ment on this significant fact. Such a law, rigidly enforced against the objects of it, might be justly regarded as a very harsh one; there would be, to say the least, great doubt as to its constitutionality; we do not admit that it could be justified by any necessity which has yet been proved to exist; but, waiving all these considerations, we insist that no possible necessity can justify any thing more than this; that this is the utmost limit to which South Carolina or any other state can go in trespassing on the rights of other states or their citizens, and claim the forbearance of the injured parties; and that every step taken beyond it is aggression, wanton, gratuitous, and utterly inexcusable.

We have thus examined, with rather an excess of concession, the plea of necessity put in by the advocates of the South Carolina policy.

We have shown that in its best estate it is a useless weapon in their hands; in justice to the truth of the case, we ought now to show, more fully than time or space will permit, how effectively it might be turned against them. The necessity which really dictates the maintenance of these laws, is a very different thing from that which we have been contemplating. It is simply the necessity of upholding, at all hazards, and by any sacrifice whatever of right and justice, against all the causes which are tending to undermine or overthrow it, the supremacy of slavery and of the slaveholding interest. Obeying this necessity, the southern states have been gradually maturing a policy, the effect of which is to put down and keep down, below the level of the slaves themselves, that portion of the enslaved race who are guilty of being free. The slave code has no provisions more revoltingly tyrannical, than those devised to carry out this policy. And of these there are none more terribly effective, than the laws of which the Act of South

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Carolina, to prevent free negroes and other persons of color from entering the state," is a specimen, and, if we mistake not, was the model. It is these laws, now enforced in nearly all the slaveholding states, that make the free negro, who ventures beyond the precinct in which his lot may be cast and where he is suffered to vegetate, in effect an outlaw. If, crossing the line of his native state, he is detained, by whatever necessity, beyond the short period of absence which the law may allow, he finds his return precluded

he is not permitted to remain where he is and acquire a domicil— the adjoining states are closed against him-wherever he may turn, the law is his enemy, and he has no choice but to take refuge in the swamps, or to surrender himself to the sheriff and enrich the coffers of the state by the price of his liberty. It is to this policy, rather than to any special distrust of himself, though such distrust doubtless there is, that the colored citizen of Massachusetts falls a victim when he enters the harbor of Charleston. When therefore the Carolina legislator, appealing to our sympathies, protests that he is a most reluctant trespasserthat his sole object is, in the strictest self-defense, to ward off the firebrands which incendiary abolitionists, through the agency of colored seamen on board northern vessels, would scatter among their dwellings, we point to the whole law as it stands on his statute-book, and retort-' But you do not stop with free negroes on board northern vessels, or any vessels; the free negroes from Baltimore, from Norfolk, from the interior of North Carolina or Georgia, meet the same proscription; you say, in so many words, "It shall not be lawful for any free negro or person of color, to migrate into this state, or be brought or introduced into its limits, under any pretext whatever, by land or water;" and if any such are found there, you

remedy the grievances complained of."

But this remonstrance produced no effect; and therefore, after waiting three years, and finding that citizens of the state still continued to suffer as before, the Legislature, in 1842, passed other resolves, authorizing the Governor, on application in behalf of any citizen imprisoned under these laws," to take all suitable and proper measures to cause such citi zen to be discharged from his imprisonment, and the legality of such imprisonment to be tried and determined by the courts of the United States."

This measure it was found would not reach the case; for the reason that the sufferers in prison could take no measures to avail themselves of the proffered assistance. In 1843, therefore, the Governor was by resolution authorized to employ agents in the ports of Charleston and New Orleans, to institute suits in behalf of any such citizens, with the same purpose of testing the legality of their imprisonment. No lawyer, however, could be found in either of these cities to undertake the duty; and therefore, as a last resort, the Legislature of 1844 authorized the Executive to employ as agents citizens of Massachusetts, whose duty it should be to proceed to those ports and there take the proper measures to promote an amicable appeal of the controversy to the highest tribunal of the Union. Under this resolve, an eminent citizen of Massachusetts, Hon. Samuel Hoar, was appointed to the agency, and proceeded to Charleston to exercise its duties. The result of this mission is well known. Mr. Hoar, attempt ing in a manner perfectly respectful to perform the simple and peaceful duty assigned him, was prevented by the violence of a mob, and driven from the state, and the disgraceful outrage was immediately sanctioned by a special act of the Legislature of South Carolina. VOL. IV.

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Such have been the proceedings of Massachusetts, in her efforts to obtain for her injured citizens protection and redress. Upon a review of them, we think she may well, in the language of her protest, "challenge the world to show that she has done any act in connection with this subject which it was not her indispensable duty to her citizens to do for their protection, or which any state has a just right to complain of her for doing. Neither has there been a word placed upon her statute book which she has occasion to regret. Her remonstrance has been grave, respectful, reasonable. Her measures have been moderate, strictly lawful, conciliatory, in the spirit of truth and peace. Let posterity decide whether South Carolina will be entitled, with any justice, to say as much."

The conduct of the latter state it can not be necessary for us to characterize. Her Act for the expulsion of Mr. Hoar, was followed by an Act making it a high misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprisonment and banishment from the state, to call in question before any court the validity of the obnoxious laws, or to come into the state with that intent; and in the very infatuation of despotism, as if to show how utterly unmeaning a term is freedom in a land of slavery, and to heap up odium and detestation on her own head, she proceeded to repeal, in respect to free persons of color imprisoned under her laws, the provisions of the "Habeas Corpus Act;" not hesitating even to quote it by the title by which it has become venerable in the history of English liberty, as "An Act for the better securing the liberty of the subject, and to prevent imprisonment beyond seas."

