the aggressive South forced upon a passive North a law whose enormity passes description. Every man at the beck of the Southern kidnapper, by its provisions was obliged to play the part of a Negro catcher. So great was the passiveness of the North that her most eminent orator, instead of decrying the proposition as unworthy of humanity, even lifted up his voice in its defense. Virgil inveighed against the accursed thirst for gold--_auri sacra fames_; but it was not this thirst that made him, ofttimes called the "Godlike," turn against all the traditions of his birth and associations, and speak words which closed to him Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty, and drew from Whittier the scathing lines of "Ichabod!" But his thirst was not appeased, and the South before which he had prostrated himself, turned away from him, spurning his bribe, and made a nomination which terribly disappointed Webster, and on account of which he went down to his grave broken hearted. Imagine if you can the astonishment of the student a hundred years hence, when he reads that the highest judicial tribunal in the land, voiced through its aged though not venerable chief, said in the year of our lord, 1857, and in the year of American Independence the eighty-first, that three millions of people, at that time represented in Congress through an infamous scheme of apportionment, had no rights that a white man was bound to respect. Two judges of that court, and be it ever remembered to their credit, dissented. Through the worse than Cimmerian darkness that overspread the Supreme Bench of those days, the names of McLean and Curtis shine forth, the only rays of light; and I may say with the exception of that of Taney, remembered through his unique position, the only names recalled to-day. I doubt whether any present can name three out of the six judges who concurred with their Superior in his opinion. It was the age, _par excellence_, of spread-eagle oratory, when the American Bird soared higher and staid up longer than he ever has since. Hail Columbias and Star Spangled Banners were in order, but the latter waved for the white portion of the people only. A flaunting mockery, our flag justly merited the reproach of other nations that pointed to our enslaved millions and then said: "Call ye that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?"