right to complain; and the North has been too careless of
what, I think, the Constitution peremptorily and emphatically
enjoins upon her as a duty."--_Idem._ p. 30.

In a speech in the United States Senate, July 17, 1850, made with an
evident view to calm that Northern feeling which had been aroused
and excited by his 7th of March speech, beyond the power of priest
or politician wholly to subdue, Mr. WEBSTER said there were various
misapprehensions respecting the working of the proposed Fugitive
Slave Bill:--

"The first of these misapprehensions," he said, "is an
exaggerated sense of the actual evil of the reclamation of
fugitive slaves, felt by Massachusetts and the other New
England States. What produced that? The cases do not exist.
There has not been a case within the knowledge of this
generation, in which a man has been taken back from
Massachusetts into slavery by process of law, not one."
* * * * "Not only has there been no case, so far as I can
learn, of the reclamation of a slave by his master, which
ended in taking him back to slavery, in this generation, but
I will add, that, as far as I have been able to go back in my
researches, as far as I have been able to hear and learn, in
all that region there has been no one case of false claim.
* * * _There is no danger of any such violation being
perpetrated."[A]--Webster's Speech on the Compromise Bill, in
the United States Senate, 17th of July, 1850, edition of
Gideon & Co., Washington_, pp. 23-25.

[Footnote A: See also Mr. Webster's letter to the Citizens of