The controversy rests for the present upon the declaration adopted by Massachusetts, in which, addressing each of her sister states, she enters her earnest and solemn PRO

TEST against the hostile acts of South Carolina. We regret that our limits will not permit us to do justice to this noble document-a document worthy of the best days of old Massachusetts and of her best men; and one which, crowning the series of her acts, completes the contrast, from the first so striking, between her conduct and language and those of her antagonist; the contrast between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of chivalry. Disclaiming the purpose of retaliation, and acknowledging that patience under such gross and glaring wrong is the present duty of the state, not towards South Carolina, but towards the pacific states, she impressively protests against the commission of that wrong, adjures her sister states not to permit a case of injury to the rights of the people of any state to find no constitutional mode of redress whatsoever, and points out the consequences which must inevitably ensue, if one state is thus permitted to assume and maintain the prerogative of setting up her own will or her own opinion as law, instead of or in opposition to the judgment of that high tribunal which the Supreme Law of the land has made the final arbiter in all cases of conflicting right arising under it.

In opening the discussion now concluded, we expressed the hope and belief that this controversy would yet be decided upon its intrinsic merits. It is, indeed, hardly to be expected that upon the identical law out of which it has arisen the Supreme Court will very soon have an opportunity to pronounce; but laws the same in principle are enforced in so many of the states, in some of which the friends of freedom and the right are becoming numerous and ardent, that we do confidently expect to see at an early day the great question, as to whether the Constitution does or does not recognize and protect the essential rights of the colored freeman, tried and decided

before that final tribunal. Armed with that decision, for there can be no possible doubt as to what it will be, Massachusetts may be in a condition to renew the contest on the soil of South Carolina, and force that state to the alternative of admitting the rights of her citizens, or expressly annulling within her limits, not as of old a law of Congress, but the Constitution itself. In the mean time, we hope, though it is much to require of human nature, that she will continue to forbear from acts of mere retaliation; and we know that she will continue to press, by every proper measure and in every proper place, her demand of justice for herself and her citizens. And especially, though we know how little is to be expected from Congress, absolutely controlled as it is by the slaveholding interest, yet, seeing that the Federal Judiciary is charged with the duty of protecting the rights of citizens under the Federal Constitution; that the power of resorting to that tribunal, to ascertain and enforce those rights, is a fundamental right of every citizen; that South Carolina has set herself to defeat that right, by making its exercise within her limits in certain cases a crime, and in other cases impossible; that a case has thus arisen which the law organizing the Judiciary department did not contemplate and does not reach; that it is the imperative duty of the Legislative department to enable the Judiciary to perform its functions and give effect to the positive enactments of the Constitution; and that further legislation has become necessary for this purpose, and may accomplish it: we hope and trust that those who represent the state in Congress will be instructed to urge upon that body the enactment of such further laws, and that all the friends of the Constitution and of freedom, there and else where, will co-operate with them in the work, as one of paramount importance and never to be abandoned.

DID the worthy publishers think of the significance of the above title, which they tacked to a cheap form of this work? CARLYLE'S Cromwell: exactly so! Not the Cromwell who has lived in the fancies of most men, since, two centuries ago, one of that name was dug up from Westminster Abbey, and hung upon Tyburn gallows; not that quintessence of cant, falsity and the devil; that red-nosed Noll, who was a mere savage fighter, snorting death-fire upon St. Charles I. and his canonized host of cavaliers all the way from Edgehill to Naseby, a usurper, murderer, hypocrite and prince of liars; not that man at all! Carlyle can find no such Cromwell after the utmost search in all the truthful history of England in the middle of the seventeenth century.

It is Oliver (the son of Robert Cromwell) who was an active country gentleman, a member of Parliament in his younger years, and understood to have been a wise, devout and worthy man, of whom Carlyle writes. A man who was once somewhat emphatically acknowledged by the civilized world, as England's Protector and ablest man. Till past forty, this Oliver was a Huntington farmer; a quiet, just man, fearing God and studying the Bible-of the class called Puritans. He talked and prayed in conference meetings, in common with others of this sect. Being known, as a man who would set well at the mark, his fellow citizens deemed him fit to represent them in Parliament. He went; and for long years, he manfully did the work which his country and Parliament called upon him to do. The task set him was not an

* Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches with elucidations. By Thomas Carlyle. In two volumes. Wiley & Putnam, 161 Broadway, New York.

easy one: it demanded the highest qualities of a hero; and Cromwell performed it to the perfect satisfaction of his employers, and to the admiration of the world. After this was done, he set himself a still harder task, viz. to see that England, Scotland and Ireland, were righteously governed. And, in spite of obstacles, the like of which no ruler ever had to surmount, he did this confessedly better than it had ever been done before. This is Carlyle's Cromwell. A real hero; a deep, earnest, sincere, godly man; a reality and not a sham; veracious, not lying, truly religious, and as far from cant and hypocrisy as any other. Truly this is not the Cromwell we read of in most histories. The two have nothing in common with each other, except-neither of them could ever be beaten in battle, outwitted in council, circumvented in diplomacy, or frightened from his purpose. Perhaps also we should grant that the two men bore a personal resemblance to each other: the unbeautiful face, the negligent toilet, the awkward manners, are recognized in both. But here the resemblance ceases. The characters of the two differ toto cœlo,the whole distance of heaven from hell! In mental ability also the contrast is great; and even their earlier occupations differ,-the one being a brewer of malt, the other a gentleman farmer in the substantial medium class of English life.

Change the names of these two men, and the names of the battles they fought, and it is doubtful whether the one would ever suggest the other.

But how comes it to pass that Carlyle's Cromwell is so different from the Cromwell of Clarendon, Hume, and nearly every historian since he lived? The reader of this