Though the last quoted provision of the constitution prevented the suppression of the importation of slaves, before 1808, the third congress, under the present government, prohibited the carrying on of the slave trade from our ports. Several subsequent enactments discouraging and restraining the trade were passed: and on the 2d of March, 1807, the importation of slaves was fully and effectually prohibited under the heaviest penalties.

Of the course of the South, in relation to this subject, Mr. Walsh makes the following remarks: "In truth, the representatives from our southern states have been foremost in testifying their abhorrence of the traffic; an abhorrence springing from a deep sense, not merely of its iniquity, but of the magnitude of the evil which it has entailed upon the country. It was only at the last session of the American congress (March 1, 1819,) that a member from Virginia proposed the following regulation, to which the house of representatives agreed without a division. Every person who shall import into the United States, or knowingly aid or abet the importation into the United States, of any African negro, or other person, with intent to sell or use such negro, or other person, as a slave, or shall purchase any such slave, knowing him or her to be thus imported, shall, on conviction thereof, in any circuit court of the United States, be punished with death.' The rarity of capital punishment in the penal code of the United States, and the extreme aversion from a recourse to it, universally prevailing, make this instance a potent proof of the sincerity of the dispositions which we profess respecting the slave trade."

At the same session, congress passed a law providing for the effectual suppression of the slave traffic. From that time to the present, the importation of slaves, denounced as it is by the laws, and

:

abhorred by the people, must have been extremely limited. Our slave population has since increased with that rapidity which the comforts and abundance of their condition induce; but not, as will be seen hereafter, in a ratio greater than the increase of the whites, nor sufficient to justify the fears of those nervous patriots who apprehend danger from their numbers. They have remained quiet and contented, with the exception of a limited insurrection caused by the sinister interference of misguided fanatics. The South has grown affluent in her slave population; and the South-west, with the aid of their robust and well-directed labour, is improving with a rapidity almost unequalled. Meanwhile, the North has shared generously in the universal welfare. Her manufactories have been supplied with Southern cotton, and have again found outlets in the Southern markets. North and South have filled the stations and performed the duties assigned them by nature; and each have equally benefited by the institution of slavery. The slaves themselves, without a complaint, or a cause of complaint, have lived on in tranquillity and comfort, and attained a degree of moral and religious excellence which in no other country or condition have they been able to reach.

CHAPTER V.

America not responsible for the introduction of Slavery into this country-Of the course of the British Government, &c.

As the bitterest invective has been used by the writers and speakers of Great Britain against this country on account of its sanction of slavery, and as even among our own citizens at the North many are found who regard it as a national crime, it may be well to show how far the Americans are responsible for it, and who, if it be a crime, are the guilty authors of African slavery. It will be our aim, by a plain and succinct narrative of the facts connected with the introduction of Africans into this country to prove,

1. That the people of this country did not introduce slavery within its borders.

2. That they opposed its introduction with ardour and energy.

3. That this opposition was general with the colonies-commenced at the introduction of slavery, and continued until it succeeded in effecting the abolition of the slave trade.

4. That the course of the colonies on this subject was not only repulsed, but resented by the English government.

5. That some of the Southern states were preeminently distinguished by the boldness and energy with which they opposed the slave trade.

g

6. That the anxiety of the Americans to prevent the introduction of slaves into the country, was one of the causes which induced the declaration of independence.

7. That slavery was introduced into, and entailed upon, this country, by Great Britain.

8. That the English government directly sanctioned and aided the importation of Africans into America.

9. That the English are accountable for a greater amount of atrocity in the prosecution of the slave trade, than any other people.

10. That they engaged more extensively in the trade, urged it with more skill and cruelty, and effected a greater amount of importation, than any of their rivals.

11. That they opposed the abolition of the trade until it became their interest to abolish it, and then made a merit of an act of craft and policy.

12. That the English people, ever since its abolition by parliament, have been engaged in the trade to a great extent.

The English government has been no stranger to those acts of oppression in which slavery originates. We have seen that the Anglo-Saxons sold their servants as slaves. In the reign of Edward VI. a law was passed, authorizing the sale of "all idle vagabonds" as slaves. The Scots taken at the battle of Dunbar were sent into involuntary slavery in New England. Indeed, it seems to have been the established practice of the times to ship prisoners to this country. At the same time, crowded and cruel exportations of Irish Catholics were made, accompanied by all the atrocities of the negro slave trade. "In 1685," says Bancroft, in his History of the United States, "when nearly a thousand of the prisoners, condemned for participating in the insurrec

tion of Monmouth, were sentenced to transportation, some gentlemen of influence at court, among others sir Christopher Musgrave, begged of the monarch the convicted insurgents as a merchantable commodity, and satisfied their avarice by the sale of their countrymen into slavery." These cases differ in no particular from African slavery. If the people of England, at so late and refined a period, were willing to traffic in the flesh and blood of their own kin and colour-we need not wonder at their eager and inhuman ardour in the African slave trade.

From 1567, when queen Elizabeth became the partner of sir John Hawkins in stealing slaves from the shores of Africa, and smuggling them, against the laws of Spain, into the Spanish colonies-from that period, up to the time of the American Revolution, the English commerce in slaves was prosecuted without intermission, and to an almost incredible extent. Mr. Walsh's Appeal-a work which does honour to American literature, and from which we have derived much valuable information on this subject-says, "England herself supplied her North American colonies from the outset with negroes, whom she sought, seized, and manacled on the coast of Africa, and dragged and sold into this continent. The institution of negro slavery-the great curse of America'-lies at her door. What was her motive? The alleviation of the lot of her sons, whom she had driven into the distant wilderness? No British writer has counted so far upon the simplicity of mankind, as to hazard this explanation. The motive was sheer love of gain; omniverous avarice, looking not merely to the immediate profit upon the cargo of human flesh, but to the greater and permanent productiveness of the settlements, whose staples were to be monopolized by the mother country. The slave trade received the sanction of the Bri