But there is no injustice in it--for slavery is part of the _lex terrae_, the law of the land, protected by the Constitution itself, which is the _Lex Suprema_--the Supreme Law of the Land, and nearly eighty years old! Besides, "Slavery is not immoral," not contrary to the public policy of Massachusetts; and, moreover, the "mother" whom the criminal actually rescued, was a "foreigner" and "whatever rights she had, she had no right _here_."[120] [Footnote 120: See Hon. Judge Curtis's Speech at the Union Meeting in Faneuil Hall, November 26, 1850.] But it is not a cruel or an unchristian thing to require a negro layman to allow his mother to be kidnapped in his own house--especially if she were a born slave, and so by the very law "a chattel personal to all uses, intents, and purposes whatever," and of course wholly divested of all natural rights, even if a colored person ever had any--for an eminent American minister, of one of the most enlightened sects in Christendom, has publicly offered to send his own freeborn mother into bondage for ever! Moreover, if the jurors do not find a verdict of guilty, then they themselves are guilty of PERJURY! So the jury, without leaving their seats, find him guilty; the judge sentences; the President signs the Death-warrant, and Marshal Freeman hangs the man--to the great joy of the Commissioner's and the Marshal's guard who vacate the brothels once more and attend on that occasion and triumph over the murdered Quaker. But the mischief does not stop there; the Boston slave-hunters are not yet satisfied with blood; the judge constructs another grand-jury as before, only getting more of his kinsfolk thereon, and taking his law from the impeached Judges Kelyng and Chase, charges that all persons who _advise_ to an act of levying war, or evince an "_express liking_" for it, or "_approbation_" of it, are also guilty of treason; and "in treason all are Principals." Accordingly the jury must indict all who have evinced an "express liking" of the rescue, though they did not evince approval of the rescue by such means. It appears that Rev. Mr. Grimes in the meeting-house the Sunday before the treason was consummated, had actually prayed that God would "break the arm of the oppressor and let the oppressed go free;" that he read from a book called the Old Testament, "Bewray not him that wandereth," "Hide the outcast," and other paragraphs and sentences of like seditious nature. Nay, that from the New Testament he had actually read the Sermon on the Mount, especially the Golden Rule and the summing of the Law and the Prophets in one word, Love,--and had applied this to the case of fugitive slaves; moreover, that he had read the xxvth chapter of Matthew from the 31st to the 46th verse, with dreadful emphasis.