Green Mountain Freeman

GREELEY ON THE MESSAGE.

To show that we are not alone in our opinion of the character of the President's message in relation to the Slave Law, we give the following just strictures from the Tribune, a whig paper.

As to Fugitives from Bondage - one of whom the President and Congress are about to vie with each other in honoring - we cannot so deeply regret as does the President the difficulties experienced in hand-cuffing and forcing them back into Slavery. That difficulty has its origin in the nature of the case — or rather, in the eternal laws of God written on the hearts of humane and conscientious men and women. Every uncorrupted humane soul is naturally an ally and accomplice of the fugitive escaping from Slavery, anxious that he may not be overtaken, and ready to speed and cheer him on his way. Ten thousand prayers ascend daily in behalf of the flying bondman, for one for the success of his pursuers. There is not even a Doctor of Divinity so totally depraved as to be able heartily to pray that the pursuer may triumph in the recapture of the fugitive. Nor does the President, though he roundly asserts it, produce one particle of proof that the Constitution requires any such enactment as the Fugitive Slave Law or any enactment at all on the subject. The Constitution enjoins and prohibits many things, with regard to which Congress has never thought proper to take any action whatever. The constitutional provision respecting 'Fugitives from labor or service' appears to be addressed to the States and contains no shadow of intimation that legislation by Congress would be required to give it efficiency. The President's assertions that Congress 'must from necessity first act on the subject' is disproved by the fact that no action was taken by Congress for some years after the constitution went into operation. At length an act was passed which covered the whole ground and was quite stringent in its provisions. No proof has been given that that was inefficacious; nobody petitioned for its repeal or modification; when lo! the act of 1850 was concocted to agitate and convulse the Nation - an act tyrannical in its spirit and atrocious in several of its provisions.

The President deceives himself if he supposes that the spirit of opposition to this law is diminishing. If the slave-catchers will allow it to fall into disuse, there can be little difficulty in retaining it on the Statute-books. But wherever the people are permitted to see its practical working, there they are impelled to hold it in deeper and deeper abhorrence; and if one of the fugitives now living in the free States were subjected forthwith to its provisions, its preservation would be morally impossible. To be hated it needs but to be seen. And if our liberty and our Union are based on our alacrity in depriving our fellow men of their liberty and tearing them from their wives and children, as Boldig and others were torn without the eye of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury, then our Liberty is a fraud and our Union a covenant with Death. The President will live long enough to learn that on these points he is mistaken.-Tribune.