If the opposite interpretation be accepted, and that clause be taken without restrictions, then see what will follow. South Carolina has already made a law by which she imprisons all _colored_ citizens of the free States who are found on her soil. Let us suppose she makes a new law for reducing to perpetual slavery all the white citizens of Massachusetts whom she finds on her soil; that a Boston vessel with 500 Boston men and women--sailing for California,--is wrecked on her inhospitable coast, and those persons are all seized and reduced to slavery; but some ten or twenty of the most resolute escape from the "service or labor" to which they are held, and return to their business in Boston. But their "owners" come in pursuit; the kidnapping Commissioners, Curtis and Loring, with the help of the rest of the family of men-stealers, arrest them under the fugitive slave bill. On the mock trial, it is shown by the kidnapper that they were legally "held to service or labor," and according to the constitution "shall be delivered up;" that this enslavement is perfectly "legal" in South Carolina; and the constitution says that no "law or regulation" of Massachusetts shall set them free. They must go with Sims and Burns. Gentlemen, you see where you are going, if you allow the Constitution of parchment to override the Constitution of Justice. (2.) By whom shall they "be delivered up?" Either by the Federal Government, or else by the Government of the State into which they have escaped. Now the Federal Government has no constitutional power, except what the Constitution gives it. Gentlemen, there is not a line in that Power of Attorney by which the People authorize the Federal Government to make a man a slave in Massachusetts or anywhere else. I know the Government has done it, as the British Government levied ship-money, and put men to the rack, but it is against the Constitution of the land. Gentlemen, you will settle these constitutional questions according to your conscience, not mine. But if the fugitive slave bill demands the rendition of men from whom service is not _justly_ due--due by the Law of God, or if the Government unconstitutionally aims to do what the Constitution gave it no right to do--then the Marshal was not "in the peace of the United States." Your inquiry stops at this point. 5. But, if satisfied on all which relates to this question of his being in the peace of the United States, you are next to inquire if Mr. Freeman, at the time of the obstruction was "Marshal of the United States," and "in the due and lawful discharge of his duties as such officer." There is no doubt that he was Marshal; but there may be a doubt that he was in the "lawful discharge of his duties as such officer." Omitting what I first said, (I. 1.) see what you must determine in order to make this clear.