the trade in slaves shall cease entirely, and be prohibited in his dominions;" yet we find this very treaty of July, 1817, extending the Portuguese traffic in slaves, protecting her slave traders, and binding Great Britain to remunerate them for any detention or loss that may occur, and that also to be estimated, not according to the actual loss, but according to the speculative profit they could have gained in the market, to which they might have carried the slaves; and lastly in the separate article it is stated, that if a total abolition takes place, an adaptation of the stipulations in the treaty may be made, and if not, they are to remain for fifteen years after that, as now established. It cannot be denied that Great Britain prevented the Portuguese slave trade from being annihilated, when she prevented France from possessing Portugal; that by conveying the royal family of Portugal tó the Brazils, she prevented that kingdom from revolution; and if revolution had taken place, it is probable that slavery would have been abolished in that part of South America, as completely as it has been in the revolted provinces of Spain; Great Britain having thus protracted the abolition of the slave trade, Portugal agrees with her as to the diabolical system of the traffic and the disadvantages of such a factitious population to her Brazil dominions, confesses that the slave trade" prevents peaceful industry and innocent commerce," and promises that a total abolition shall be established throughout all her dominions: she promises this over and over again: she receives three hundred thousand pounds of British money to relinquish her claim to trade for slaves on the African coast, north of the equator, over which she possessed neither right nor jurisdiction; after which she enters into another treaty, which facilitates her slave trade, insures inordinate profit to her slave traders, and then stipulates that its conditions may continue for fifteen years, even after a total abolition shall take place; so that in defiance of every benevolent declaration of its inhumanity, every acknowledgment of its injustice, every confession of its impolicy, and the most sacred promise of royalty for its annihilation, Portugal will not fix a time for the total abolition of the trade; and though it should be abolished, by this separate article she is to retain the benefit of the treaty of July, 1817, under which she may carry slaves for government use, or the planters may send for slaves for private employment : in short, (to my comprehension) there is no restriction of the trade, even after abolition, but for traffic, that is, slaves are not to be purchased to be sold again, and the proof of that is thrown on the cap tor. The impossibility of establishing, by the officers and papers of a slave ship, the destination of the slaves, is obvious; therefore, should a vessel be detained, the mixed Commission Court will probably discharge her, with an award of the liberal indemnification directed by treaty, and this reward of perfidy, the British Treasury must ultimately bestow ! Thus Portugal, by professions and promises, may continue amassing riches from the misery of Africa, and from the credulity of England, without termination. As she is the only nation that can purchase slaves after May 1820, she may obtain them at her own price; and from being the only nation allowed to sell them, any price may be procured she pleases to demand: such is the result of faithlessness and cruel pertinacity. Portugal possesses about 2,500 miles of coast in Brazil, and she claims 2,500 miles of coast in similar latitudes in Africa; shall Great Britain, after all her professions and expenditure, now suffer her to transfer all the vigor and strength of Africa into the Brazil territory, and leave only the dregs of a population to generate fresh victims for rapacity! The facts which I published last year in my View of the increased Slave Trade, were scarcely credible; but the accounts I have lately received are still more deplorable. I laid before the public, proof to establish that the trade had increased more than double since 1807 when it was abolished by England; but now I have statements from Cuba, that ten thousand slaves have been brought into that island in a week, (our newspapers say twelve thousand) and my correspondents in Africa, and commercial friends from that coast, have assured me the Portuguese Slave Trade has greatly increased since 1817, that the sea is almost covered with vessels full of slaves, and that the trade is perfectly uninterrupted: at Washington, the returns from the custom-house at the Havanna have been published, and the number of slaves landed at that one port in a day amount to 1,637, the date of the arrivals and the names of the vessels carrying them are given minutely: is it not most unaccountable that this devastation is permitted? That a hundred thousand brethren made in the perfection of God's image, and endowed with reason, should be annually debased into slaves, torn from every happiness in life, and left without a consolation but in death; and all this continued after the whole civilised world have declared their abhorrence of this traffic in human beings. The promise of the delinquent may be nugatory, but a pledge from the combined alliance to arrest the delinquency is too sacred for delusion !! If a white man is caught in Africa by the natives, he is enslaved, and we consider this a certain mark of their barbarous condition, but when a black man is found at the Havanna or in the Brazils and sold to slavery, we are told he is a negro brute, fit only to be a slave, and that the blacks are used as suchby all civilised nations: when the Africans carry from the coasts of Sicily and Italy the white inhabitants and sell them to slavery, the depredators are denominated pirates, and if seized punished as such; but if a Spaniard or a Portuguese carries from the coast of Africa the black inhabitants and sells them to slavery, it is considered a legitimate trade, in which if any person presumes to interrupt him, the interloper shall, by an august mixed tribunal of judges and arbitrators of different civilised nations, be punished with heavy damages; the crime of piracy is defined by the law of nations, but I never heard of any law, which directed the guilt or innocence of the perpetrator, to be regulated by his color; and that if white and black men should be seized committing the same depredations, the black shall suffer death, and the white receive profuse compensation for being detained for trial. I have already shown in my public letter to Mr. Wilberforce, (printed Feb. 1815) that the slave trader violates the law of God, of nature, and nations, and that it is the violation of those laws that constitutes the crime of piracy; why then should not the sovereigns of the civilised world declare slave trading piracy? while the infidel corsair shall be punished by law, should the Christian pirate be licensed by treaty!!! I have no doubt the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance are willing to constitute