legality or constitutionality tested. But here a multitude of tribunals are established, over whose proceedings, not the supreme court of any state, no, not even the supreme court of the United States, has supervision. And what do these commissioners decide? That a man has no right to himself; that his body, limbs, faculties, are the _property_ of another; that he _owes service_. Suppose the question were, whether the respondent owed the claimant a dollar. Could the commissioner give judgment and issue execution for it? Certainly not. But yet he is here authorized to decide questions infinitely more important than any amount of money. He is to decide that a man owes life-long service from himself, and from all the children of his loins. But the surrender of an alleged fugitive from service has been compared with the surrender of a fugitive from justice; and because the supreme executive of a state is required by the law of 1793 to surrender fugitives from justice, it is claimed that any commissioner may surrender fugitives from service, _without liability to question or reëxamination by any human authority_. But there is a world-wide difference between the cases. When the fugitive from justice is delivered up, he is delivered into the custody of the law. Legal process must have been commenced against him in the state from which he fled. He is returned, that the proceedings thus commenced may be consummated. He is never intrusted to private hands. The shield of the law is continued over him. After arrest, he is merely transferred from the hands of the law in one state to the hands of the law in another state. He is transferred, not to evade trial, but to have one. But the alleged slave is delivered up, not into the custody of the law, where his rights might be adjudicated upon, but into private hands; not into the hands of a neutral or indifferent person, but into the hands of a party interested to deprive him of all his rights;--if he be not a slave, then into the hands of a man-stealer. Mr. Clay saw this, and his plan provided that the alleged fugitive should be sent home _to be tried_. But the south grew bolder and bolder, until a law was passed, by which one class of men have less security for their freedom than another class have for their cattle.