CHAPTER IX.

THE UPPER AND THE LOWER LAW.

"There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same throughout the world, the same in all times: it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud and loathe rapine and abhor bloodshed, they will reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy than man can hold property in man." - Lord Brougham.

THE

HE policeman, Blake, was a Vermonter whose grandsire had been one of the eighty men under Ethan Allen at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. The traditions of the Revolution were therefore something more than barren legends in Blake's mind. They had inspired him with an enthusiastic admiration of the republic and its institutions. His patriotism was a sentiment which all the political and moral corruption, with which a New York policeman is inevitably brought in contact, could not corrode or enfeeble.

Even slavery, being tolerated by the Constitution of the United States, was, in his view, not to be spoken of lightly. He shut his eyes and his ears to all that could be said in its condemnation; he opened them to all its palliating features and facts. Did not statistics prove that the blacks, in a state of slavery, increase in double the proportion they do in a state of freedom, surrounded by whites? This comforting argument was eagerly seized by Blake as a moral sedative.

The Fugitive-Slave Law he was satisfied was strictly in accordance with both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States. Therefore it must be honestly enforced. The Abolitionists, who were striving to defeat the execution of the law, were almost as bad as Mississippi repudiators who were swindling their foreign creditors. So long as we were enjoying the benefits of the Constitution, was it not mean and dastardly to undertake to jockey the South out of the obvious protection of that clause in it which has reference to the "person held to service or labor," which we all knew to mean the slave?

Considerations like these had made Blake one of the most earnest advocates of the enforcement of the law among his brethren of the police; and when at last he was called on to carry it out in the case of Peek, he felt that obedience was a duty which it would be poltroonery to evade. He went forth, therefore, with alacrity that morning, resolved to allow no mawkish sensibility to interfere with his obligations as an officer and a citizen.

Accompanied by Iverson, he waited on Colonel Delancy Hyde at the New York Hotel. They found that worthy in the smoking-room, seated at a small marble table, with a cigar in his mouth and an emptied tumbler, which smelt strongly of undiluted whiskey, before him. The Colonel graciously asked the officers to "liquor." Iverson assented, but Blake declined.

A refusal to "liquor," the Colonel had been bred to regard as a personal indignity; and so, turning to Blake, he said: "Look here, stranger! I'm Colonel Delancy Hyde. Virginiaborn, be Gawd! From one of the oldest families in the State! None of yer interloping Yankee scum! No Puritan blood in me! My ahncestor was one of the cavalyers. My father was one of the largest slave-owners in the State. Now if yer want to put an affront on me, I'd jest have yer understand fust who yer've got to deal with.”

“Bah!” said Blake, turning on his heel, and walking to the window.

Iverson, who dreaded a scene, smoothed over the affront with a lie. "The fact is, Colonel," whispered he, "Blake would n't be fit for duty if he were to drink with us. A spoonful upsets him; but he's ashamed to confess it. A weak head! You understand?”

The explanation pacified the Colonel. Indeed, his sympathies were at once wakened for the unhappy man who could n't drink. This representative of the interests of slavery certainly did not prepossess Blake in favor of his mission; but justice must be done, notwithstanding the character of the claimant.

An addition was now made to the circle. Captain Skinner and Biggs, the sailor already mentioned, a short, thick-set stump of a man, with only one eye, and that black and over

arched by a bushy, gray eyebrow, a very wicked-looking old fellow, entered and made themselves known to the Colonel. They had come up from New London, to serve as witnesses. As a matter of policy, the Colonel could not do less than ask them to join in the raid on the whiskey decanter; and this they did so effectually that the last drop disappeared in Biggs's capacious tumbler.

As it was not yet time for the appointment at Charlton's office, the party, all but Blake, took chairs and lighted cigars, and the Colonel asked Captain Skinner to narrate the circumstances of Peek's appearance on board the Albatross.

“Well, you see, Colonel," said Skinner, "we had been ten days out, when one night the second mate, as he was poking about between decks, caught a strange nigger creeping into a cotton-bale just for'ard of the store-room. We ordered the nigger out, and he came into the cabin, and pretended to be a free nigger, and said he'd pay his passage as soon as he could git work in New York. In course I knew he was lyin', but I did n't let on that I suspected him. I played smooth; and cuss me, if the nigger did n't play smooth too; for he made as if he believed me; and so when we got to New London, afore I could git the officers on board, he jumped into the water and swam to old Payson's boat, and Payson he got him on board one of the Sound steamers, and had him put through to New York that same night. The next day Payson attakted me in the street, knocked me down, and stamped on me, and afore I could have him tuk up, he was on board that infernal boat of his, and off out of sight. There's the scar of the gash Payson left on my skull.”

