Note 204 — SPEECH. (continued 2)

De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, Cap. XLII.; Coke upon Littleton, 124b. Granville Sharp, in the remarkable testimony already cited (ante, p. 108), quotes Fortescue thus: "For in behalf of Liberty human nature always implores: because Slavery is introduced by man, and for vice; but Liberty is implanted by God in the very nature of man: wherefore, when stolen by man, it always earnestly longs to return; as does everything which is deprived of natural liberty. For which reason the man who does not favor Liberty is to be adjudged impious and cruel. The laws of England acknowledging these principles give favor to Liberty in every case." After this extract from Fortescue, we are reminded that "Slavery is properly declared by one of our oldest English authorities in law, Fleta, to be contrary to Nature (Fleta, 2d edit. p. 1), which expression of Fleta is really a maxim of the Civil or Roman Law"; and then Sharp predicts the time when "our deluded statesmen, lawyers, commercial politicians, and planters shall be compelled to understand that a more forcible expression of illegality and iniquity could not have been used than that by which Slavery is defined in the Roman code, as well as by our English Fleta, i. e. that it is contra naturam, against Nature; for, consequently, it must be utterly illegal, a crime which by the first foundation of English law is justly deemed both impious and cruel", and he adds, "The severity of these expressions cannot be restrained without injustice to the high authorities on which this argument is founded." (Letter to the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, etc., pp. 6-8.) This testimony of the great English Abolitionist is reinforced, especially with regard to fugitive slaves, when we consider its publication in 1793 by the Abolition Society of Maryland, with the prefatory observation, that, "in the case of slaves escaping from their masters, the friends of universal liberty are often embarrassed in their conduct by a conflict between their principles and the obligations imposed by unwise and perhaps unconstitutional laws."