In a Star paper that appeared October 3, upon “The Fugitive Slave Bill at its Work,” he meets it with undisguised and open defiance. “With such solemn convictions no law impious to God and humanity shall have respect or observance at our hands. If in God’s providence fugitives ask bread or shelter, raiment or conveyance, from us, my own children shall lack bread before they; my own flesh shall sting with cold ere they shall lack raiment; I will both shelter them, conceal them, or speed their flight, and while under my shelter or my convoy they shall be to me as my own flesh and blood; and whatsoever defence I would put forth for my own children, that shall these poor, despised, and persecuted creatures have in my house or upon the road.” He follows with another very thoughtful and able article upon “Law and Conscience” in defence of his position, and for the instruction of those who were in doubt what course to take in the conflicting claims of the law of the land on one side and their feelings of humanity upon the other. In the first place, he makes the duty of obedience to law very strong: “Nothing could be more mischievous than the prevalence of the doctrine that a citizen may disobey an unjust or burdensome law. Should that liberty be granted, the bad, the selfish, the cruel and grasping, might disregard wholesome laws as easily as just men unjust laws. It would constitute every man a court in his own case; and a court, too, in which selfishness would preside. Society could not exist for a day. “It is a question seriously asked by thousands: How can we as good citizens subscribe to such wholesome doctrine and yet openly resist the Fugitive Slave Law? Many reasons make it important that this question should be thoroughly answered. There are thousands who _say_ that this law must be obeyed, and who, with the next breath, bravely and generously declare that nevertheless, should a distressed fugitive ask succor, shelter, and guidance at their hand, he should have them. But this is breaking the law. To keep this law you must not shelter a slave mother fleeing to her free husband in the North, nor a slave girl whose foot bounds at the sound of a pursuer, as if it were the knell of virtue. You must not give direction to a fugitive, though his head be white and his old limbs reveal half a century of unrequited toil; though a man say to you, in the awful agony of his soul, ‘Kill me, but for the love of God do not betray me!’ the law enjoins you to go with the officer, if he summon you, and help in his arrest! The minister of the Gospel, the humane philanthropist, peacefully walking to the Sabbath-sounding bell, must turn aside and help some scoundrel hireling to run down his slave, if the marshal command him, or break the law!” He then lays down this general principle: