to prohibit the engagement of the British people in the slave trade, and can punish them with death for any violation of such law! Examination will demonstrate how wide is the difference between the underived gigantic power of the Parliament of Great Britain, and the licensed potency of the Congress of the United States.

Thus far it has been assumed that the African slave trade is a legal traffic, and justified by national law. To give place here to citations of authority to establish a postulate so plain and apparent, would convict of the juvenile folly of proof to make clearer an axiom, and to render more transparent the simple truths and maxims of elementary law. If more than the assumption shall be deemed necessary to the inquiry, the necessity can scarcely extend beyond a reference to the teachings found passim in the learned works of the writers of Modern Europe on the public law. It is true, that, from time to time, serious inroads have been made upon the practice and pursuit of merchandizing in men. Notwithstanding such commerce has the approbation and high authority of the public law, individual nationalities aiming to abolish or abridge its dominion, have enacted laws stringent and laden with severe penalties, and formed treaties with neighboring states and foreign powers. Indeed more efforts have been put forth not unfrequently at the great Conventions of the representatives of the European courts and cabinets, to enlist all civilized nations and governments unanimously to enter into an agreement or compact to abolish the African slave trade, and thereby repeal the existing law of nations. The Congress of Vienna in the year 1815, the Congress of Aix la Chapelle, and that of Verona, both held subsequently to that year, are memorable instances of the assembled Powers of Europe endeavoring to change the public law and to overturn. the established code. But to this day, all these courts have been unable to agree; and hence the traffic in slaves remains. as legitimate as ever, and open to all such persons as are not properly and constitutionally restrained by the governments to which they owe allegiance. England and the Un ted States have hitherto been most prominent and efficient among

the nations of the Old and New World, in their attempts to prevent the embarkation of the African, and to make a finish of the foreign slave trade. It is desirable that the European powers and the United States should determine to strike from the usages and customs of nations, the traffic in slaves as legitimated by the Past; but till such act shall be done, independent legislation and treaty arrangements by individual nationalities will never abate the evil, nor much lessen its dimensions.

It is all quite well, and worthy of much credit, that Great Britain joins other Powers in Congress of Nations assembled, to change the public code; that the suffering slave abroad has its pity and compassionate tears, for his condition among mortals, and that so many millions of slaves have been emancipated on its soil; but it is not quite so well, nor so praiseworthy, to send here into distant seas great admirals with royal cruisers, to teach Americans lessons of humanity! Unfortunately the historical record of that nation is not quite immaculate in the matter of slavery. Why such virtuous indignation against that condition of social life in the case of the African? How much better off than slaves are vast numbers of the inhabitants of British territory? Its rulers, who are not the people, will not now even designate the inhabitants of the realm by a name much better or much more significant of good, of happy condition, than that of slave--the government will have it that they are subjects;— an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotchman, is a subject not a citizen. The African, here in the United States, holds the same or as good title of social and political state; he is never a citizen of the United States, though in some of the States, if free, he is admitted to the citizenship of the State. National citizenship can never be his under the present constitution. He is a subject of this government, not a citizen thereof. If a slave, he is still lower in the scale of political rights. He is merely a servile. Till the British government shall so adjust the social and political conditions of the people, that famines in Ireland, squalid misery in many towns of England, and pinching want in some places in Scotland, shall not drive

away for ever from their birth-places, millions of men and women, to seek their fortunes in foreign lands, to avoid starvation and death at home-it is responsible for an emigration or migration of the population of these lands, which, in morals or religion, has no higher nor holier character than one of force of expatriation. These multitudes of men, women, and children, which are thus annually crowded away from their homes with their Lares and Penates, depart no more from choice or good will than do the negroes from the inhospitable shores of Africa, whose heathen hordes make war on each other and sell the vanquished to be transported beyond its seas. Its savage kings and barbarous princes are ignorant of the higher laws of social and political organization, of the teachings of Christianity, and make no pretensions to civilization. But Great Britain, zealous to ameliorate the condition of man the world over, begins its crusade against the Infidels, by sending into the American waters its Admirals and War ships, to inaugurate the grand missionary enterprise of humanity among the American citizens! Macte virtute.

It would seem that if Great Britain were really honest and anxious in the affairs which now engage its attention this side the water which divides us, the first thing the statesmen composing the cabinet councils of the Kingdom should do in the premises, would be to make peremptory demand on Spain, Portugal, and the other countries where are kept open slave-markets, and with which that government has treaties touching the slave trade, to close immediately their mammon stalls; for the lessons of Political Economy truthfully teach that there is a reciprocal action between supply and demand. Cut off demand, and supply is without motivewithout market. Let the arms of Great Britain be burnished for such humanitary action as this. They are just now blotched and stained with the blood of the Sepoys of India beyond the Ganges. They still show on their glimmer, dull damned spots which will not out of themselves, nor yet be erased by the hands of Time, caused by the blood with which they were baptized in the Crimea. They have uneraseable stains on them which began to corrode their brightness and

dim their flashes, in farthest Asia, when victoriously carrying the trade in opium within the Walls of China. Next after the enforcement of the terms of those treaties, let Parliament declare that the exportation of gewgaw goods, wares, and merchandize, to these shores of Africa, by British merchantmen, to further the traffic in slaves with its petty princes, shall be contraband.

It will be in time for the salient philanthropy of the people of Great Britain to expend itself in behalf of the negro abroad, when it has reduced the mountain mass of suffering and evil so terrible among its inhabitants at home. Yet its war-ships sail forth in quest of adventure in far off seas, and to redress the wrongs of Africa far away in America, upon a flag in alliance with its own, under the treaty of Washington, by which vessels of war making a squadron of four-score guns, shall co-operate with each other! To search is the questionsomebody-it may be foe-it may be friend. Wrongs must and shall be redressed! Has this its exemplar in history? It has been prefigured in romance-only romance is not quite equal to reality-once, at least, is truth stranger than fiction. It has its shadow in the valiant, puissant deeds of Don Quixote, Knight of La Mancha, and his trusty adjective, Sancho Panza, Esquire. Are not their deeds recorded in the book of the chronicles of their faithful historian, Cervantes? There is one aspect of this matter which must be met by all who meddle with the question of slavery-entirely beside the constitutional or political one of this and other nations—and not likely to be productive of the same feelings or conclusions: the moral aspect, in the light of pure reason, in the abstract, and independent of all outward or external objects. It is proper here to dwell a little, and to observe in that direction.

There is not, in the nature of things, any essential difference, morally, in the traffic in slaves at one time or place more than in another. Hence we cannot concede to Congress any right to discriminate between the foreign and domestic slave trade. It may prohibit importation into the United States-that is its extent of power. We question its right, as well as any reason it may give for distinguishing between them and declaring

the one no better than and synonymous with piracy-full of all turpitude—and laden with every iniquity. It lacks authority for its maledictions as well as its interdictions against the one more than the other. The moral code has been unable to demonstrate any difference between them, and careful consideration can discover nothing generically unlike or dissimilar. It is very hard to discern wherein lies the difference between the traffic or trade in slaves on the coast of Guinea, and their transit hither upon the high seas, and the like dealing here at home along the Atlantic borders, concluding the adventure by a sea-voyage coastwise to some distant market on our own extended sea-board-yet Congress claims to have discovered it, and has legislated accordingly. But we aver that if one is wrong, then both are wrong; that if one is right, then both are right. We enter protest against such absurd definitions and distinctions as have been made by Congress. Can it change the nature of things? May it by a species of legislative legerdemain in the use of terms and language known to the common law and the Code of Nations transmute a person into a pirate, if, in a certain latitude and longitude, he be engaged in the slave trade, while at another point, if engaged in the like pursuit, he is a worthy citizen, commanding the protection of the government in transacting his business? Can it give good reasons why it has assorted the incidents of the system which our institutions established to regulate the relations of the servile race long before there ever was an American Congress? How can it make the slave trade abroad, which is only one of its bearings, a great wickedness and contrary to approved morals, and the same thing here at home a great goodness, and in conformity to the monitions of conscience? Right reason revolts at such absurdities, and the voice of nature will not be silent.

Observe and apply here what Cicero says, a slaveholder of old Rome in the days of its greatness and glory, the statesman and orator so accomplished in philosophy and letters: There is, indeed, a law, right reason, which is in accordance with nature, existing in all, unchangeable, eternal; commanding us to do what is right, forbidding us to do what is wrong. It