Blake, at these words, left the window, and came and looked at the scar with evident satisfaction. Colonel Hyde, with a lordly air of patronage, held out his hand to Skinner, and said: Capting, the scar is an honor. Capting, yer hand. I love to meet a high-tone gemmleman, and you're one. Capting, allow me to shake yer hand.”

66

"With pleasure," said Biggs, taking the Colonel's hand and shaking it in his own big, coarsely-seamed flipper, before the Captain had a chance to reach out. The Colonel smiled grimly at Biggs's playfulness, but said nothing.

"Come! it's time to go," exclaimed Iverson, looking at his watch. The party rose, and proceeded down Broadway to Charlton's office. We have already seen what transpired on their arrival. Our business is now with what happened after their departure.

Three o'clock struck. The small hand on the dial of Trinity was fast moving toward four; and still Blake paced the floor in Charlton's office. Every now and then there would be a knock at the door, and Blake, with a menacing shake' of his head, would impose silence on the conveyancer, till the applicant for admission, tired of knocking, would go away.

Blake's thoughts were in the condition of a chopping sea where wind and tide are opposing each other. Reflections that reached to the very foundation of human society questions of abstract right and wrong were combating old notions adopted on the authority of others, and as yet untested in the cupel of his own conscience.

Brought for the first time face to face with the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves, encountering it in its practical operation, he found in it a barbarous necessity from which his heart recoiled with horror and disgust. Must he disregard that pleading cry of conscience, that voice of God and Christ in his soul, calling on him to do in righteousness unto others as he would have them do unto him? Could any human enactment exempt him from that paramount obedience ?

How had he felt dwarfed in another's presence that day! He had seen a man, and that man a negro, putting forth his manhood in the best way he could to parry the arm of a savage oppression, doubly fiendish in its mockery, coming as it did under the respectable escort of the law. Surely the negro showed himself better worthy of freedom than any white man among his hunters.

Would the fellow keep his pledge? Would he come back? Blake now earnestly hoped he would not. Was not any stratagem justifiable in such a case? Should we mind resorting to deception in order to rescue ourselves or another from a madman or a murderer? Why, then, might not Peek violate his written promise, made as it was to men who were trying to rob him of a freedom more precious than life to such a soul as his?

But had not he himself— he, Blake — made use of his poor show of generosity to impress it on Peek that he must prove worthy the trust reposed in him? This recollection brought bitter regret to the policeman. Instead of encouraging the negro to escape, he had put scruples of conscience or of generosity in his way, which might induce him to return. Would Blake have done so to his own brother, under similar circumstances? Would he not have bidden him cheat his persecutors, and make good his flight? Assuredly yes! And yet to the poor negro he had practically said, Return!

These reflections wrought powerfully upon Blake. Why not run and urge the negro to escape? It was still more than an hour to five o'clock. Yes, he would do it!

Then came a consideration to check the impulse. He, a sworn officer of the law, should he lend himself to the defeat of the very law he had taken it upon himself to execute? Was there not something intensely dishonest in such a course? Well, he could do one thing at least: he could resign his office, and then try to undo the mischief he had perhaps done the negro by his injunction. Yes, he would do that.

Impulsive in all his movements, Blake looked at his watch, and found he would have just an hour in which to crowd all the action he proposed to himself. Turning to Charlton, he said: “Your conduct to this runaway slave will make your life insecure if I choose to go to certain men in this city and tell them what I can with truth. What you now are intending to do is to have the slave intercepted. I don't ask you to promise, simply because you will lie if you think it safe; but I say this to you: If I find that any measures are taken before five o'clock to catch the slave, I shall hold you responsible for them, and shall expose you to parties who will see you are paid back for your rascality. Take no step for an arrest, and I hold my tongue."

Glad of such a compromise, Charlton replied: "I'm agreed. Up to five o'clock I'll do nothing, directly or indirectly, to intercept the nigger."

Blake was speedily in the street after this. He hurried to the City Hall, found the Chief of Police, gave in his resignation, deposited Colonel Hyde's pistol among the curiosi

4