II. A great deal of pains has been taken to impress the people with their "moral duty to obey the fugitive slave law." To carry it out, government needs base men; and that, my brothers, is a crop which never fails. Rye and wheat may get blasted many times in the course of years; the potato may rot; apples and peaches fail. But base men never fail. Put up your black pirate-flag in the market-place, offer "money and office," and they will come as other carrion-vultures to their prey. The olive, the fig, and the orange are limited in their range; even Indian corn and oats will not grow everywhere; but base men are indigenous all the world over, between the tropics, and under a polar sky. No bad scheme ever failed for lack of bad men to carry it out. Do you want to kill Baptists and Quakers in Boston? There are the men for you. To hang "witches" at Salem? There are hangmen in plenty on Gallows Hill. Would James the Second butcher his subjects? He found his "human" tools ready. Would Elizabeth murder the Puritans and Catholics? There was no lack of ruffians. Would bloody Mary burn the Protestants? There were more executioners than victims. Would the Spanish Inquisition torture and put to death the men for whom Christ died? She found priests and "gentlemen," ready for their office. Would Nero murder the Christians, and make a spectacle of their sufferings? Rome is full of scoundrels to do the deed, and teems with spectators rushing to the amphitheatre at the cry of "Christians to the Lions!" all finding a holiday in their brothers' agony. Would the high-priests crucify the Son of man? They found a commissioner to issue the mandate, a marshal to enforce it, a commissioner to try him by illegal process,--for the process against Christ was almost as unconstitutional as that against Sims,--they found a commissioner ready to condemn Christ, against his own conscience, soldiers ready to crucify him. Ay! and there was a Peter to deny him, and a Judas to betray, and now there is a judge with his legal ethics, to justify the betrayal! I promised not to speak of Judas or the judge again, but they will come up before me! It is true, that, if in Boston, some judicial monster should wish to seethe a man in a pot of scalding water, he would find another John Boilman in Boston, as Judge Jeffries found one in England, in 1686. The churches of New England, and the North, have had their trials. In my time they have been tried in various ways. The temperance reformation tried them. They have had perils on account of slavery. The Mexican war tried them; the fugitive slave law has put them to the rack. But, never in my day, have the churches been so sorely tried, nor done so well as now. The very letter of the New Testament on the one side, and of the Old Testament on the other, both condemned the law; the spirit of them both was against all slavery.