of the maxim is an old law phrase, found in Law Dictionaries, and often repeated. A letter, dated London, May 4, 1621, relating the fine and degradation of Lord Bacon, concludes, _Fiat justitia_. (Birch's James I., Vol. II. p. 252.) Charles I., in a letter to the Lords, dated May 11, 1641, interceding for Strafford, said: "But if no less than his life can satisfy my people, I must say, _Fiat justitia_." (Parl. Hist. Vol. IX. p. 316. Howell's State Trials, Vol. III. col. 1520.) If not classical in authority, the maxim is not without interest from association with great events of English history, while it is a perpetual injunction to justice. Shakespeare gives expression to similar truth, when he says, "Be just and fear not." And still another rule, hardly less important or less commanding, was clearly proclaimed in these penetrating words: "I care not for the supposed _dicta_ of judges, however eminent, _if they be contrary to all principle_"; or, in other language, In vain do you invoke great names in the law, even the names of Hardwicke and Talbot, and my own learned associate, Blackstone, in behalf of an institution which defies reason and outrages justice. Human precedent is powerless against immutable principle. Thus again spoke the Chief Justice of England. Braced by these rules, the next stages were logically easy. And here he uttered words which are like a buttress to Freedom. He declared, that, tracing Slavery to _natural principles_, it can never be supported: that is to say, Slavery is a violation of the great law of Nature, established by God himself, coextensive in space and time with the Universe. Again he proclaimed, Slavery cannot stand on any reason, moral or political, but only by virtue of _positive law_; and he clinched his conclusion by the unquestionable truth, that, in a matter so _odious_, the evidence and authority of this law must be taken strictly: in other words, a wrong like Slavery, which finds no support in natural law or in reason, can be maintained, if at all, only by some dread mandate, from some sovereign authority, irresistibly clear and incapable of a double sense, which declares in precise and unequivocal terms, that men guilty of no crime may be held as _slaves_, and be submitted to the bargains of the market-place, the hammer of the auctioneer, and the hunt of the blood-hound. Clearly no such mandate could be shown in England. After asserting the obvious truth, that rights cannot depend on any discrimination of color, and thus discarding the profane assumptions of race, while he quoted apt Roman authority,-- "Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses," the Chief Justice concluded, "And therefore let the negro be discharged." Such was this immortal judgment. I catch its last words, already resounding through the ages, with the voice of deliverance to an enslaved people.