slave-traders pirates; they only require Great Britain, the benevolent advocate of abolition, to lead the way; Austria, Russia, and Prussia, have shown themselves adverse to slavery, and have emancipated hundreds of thousands in their own dominions; Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, Spain, Sardinia, with North and South America having abolished the slave trade themselves, it must be their wish, as well as their interest, that other nations should do the same; Portugal alone resists the claims in favor of Africa, though she acknowledges the justice and humanity of them, and the impolicy of carrying the Africans to Brazil: if she will then be so obstinately and confessedly unjust, I assert that it is the bounden duty of the civilised world to combine and compel her to relinquish the trade, and if I err, I err with high authority; for Vattel says in his Preliminary Discourse, "The object of the great society established by nature between all nations, is the interchange of mutual assistance for their improvement, and the first general law that we discover in the very object of the society of nations is, that each individual nation is bound to contribute every thing in her power, to the happiness and perfection of all the others.? Does not Portugal prevent Africa from obtaining this desired perfection at which other nations have arrived? does she not deprive her inhabitants “ of the VOL. XIV. NO. XXVIII. Pam. ་ 2 G blessings of peace and of innocent commerce ?" Does she not destroy their happiness by dragging them to slavery and subjecting them to every misery the most obdurate master may choose to inflict? And has not the King of Portugal thrown aside the mantle of his infallibility, and from his declaration in this treaty, acknowledged the principle, by the violation of which, he has established his own error? therefore is it not an abandonment of the Sovereigns' duty if they do not interfere and arrest the progress of so calamitous an evil? This load of guilt is maintained on the principle "That the rights and liberties of independent nations ought not to be encroached on, therefore Portugal should not be compelled to abolish the slave trade;" no position could palliate the enormities attendant on the traffic, or suffer its continuation; but on this very principle is not Portugal unjustifiable in destroying the natural rights and liberties of the Africans who are independent? And is not Great Britain bound by the law of nature and nations (as above stated) to afford Africa "assistance for her improvement, and to contribute every thing in her power to promote her happiness and perfection ?" Vattel, in writing on the Duty of Nations (b. ii. c. 1.) also lays it down, that "No one nation should hinder another from attaining the end of civil society, or render her incapable of attaining it; which general principle forbids nations to practise any evil manoeuvres tending to create disturbances in another state, to foment discord, to corrupt its people, to raise enemies, or deprive it of natural advantages." Are not the Portuguese guilty of each and all of these crimes? do they not practise every vice forbidden, and violate every principle they are under this dictum directed to uphold? Grotius (1. ii. c. 20.) says, "It is the duty of Sovereigns to chastise nations which are guilty of such enormous transgressions against the law of nature?" it is therefore evident on these principles, and under this doctrine, that Portugal should be obliged to abandon her slave trade to Africa totally and permanently, and that the allied Sovereigns are pledged to aid Great Britain in effecting its accomplishment without delay. Portugal in February 1810, by treaty promised gradually to abolish the slave trade, and she has regularly ever since gradually increased it in 1815 she agrees to appoint a time for the total abolition, and in 1817 she engages to do the same; yet by a separate article in this last treaty, we are led to expect its continuance for fifteen years at least: it has been proved that the slave trade is a thousand times more profitable than any other traffic, every nation but Portugal has relinquished it from the conviction of its injustice and inhumanity, and is she to be allowed a mono poly, because she is devoid of those feelings of justice and huma nity, and of those moral and religious obligations, which have actuated all other states, and caused them to abandon the trade? I have shown that any one power being allowed to carry on the slave trade, will agitate Africa from the circumference to the s centre, and continue every mischief and misery now experienced s by her inhabitants: one leper will infect a community, until the very air breathes contagion ! I If exorbitant profit is to be made in this trade, it had better be equitably divided amongst all the other nations that had formerly 1 a partition of its advantages: they have an equal right, and there is greater chance of its being surrendered totally, when the emoluis ments are divided, than when this inexhaustible mine of wealth is t suffered to be worked for the sole advantage of any one nation: besides it is allowed, that no beneficial advance can be made in the civilisation of Africa, whilst this destructive trade is suffered, and the policy of the civilised world is interested in her civilisation; because it would induce cultivation, and employ the hands of the inhabitants for their own enrichment, which must ultimately tend to the advantage of general society: the Africans, after collecting their natural and cultivated productions, would receive the arts and manufactures of more civilised states, they would soon unlock their hidden treasures, and obtain in return, not only every comfort this life can afford, but by instruction the means of obtaining the d blessing of life everlasting. It is evidently the wish, the duty, and the interest of every civilised nation, that the slave trade should be totally abolished: it is only necessary for Great Britain to collect the united voice of the different Sovereigns, and state to Portugal explicitly that the time is arrived, when the slave trade must be totally abolished in her dominions; and after that has been concluded, the allied Powers can easily be induced to declare, that it shall be considered piracy to carry on, directly or indirectly, any species of trade in slaves, and that all persons detected in purchasing or procuring Africans as slaves, by themselves or others, on any account whatsoever, shall be prosecuted and punished as pirates by every nation indiscriminately that shall seize them, and that all nations are bound to seize and punish them wheresoever found; then and not until then, will Africa be liberated or made susceptible of receiving the advantages of civilisation, or be enabled to contribute reciprocally to the improvement of other nations: after this most desirable object has been effected, all necessity for treaties, ships of war, and Commission Courts, will cease; then, and not until then, will a most burthensome, unlimited, and useless expense, 3 है |