"Slavery corrupts the judicial class. In America, especially in New England, no class of men has been so much respected as the judges, and for this reason: We have had wise, learned, and excellent men for our judges, men who reverenced the higher law of God, and sought by human statutes to execute justice. You all know their venerable names and how reverentially we have looked up to them. Many of them are dead, and some are still living, and their hoary hairs are a crown of glory on a judicial life without judicial blot. But of late slavery has put a different class of men on the benches of the Federal Courts--mere tools of the Government creatures who get their appointments as pay for past political service, and as pay in advance for iniquity not yet accomplished. You see the consequences. Note the zeal of the Federal judges to execute iniquity by statute and destroy liberty. See how ready they are to support the Fugitive Slave Bill, which tramples on the spirit of the Constitution and its letter, too; which outrages justice and violates the most sacred principles and precepts of Christianity. Not a United States Judge, Circuit or District, has uttered one word against that bill of abominations. Nay, how greedy they are to get victims under it. No wolf loves better to rend a lamb into fragments than these judges to kidnap a fugitive slave and punish any man who desires to speak against it. You know what has happened in Fugitive Slave Bill courts. You remember the 'miraculous' rescue of a Shadrach; the peaceable snatching of a man from the hands of a cowardly kidnapper was 'high treason;' it was 'levying war.' You remember the trial of the rescuers! Judge Sprague's charge to the jury that if they thought the question was which they ought to obey, the laws of man or the laws of God, then they must 'obey both,' serve God and Mammon, Christ and the devil in the same act. You remember the trial, the ruling of the bench, the swearing on the stand, the witness coming back to alter and enlarge his testimony and have another gird at the prisoner. You have not forgotten the trials before Judge Kane at Philadelphia and Judge Greer at Christiana and Wilkesbarre. "These are natural results from causes well known. You cannot escape a principle. Enslave a negro, will you? You doom to bondage your own sons and daughters by your own act." [Illustration: HON. GEORGE B. CORTELYOU. Secretary to the President. Born July, 1862, in State of New York--Has Made Mark in Literature and Art--His Promotion Has Been Rapid, From Stenographer to Executive Clerk, Thence to Secretary to Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, an Office Now Grown to the Dignity of a Cabinet Position.]