at Monticello in Sullivan county, and although the libel was published in the county of New York, we were tried, and if found guilty, would have been punished in the former county. The same rule of law should, we conceive, be applicable to states as to counties in this instance; but we have a still stronger argument in favor of our position.

"A citizen of New York, resident in this state, suborns another, or directly instigates him to go into South Carolina and there commit a murder,— thereby rendering himself an accessary before the fact to murder, and therefore liable to capital punishment. The murder is committed in South Carolina-the murderer escapes to New York-is demanded, and of course delivered up to take his trial at the place wherein the murder was committed. On his trial, proof is developed of the agency in the murder of an accessary before the fact to this murder committed in South Carolina, who is a resident of New York, which place he has not quitted. Where would that accessary be tried?-clearly in the place where the crime to which he was an accessary was committed. On this point no one we presume can entertain a doubt; otherwise, as he cannot be tried in New York as an accessary to a crime not committed within her jurisdiction, he would escape punishment.

"If, then, this be true in a case of murder, it must be equally true in case of Treason; and if the putting into circulation of the abolition pamphlets in South Carolina be treason-and if it can be proved that Arthur Tappan be accessary before the fact to the putting into circulation of those pamphlets in South Carolina-then is Arthur Tappan, though he has not quitted New York, accessary before the fact to treason committed in South Carolina.

"And again, if the circulation of abolition pam phlets be a capital offence in Carolina, and if persons charged with capital offences be mutually deliverable between the states of the Union as the Constitution provides, then Arthur Tappan, as accessary before the fact to a capital offence committed in South Carolina, may be demanded at the hands of our Executive, and if demanded must be delivered up to take his trial in South Carolina."

If the South have not, under the Constitution, the right to demand and punish those who stand on her borders, and fling amid her slaves incendiary and seditious publications-it is to be regretted that so important and necessary a protection was not provided. Those who are willing to violate the laws and disturb the tranquillity of a state of this Union, should find no shelter from its sister states.

But it may be doubted whether, if this right were fully conceded to the South, she would descend to exercise it. The wrong comes, not from individuals, but from a party in the North, which is permitted, by those states, to prosecute a systematic and organized war against the rights and the peace of the South. It is the duty of the North to crush them;* and any attempt on the part of the South to secure individuals of the mass, would be unworthy her dignity, and inadequate to the prostration, or even the discouragement of the conspiracy against

her.

*What would you say, if your own operatives were to become discontented and rebellious-threatening your houses with the torch and your families with the knife-and if we were to erect presses in our own bosom to print and circulate papers to blow them into flame? Would you not call upon us, to interfere for their suppression ?—And may we not call upon you in the like spirit?-Richmond Enquirer.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia.

THE abolitionists, with all their presumption, do not venture to assert that Congress has a right to legislate on the slave question for the States. They do not, however, hesitate to allege the existence, and claim the exercise of that right in the District of Columbia. They have turned their whole force against this District. Falsehoods and calumnies against the slave-holders of the District are circulated throughout the Union; and the people of the remotest States are told, with all the declamatory cant of the abolition school, that, for the atrocities thus conjured up and presented to their imaginations, they are responsible. They are called upon, therefore, by every consideration, to clear their skirts from the horrid sin, by insisting on the abolition of slavery in the District. Great efforts are made to procure petitions to Congress on the subject; and it is probable that their application will be presented during the ensuing session, with several thousand names attached to it. The following is a copy of one of the petitions in circulation.

"To the honourable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America: The petition of the undersigned, citizens of

humbly sheweth, That your petitioners feel themselves bound by their duty to their country, to their

fellow-men, and to their God, to protest against the continuance of SLAVERY and the SLAVE-TRADE in the District of Columbia, and to pray your honourable bodies to exercise your constitutional powers for their immediate abolition.

"Remembering that the traffic in human flesh, when practised on the ocean, has been solemnly declared piracy by our own, and that it is so considered by almost all Christian nations, your petitioners do most earnestly implore that slavery, the necessary cause of the traffic, may no longer be permitted to exist in the Capital of this Republic."

The subject thus forced upon the attention of our people, is one involving the most momentous considerations. Fully understood, the scheme of abolition in the District, must be generally reprehended. It may be regarded as the outposts of the great question; and, if carried, will insure a final and complete triumph to the conspirators in all their designs.

The general government has no right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.

The framers of the constitution could never have intended to give to the government jurisdiction over this delicate subject. So far as they could, they secured to the South exclusive control of the slave question. The difficulty before us could not be foreseen by them, or express provisions would have been made to secure the country from this species of agitation. The South would never have sanctioned a constitution which gave to the general government any power, direct or indirect, to legislate on the slave question. They denied that power then, as they deny it now. They would not then submit to it; and subsequent events have induced no change of sentiment or feeling.

The constitution, which so expressly withheld from the general government the power of legislation

on the subject of slavery, could not have designed to give it the power of agitation-a power which would have annihilated all restraints, and laid the domestic rights of the South at the very feet of the central government. Let the general government but possess and exercise a right to agitate the subject of slavery in the South, to use the influence of her public councils, the power of her immense patronage, and of the treasury of the country-and she will not need the empty privilege of legislation. The South will be completely at her mercy.

Should the abolitionists triumph in the approaching effort, they would make the general government an abolition engine. The measure of abolition in the District would be regarded as a direct and emphatic approval of the course of the abolitionists. The fanatics would take fresh courage; the venal and time-serving would flock to a standard sustained by the government; and the cause would soon be considered "the cause of the country." The passage of the act referred to would put the seal of national sanction on the calumnies and vituperation of the abolitionists against the South; and would hold the citizens of that section of the country up to the detestation of the world, as brutal and fiendlike monsters, destitute of mercy and justice, and wholly sordid and savage in their character and habits. It would do more-it would extend to the slaves of the South, hopes that would madden them. The government itself would become incendiary; and the slaves, like those of St. Domingo, under a like policy of the French government, would respond to the lure held out, and rise in a mass to commence the work of murder and desolation. With the countenance of the general government, it is impossible to say what would be the results of an insurrection` of the slaves of the South. The dangers are, at least,