=§ 79. Acts passed between the Prigg decision and the second Fugitive Slave Law (1842-1850).=--After the Prigg decision in 1842, wherein it was declared that the law must be executed through national powers only, and that State authorities could not be forced into action,[260] a new class of statutes sprang up. The State legislatures seized the opportunity afforded them by Judge Story's opinion, to forbid State officers from performing the duties required of them by the law of 1793, and prohibited the use of State jails in fugitive slave cases. Such laws were passed in Massachusetts,[261] Vermont,[262] Pennsylvania,[263] and Rhode Island.[264] In 1844, Connecticut repealed her act of 1838, as being then unconstitutional, but retained the portion forbidding State officers to participate in the execution of the law. =§ 80. Acts occasioned by the law of 1850 (1850-1860).=--The provisions of the law of 1850 roused yet more opposition in the North, and before 1856 many of the States had passed personal liberty bills. The new national law avoided the employment of State officers. This change in the statute brought about a corresponding alteration in the State legislation, and we therefore find the acts of this period differing somewhat from those of earlier years. They almost invariably prohibited the use of State jails, they often forbade State judges and officers to issue writs or to give assistance to the claimant, and punished severely the seizure of a free person with the intent to reduce him to slavery. Should an alleged fugitive be arrested, the personal liberty acts were intended to secure him a trial surrounded by the usual legal safeguards. The identity of the person claimed was to be proved by two witnesses; or they gave him the right to a writ of habeas corpus; or they enjoined upon the court to which the writ was returnable a trial by jury. At the trial the prisoner must be defended by an attorney, frequently the State or county attorney, and a penalty was provided for false testimony. Any violation of these clauses by State officers was punished by penalties varying from five hundred dollars and six months in jail, as in Pennsylvania, to the maximum punishment in Vermont, of two thousand dollars' fine and ten years in prison. Such acts were passed in Vermont,[265] Connecticut,[266] and Rhode Island,[267] in Massachusetts,[268] Michigan,[269] and Maine.[270] Later, laws were also enacted in Wisconsin,[271] Kansas,[272] Ohio,[273] and Pennsylvania.[274] Of the other Northern States, two only, New Jersey and California, gave any official sanction to the rendition of fugitives. In New Hampshire, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, however, no full personal liberty laws were passed.[275]