till due
order be taken for their relief; provided due
notice thereof be speedily given to their
masters from whom they fled, and the next
assistant or constable where the party flying
is harbored."
That was the law in Massachusetts, and so
it stood. Yet slaves were introduced there
and held as matter of fact, as I urged before;
and there were subsequently certain laws
regulating slavery there.
The gentleman cited a case from 4 Massa-
chusetts Reports upon that point. What
docs that say? He says that the constitution
of 1788 (1 presume he meant the constitution
of 1780, as there was none in 1788,) that the
constitution of 1780 extinguished slavery
there. Yet, in that very decision which he
cited, the court give it as their unanimous
opinion that a negro born in that State before
the adoption of that constitution was born
free, although born of a female slave, (18
Pickering R. 208.) Is that slavery? Is that
slavery existing by law?
Under that the unrivalled Chief Justice
Shaw, subsequently in a case in 18 Pickering,
held that "although there were several pro-
vincial acts recognizing slavery as existing in
fact, yet no law is found or known to exist."
And I think Chief Justice Shaw knew the law
' by virtue of which it ever had a legal exist-
ence."
Yet slavery did exist there for a while as a
matter of fact; and it came there just as it
came to Maryland, by trampling upon and
overriding the laws, until it gained sufficient
power and authority and influence here, for
men to combine and obtain from the legisla-
ture protection for what bad grown out of in-
terest That is the way it was in Maryland.
I will not go back to the laws upon that
subject, but I will refer to one which my
friend and colleague (Mr. Thomas) read from
the code last night. So long as slaves had
been held in Maryland, so many acts and de-
cisions as there had been in our courts recog-
nizing it as a fact, down to the beginning of the
year 1840, there could be found upon our stat-
ute books no law sufficiently authorizing, ex-
plaining, declaring that slaves might be held.
I will read what the legislature then under-
took to enact, in the act passed in the begin-
ning of 1840, called the session of 1839 :
"Whereas the courts in some of the non-slave
holding States require the owners of fugitive
slaves to prove that slavery exists in this
State, and it is right to provide a convenient
mode of enabling such owners to procure a cer- |
