Another remarkable feature of Mr. Butler’s bill is, that it provides no penalty whatever for any one who shall abuse, or fraudulently use, the dangerous authority which it gives. It furnishes endless temptations and facilities for committing wrong; it imposes no restraints; it warns by no threats of retribution. Mr. Webster calls me to account for some unspecified erroneous “opinion,” expressed in relation to this bill. Can any opinion be so false to the constitution, as this bill to humanity? I deprecate error of all sorts; but hold it to be more venial to err in judgment than in heart. I said that in promising to support Mr. Butler’s bill, “with all its provisions, to the fullest extent,” Mr. Webster “abandoned” the right to a trial by jury. I spoke of him as a senator, as one who, with his co-legislators, was bound, in fulfilment of his constitutional duty, to secure this form of trial to the alleged slave, or to a known freeman seized as a slave. Mr. Seward’s bill, providing for the trial by jury, in such cases, was before him. He took no notice of it. He passed by “on the other side,” while he bestowed his best encomium on Mr. Butler’s bill, by promising to support it. Was not this an “abandonment,” under any of the synonyms given in the dictionary? Mr. Webster advises me, in a certain contingency, “to appeal to that higher authority which sits enthroned above the constitution and above the law.” I take no exception to this counsel, because of its officiousness, but would thank him for it. My ideas of duty require me to seek anxiously for the true interpretation of the constitution, and then to abide by it, unswayed by hopes or fears. If the constitution requires me to do any thing which my sense of duty forbids, I shall save my conscience by resigning my office. I am free, however, to say, that if, in the discharge of my political duties, I should transfer my allegiance to any other power, I should adopt Mr. Webster’s ironical advice, and go to the power “which sits enthroned above,” rather than descend to that opposite realm, whence the bill he so cordially promised to support must have emerged. I wish, however, to remark, that though I acknowledge the constitution to be my guide while under oath to support it, yet I do not relish this fling either at the powers above us, or at those who reverence them. I hold it to be not only proper, but proof of sound moral and religious feeling, to look to the perfect law of God for light to enable us more justly to interpret the imperfect laws of man. Especially, when we are proposing to make or amend a law, ought we to take our gauge of purpose and of action from the highest standard. Noy, that Solomon of the law, thought it not improper to say, “The inferior law must give place to the superior; man’s laws to God’s laws.”--_Maxims_, pp. 6, 7.