is a transfer of the party, not for a trial, but for evading a trial. I submit, then, to the public, that here are three provisions of the constitution, each one of which does have “_a bearing on the subject_.” Each strengthens the other. They form a triple implication, if not a _trinoda necessitas_, which no man, however powerful he may be, can break. The argument which the lawyers call _ab inconvenienti_,--the argument from inconvenience,--has been pressed into the service of the slaveholder to endanger the liberties of the citizen. I answer, there are two sides to this argument; nor was it wise in the slaveholder, or his northern friends, to suggest it. It seems to me quite as _inconvenient_ for a free man to lose his liberty, as for a slaveholder to lose his slave. If a southern man sues a northern one for the value of a bale of cotton or a barrel of rice, must not the plaintiff await the next term of the court before he can enter his action, abide by the rules of the court respecting continuances, and submit to the order of business in taking his turn before a jury? To obviate this inconvenience, has any legislature or any court ever proposed to set aside or annul, at once, all the securities by which we hold property and life? And how stands the question respecting evidence or proof? If difficult for a slave claimant, from Texas, to prove title to his slave in Massachusetts, how infinitely more difficult for a citizen of Massachusetts to prove title to himself in Texas. But Mr. Webster says there are independent courts at the south, “always open and ready to receive and decide upon petitions or applications for freedom.” Suppose this to be true; how is a man or a woman, whose master knows that he or she is free, to get to the courts? Mr. Webster seems to think that as soon as a kidnapping slave dealer shall transport his human prey to the south, he will at once take him to, or allow him to go before a court of justice, or will sell him to some brother Samaritan who will do so. Does not every body know that any man, who is capable of the enormous guilt of seizing or buying a freeman, will make it impossible for that freeman to regain his birthright? Mr. Webster says, persuasively, that the alleged slave “is only remitted, for inquiry into his rights, to the state from which he fled.” But suppose he had never “fled,” but was demeaning himself as a peaceable citizen, under the solemnly pledged protection of the government, on the soil where he was born! This is the false idea that underlies the whole of Mr. Webster’s seductive letter, that under such a bill as Mr. Butler’s, nobody but a slave would ever be arrested.