There are other points in this bill whose enormity only needs to be stated to be seen and abhorred. One of them is so unspeakably mean and contemptible, that all northern men must feel the insult more keenly than the wrong. It provides that if a commissioner will doom a man to bondage, his fee shall be twice as much as though he restores him to liberty. Now, every body knows that claimants will rarely, if ever, appear before commissioners without a _prima facie_ case. If there be no defence, the proceedings will be brief. But a case of discharge presupposes a defence and a trial. A case of discharge, therefore, will probably occupy as much time as half a dozen cases of surrender. Yet for this greater labor, the commissioner is to have but half price. In assailing all we love of liberty, could not the framers and supporters of this measure have forborne to wound us in all we feel of honor! The cases are to be “heard and determined,” as they were under Robespierre, “_in a summary manner_.” Shakspeareenumerates the “law’s delay” among the causes of suicide. Under this act, real suicides will doubtless be occasioned by the _law’s despatch_.[15] This “summary manner” contains the sum of wrong. Does not every lawyer and every client know that when an action is brought for the unfaithful execution of a contract, in building a house or a ship, or for the balance of an account, or for flowing lands, or for defamation or libel, the defendant needs weeks and often months to make ready for his defence. His witnesses may be in another state, or abroad; it may be necessary to examine ancient titles in registries of deeds or of wills, to make surveys of premises, or investigations into character and conduct. It often happens that when process is first served upon a man, he does not know the grounds of his own defence. They may consist of facts which he has forgotten, or of law of which he is ignorant. Our courts, acting upon this well-known truth, have established a rule that a party, even after he has had fourteen days’ notice, shall be entitled to a continuance as a matter of right, unless under special circumstances; and he may always have it on cause shown. I ask any defendant who was ever forced into court to resist a claim of any magnitude or difficulty, whether he was ready to do so, on the instant when process was served upon him? Yet this is what the respondent must do under the Fugitive Slave act. On the 26th day of last September, James Hamlet was peacefully pursuing a lawful occupation in Water Street, New York, and earning an honest support for his wife and children. In three hours, hand-cuffed, in irons, and surrounded by armed men, he was on his way to the house of bondage. No time was given him for procuring the aid of counsel. He declared he was free, that his mother was a free woman, and he a free man. But by another provision in the act, it is declared that “in no trial or hearing under this act, shall the testimony of such