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RESPECT FOR LAW. – One among the many signs of disorganization and anarchy which our country too frequently presents, has just been manifested among the free soilers of the Northwest – among whom, by the way, may be found every sort of ism that is opposed to sound morals and to good government. A mass meeting was held at Cleveland, Ohio, by a very large number of people, who solemnly resolved that the fugitive slave law is unconstitutional and void, and the Dred Scott decision of the U. S. Supreme Court wrong. They also resolved that the Supreme Court has degenerated, and is subservient to party politics; that the conviction of persons at Oberlin for rescuing a slave, was disgraceful and unparalleled, and that the prisoners are entitled to their liberty. Giddings, Chase, Wade and others, spoke at the meeting.
Now one can hardly tell whether most to admire the modesty or the patriotism of these worthies. They constitute themselves judges of the constitution and laws – a Court of Appeals to revise the decisions of the highest legal tribunal in the country – a tribunal which, in the days of nullification, they contended was clothed with authority to settle all such disputed questions.
It is to be regretted that such a gang of fanatical changelings could not be indulged with a government of their own, which they might set up to-day and pull down to-morrow; and where “free-love,” and amalgamation, and atheism, might go hand in hand with abolitionism.
