I have no doubt that what Mr. Webster says about southern courts being “fair and upright,” is very generally and extensively true; but I have had a little personal knowledge of southern courts, and I have no hesitation in saying that there has been one, at least, before which, if a slave were suing for his freedom, and any popular clamor against him should exist, he would have no more hope of obtaining his liberty through the “fairness” of the court, than, if thrown overboard in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, he would have of saving his life by swimming ashore. Mr. Webster holds Massachusetts up to the ridicule of the world, because, as he says, she “grows fervid on Pennsylvania wrongs;” and he has deemed it his duty to inquire how many seizures of fugitive slaves have occurred in New England within our time. Is this the Christian standard by which to estimate the evil of encroachments upon the most sacred rights of men? If I repose in contentment and indifference, because my own section, or state, or county, is as yet but a partial sufferer, why should I not continue contented and indifferent while I myself am safe? In providing for the liberties of the citizen, under a common government, I think Massachusetts worthy of all honor and not of ridicule, because she does “grow fervid on Pennsylvania wrongs,” and on the wrongs of an entire race, whether in Pennsylvania or California, or any where within the boundaries of our own country. I see no reason why my sympathies as a man, or the obligations of my oath as an officer, in regard to the nearer or the remoter states, should be inversely as the squares of the distances. Even with regard to foreign countries, did Mr. Webster think so, in those better days, when his eloquent appeal for oppressed and bleeding Greece roused the nation, like the voice of a clarion. Did Mr. Webster deem it necessary to make inquisitions through all the New England States, to learn how many Hungarian patriots they had seen shot at the tap of drum, or how many noble Hungarian women had been stripped and whipped in their market places, before he thrilled the heart of the nation at the wrongs of Kossuth and his compatriots, and invoked the execrations of the world upon the Austrian and Russian despots? I see no difference between these cases, which is not in favor of our _home interests_, of our own _domestic rights_, except the difference of their bearings upon partisan politics and presidential rivalries. Mr. Webster quotes and commends Mr. Bissell, who said that those southern states which had suffered the least from loss of slaves, made the greatest clamor. That statement of a fact was well put by Mr. Bissell; but was it well applied by Mr. Webster? In the statement, it was a question as to the loss of property. In the application, it is a question as to the loss of liberty. The latter is not, therefore, the “counterpart” of the former. Blindness to the distinction between the value and the