Is the case of the _Amistad_ forgotten, where a few ignorant, degraded wretches, fresh from the jungles of benighted Africa herself, seized upon the vessel in which they were transported, and compelled the master, under peril of his life, to steer for the north star,--that light which God kindled in the heavens, and which he will as soon extinguish as he will extinguish the love of liberty which he has kindled in every human breast? And will a slave, escaping to Great Britain, or to any of her colonial possessions, be reclaimable? Examine Somerset’s case for an answer. No, sir. Neither the third clause of the second section of the fourth article of the constitution, nor the law of 1793, will ever be extended over the Three Kingdoms or their dependencies. It surely is not beneath the dignity of the place or the occasion to look at another of those “hazards” which the south are invoking. They are proud of their past history, and I doubt not their reflecting and patriotic men are at least reasonably solicitous of their future fame. When they meet in august council to inaugurate the great event of establishing an independent confederacy of slave states, and of dissolving the political bands which now unite them with us, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” will “require them to declare the causes which had impelled them to the separation.” And will they find a model for their manifesto in that glorious Declaration of American Independence which their own immortal Jefferson prepared, and to which many of the greatest of all their historic names are subscribed? Alas, they will have to read that Declaration, as the devil reads Scripture, backwards! I know not what may be the rhetorical terms and phrases of the new Declaration, but I do know that its _historic_ form and substance cannot be widely different from this:--