It was not enough, it seems, that the wretched defendant in this momentous issue should be subjected to the jurisdiction of a judge unknown to the Constitution, holding his office by a prohibited tenure, incapable of being impeached, and bribed to decide in favor of the plaintiff by the promise of double fees, but the very trial allowed him must be a burlesque on all the forms and principles of juridical justice. The plaintiff, without notice to the defendant, prepares himself for trial, and when his affidavits or witnesses are all ready, he seizes the unsuspecting victim in the street, and puts him _instanter_ on his defence. Had the wretched man been accused of some atrocious crime, he might have demanded bail, and would have been permitted to go at large to seek for counsel, to look for witnesses, and to prepare for trial at some future day, of which he would have due notice. But no such privilege is allowed a man who is accused of _owing service_. One of your commissioners has already decided that the law does not permit him to bail the prisoner. The slave power rides in triumph over all the barriers erected by the wisdom of ages for the protection of human rights. The defendant is brought, generally in irons, before your commissioner judge, who is required "to hear and determine the case of _the claimant_ in a summary manner." The law seems not even to imagine the possibility of any defence being made on the part of the defendant. It makes no provision for such a defence,--no assignment of counsel, no summons for witnesses. We shall see presently, that if the plaintiff makes out a _prima facie_ title, satisfactory to the commission, it is all the law requires. Let me now call your attention to the practical working of your diabolical law. A man named Rose was lately seized at Detroit, and brought before a commissioner as a fugitive slave. I copy from the newspaper report. "Mr. Joy (counsel for defendant) moved a postponement of the trial to a future day, to enable Rose to produce his papers to establish his right to freedom, which papers he had _sworn_ were in Cincinnati. The counsel for the claimant denied that the commissioner had any authority under the law to grant a postponement. The commissioner agreed with the counsel for the plaintiff, that _he had no authority to postpone the trial_; and he further declared, that, _even were the papers by which Rose was manumitted present, he could not under the law receive them in evidence_."