Nor in the Slave States is this spirit confined to outbreaks of mere lawlessness. Too strong for restraint, it finds no limitations except in its own barbarous will. The Government becomes its tool, and in _official acts_ does its bidding. Here again the instances are numerous. I might dwell on the degradation of the Post-Office, when its official head consented that for the sake of Slavery the mails themselves should be rifled. I might dwell also on the cruel persecution of free persons of color, who, in the Slave States generally, and even here in the District of Columbia, are not allowed to testify where a white man is in question, and now in several States are menaced by legislative act with the alternative of expulsion from their homes or of reduction to Slavery. But I pass to two illustrative transactions, which a son of Massachusetts can never forget. 1. The first relates to a citizen of purest life and perfect integrity, whose name is destined to fill a conspicuous place in the history of Freedom, William Lloyd Garrison. Born in Massachusetts, bred to the same profession with Benjamin Franklin, and, like his great predecessor, becoming an editor, he saw with instinctive clearness the wrong of Slavery, and, at a period when the ardors of the Missouri Question had given way to indifference throughout the North, he stepped forward to denounce it. The jail at Baltimore, where he then resided, was the earliest reward. Afterward, January 1st, 1831, he published the first number of “The Liberator,” inscribing for his motto an utterance of Christian philanthropy, “Our country is the world, our countrymen are mankind,” and declaring, in the face of surrounding apathy: “I am in earnest,--I will not equivocate,--I will not excuse,--I will not retreat a single inch,--AND I WILL BE HEARD.” In this sublime spirit he commenced his labors for the Slave, proposing no intervention by Congress in the States, and on well-considered principle avoiding all appeals to the bond-men themselves. Such was his simple and thoroughly constitutional position, when, before the expiration of the first year, the Legislature of Georgia, by solemn act, a copy of which I have before me, “approved” by Wilson Lumpkin, Governor, appropriated five thousand dollars “to be paid to any person or persons who shall arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction under the laws of this State, the editor or publisher of a certain paper called _The Liberator_, published in the town of Boston and State of Massachusetts.”[98] This infamous statute, touching a citizen absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of Georgia and in no way amenable to its laws, constituted a plain bribe to the gangs of kidnappers engendered by Slavery. With this barefaced defiance of justice and decency Slave-Masters inaugurated the system of violence by which they have sought to crush every voice raised against Slavery. * * * * *