On behalf of the government there appeared six persons as prosecuting officers. One United States Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cooper), the Attorney-General of Maryland, the District Attorney of Pennsylvania, the Recorder of the City of Philadelphia, and two members of her bar.[178] For Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, was highly desirous that Maryland should send her Attorney-General, Hon. Mr. Brent, to help the government of the United States prosecute a Quaker miller, a Non-resistant, for the crime of treason. Hon. James Cooper, the Pennsylvania Senator, also appeared on behalf of Maryland, seeking to convict one of his own constituents! Gentlemen, such conduct carries us back to the time of the Stuarts; but despotism is always the same. It was very proper that the United States government should thus outrage the common decencies of judicial process. [Footnote 178: History, 55, 57; Report, 19; 2 Wallace.] This question amongst others was put to each juror:-- "Have you formed an opinion that the law of the United States, known as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, is unconstitutional, so that you cannot for that reason convict a person indicted for a forcible resistance thereto, if the facts alleged in the indictment are proved and the court hold the statute to be constitutional?" Thus all persons were excluded from the jury who believed this wicked bill a violation of the constitution; and one most important means of the prisoner's legitimate defence was purposely swept away by the court. Now look at the law as laid down by the government. Mr. Ashmead, the government's Attorney, said when the Constitution was adopted "Men had not then become wiser than the laws [the laws of England and colonial laws which they were born under and broke away from]; nor had they learned to measure the plain and unambiguous letter of the Constitution by an artificial standard of their own creation [that is the Self-evident Truth that all men have a natural and unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness]; to obey or disregard it according as it came up to or fell beneath it [as the law was just or unjust]." "_You will receive the law from the court._" "You _are bound by the instructions which the court may give_ in respect to it;" "_it is in no sense true that you are judges of the law_." "_You must take the interpretation which the court puts upon it._ You have a right to apply the law to the facts, but you have no right to go further." "The crime charged against this defendant is ... that of _levying war against the United States_. The phrase _levying war_ was long before the adoption of the Constitution, a phrase ... _embracing such a forcible resistance to the laws as that charged against this defendant_ [that is, speaking against the fugitive slave bill and refusing to kidnap a man is 'levying war against the United States']!"