The Mortara Case at Washington.
By Editor
[The following recital we find in the Independent. Who can read it without almost feeling impatient for the outpouring of the seven last plagues?—ED] ALL Christendom yet resounds with the appeal of the Jew of Bologna for his kidnapped son. If Europe shall be kindled into a general war, no small element of the conflict will be the hatred of the masses toward the Papacy, stirred anew by this outrage upon the family relation in the case of Mortara. For while this is but one of a thousand petty cruelties perpetrated by the Papal Government, it shows that the spirit of the Inquisition yet lives, and this incident has been made to concentrate the agitated feelings of the masses upon the concrete fact that the Papacy is a fearful tyranny over every man's household, ready to trample at any moment upon the dearest rights of nature, the fondest pledges of affection. When this case was urged upon the attention of Mr. Secretary Cass, he assured his Jewish fellow-citizens of his personal sympathy, and that of the government, but declined to interfere solely upon the ground of non-intervention in the affairs of foreign governments. Now, however, the Mortara case is repeated at Washington, with aggravated cruelty. Let fathers and mothers read this narrative from The Evening Post of recent date, and make the case their own. It is given on the authority of the Washington correspondent of The Post under the date of March 29th: “There was a singular slave case in the Criminal Court yesterday. A free colored man was tried before a jury for harboring his own son. A couple of months since, the offender was brought before a common justice on the above charge, and a bail of $2,000 was required, and it was given. The colored man has a wife who is a slave, and one by one his children have been snatched from him at the age of ten years and sold off. The father keeps a house to which his wife comes on Saturday nights, spending her Sundays at home. Her master has been very glad to make use of the father's affection for187his children to get them fed and housed till they were of a suitable age for selling, but he has always pounced upon each at a certain age and sold them off without allowing the parent a dollar for his trouble. In the present case the boy ran back home and the father did not turn him out of doors. For that offense a Washington jury has brought him in guilty of harboring slaves, and his punishment will be severe.” Neither the Mortara nor that of the Neapolitan exiles, just released from their long and cruel imprisonment, can show such refinement of cruelty as this. The most sacred affections of nature—the hallowed institution of marriage—are used for the purpose of raising chattels for the market; the wife of a free man is permitted at intervals to enjoy her husband's society, in order that the offspring of their sacred wedded love may be secured for the service of another; the mother being held as a chattel, her children are doomed to the same fate; child after child is born in the father's house, and suffered to remain there as an object of parental love, to be maintained and educated at the father's expense; then just at the moment when the child begins to be serviceable, and when the hearts of the parents have become wrapped up in its welfare, the mother's owner steps in to seize her offspring just as he would take away a calf from his cow; and when this kidnapping of a free man's children has been many times repeated, and the father ventures to retain his own boy under his roof, he is arrested, condemned and imprisoned for harboring a fugitive slave. Let the christian parent read this story aloud in the bosom of his family and then pronounce his judgement upon the law of slavery. Let this story be repeated at missionary stations, and what must be the judgement of unsophisticated converts upon our christianity? This cruelty is only a necessary application of the law of slavery, a product of the system. It is perpetuated at the seat of government, within the domain consecrated to the Union. It thus becomes a national crime. It is a crime of yesterday. Its victim now lies in jail in Washington. Are such things done in this christian land, and will not God arise for vengeance?