Speech #540129835

Mr. President Massachusetts and slavery. the selling of slaves in the South and the horrors of separation of families and the "fugitive slave law!" What iniquities more strongly denounced by Massachusetts than these? And yet today we have Massachusetts invoking in an immigration bill what it suited her purpose in times before to inveigh against. The fugitive slave law. which was intended to further the carrying out of the Constitution with reference to the return of fugitive slaves in the South. is absolutely adopted in the conference report. We know of no legislationThe Philadelphia Record proceeds to sayWe know of no legislation so despicable as this since the passage of the fugtive slave law. That law was designed to .better enforce a provision of the Constitution requiring the delivery of fugitives from labor. But it was so mean and so atrocious in its premises. making crimes of acts innocent and humane in themselves. that the moral sense of the country revolted against it. and the Government was powerless to enforce it. This immigration bill attempts to make a crime out of the right of locomotion and of the equally sacred right of earning a living by the sweat of the brow. The fugitive slave law denounced heavy penalties against any person who. in obedience to the dictates of humanity. should give food to a fegitive or refuse to deliver him up to his owner. This immigration bill would subject to like fine and imprisonment any citizen of the United States who should employ a Canadian or Mexican crossing the border to and fro in pursuit of his dail vocation. Meaner than the fugitive slave law. this bill wouldviolate the simplest rites of hospitality and the observance of good neighborhood. The Senator from Massachusetts refers with a great deal of zeal to the fact that heWas informed by an inspector of immigration on the Lakes that in one day in lastDecember $4.000 were paid in wages by one firm of contractors to aliens and $2.700 by another. How many days in the year were such sums ever paid? Will the Senator from Massachusetts answer?