“This was an action on the case for not keeping in safety Tom, a fugitive slave, the property of the plaintiff, who was delivered to him by the plaintiff’s agent and attorney, to be safely kept in the gaol at Doylestown. Upon the plea of the general issue, it was proved that the defendant was the clerk or deputy of the sheriff of Bucks county, in which the gaol was, at the time of the transaction which forms the subject of this suit. It was proved by the person who acted under a regular power of attorney from the plaintiff, that on the 19th of September 1822, he, with the plaintiff’s son, seized the said slave in Bucks county, and took him before a state judge, who, after examining witnesses as to the plaintiff’s property in Tom, gave to the attorney a certificate for the removal of the slave to the state of Maryland, whence he had before escaped. That he and the son of the plaintiff carried him, the same afternoon, to the gaol at Doylestown, and delivered him to the defendant, who locked him in the gaol yard, which is surrounded by a high wall, (nineteen feet high, as proved by another witness), and that the defendant at the same time undertook to keep him safely. Mr Worthington, the son, deposed to many of the above facts, and that he went with the other witness to the gaol to deliver the slave there, which was done; but that he knows nothing of the agreement of the defendant stated by the other witness, as to the safe keeping of the slave.”