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Upon the 8th of May following, the committee on the suppression of the slave trade reported an amendment of two additional sections to the Senate's bill; also, a bill to incorporate the American Society for colonizing the free people of colour of the United states, and three joint reso. lutions, two of which related to the objects of that society; but the first of which, in behalf of both Houses of Congress, requested the President "to consult and negotiate with all the governments where ministers of the United States are, or shall be, accredited, on the means of effecting an entire and immediate abolition of the African slave trade." The amendatory sections denounced the guilt and penalty of piracy against any citizen of the United States, of the crew or company of any foreign vessel, and any person whatever of the crew or company of any American vessel, who should be engaged in this traffic.

The amendments, bill, and resolutions, along with the explanatory report, which accompanied them, were referred to the committee of the whole above mentioned; and on the 11th of the same month, the House proceeded to consider them. After a discussion in the committee, the piracy bill, and its amendments, having been adopted, were reported, and both were concurred in by the House. The following day, the bill, as amended, being then on its passage, a motion was debated and nega tived, to recommit the bill to a select committee, with an instruction to strike out the last section of the amendment. The bill then passed, and was ordered to be returned, as amended, to the Senate.

On the same day, a motion prevailed to discharge the committee of the whole from the further consideration of the bill, and the resolutions which accompanied the report; and the particular resolution, already recited, being under consideration, to try the sense of the House on its merits, it was moved to lay it on the table. The yeas and nays having been ordered on this motion, it was rejected by a majority of 78 to 35 members. It having been again proposed to postpone the resolution, till the ensuing or second session of the same Congress, and this proposal being also determined in the negative, the resolution was engrossed, read the third time, passed, and ordered to be transmitted to the Senate on the same day with the piracy bill.

The amendments of this bill underwent like scrutiny and debate in the Senate, and were finally concurred in, the day after they were received from the House of Representatives, without any division apparent on the journal of that House.

The resolution which had been received by the Senate, at a different hour of the same day, was read a second time on the 15th of May, was

further taken up and considered, as in committee of the whole, reported to the House without amendment, and ordered, after debate, to pass to a third reading. But this being the last day of the session of Congress, and a single member objecting" that it was against one of the rules of the Senate to read it the third time on the same day without unanimous consent," it remained on the table of that body, on its final adjournment, after an ineffectual effort to suspend one of their rules, against which many of the friends of the resolution felt themselves compelled, by their invariable usage, to vote in union with its enemies.

One of the objections to the resolution in the Senate, was founded upon the peculiar relation of that branch of the National Legislature to the Executive, in the ratification of treaties; which seemed, in the opinion of those who urged this argument, to interdict their concurrence in a request of the President to institute any negotiation whatever.

A cotemporary exposition of the object of the amendments of the piracy bill, and the resolution, which the House of Representatives adopted, by so large a majority, will be found in the report, which accompanied them, from the committee on the suppression of the slave trade, and which is hereto annexed. (A.) Those objects, it will be seen, were in perfect accordance with each other. They were designed to introduce, by treaty, into the code of international law, a principle, deemed by the committee essential to the abolition of the African slave trade, that it should be denounced and treated as piracy by the civilized world.

The resolution being joint, and having failed in the Senate, for the reason already stated, the subject of it was revived in the House of Representatives, at a very early period of the succeeding session of Congress, by a call for information from the Executive, which, being received, was referred to a committee of the same title with the last. Their report, after reviewing all the antecedent measures of the United States for the suppression of the slave trade, urgently recommended the cooperation of the American and British navy against this traffic, under the guarded provisions of a common treaty, authorizing the practice of a qualified and reciprocal right of search.

This report, which is also annexed, closed with a resolution, requesting "the President of the United States to enter into such arrangements as he might deem suitable and proper, with one or more of the maritime powers of Europe, for the effectual abolition of the African slave trade." (B.)

The United States had, by the treaty of Ghent, entered into a formal stipulation with Great Britain, "that both the contracting parties

shall use their best endeavours to accomplish the entire abolition of this traffic."

The failure of the only joint attempt which had been made by England and America, at the date of this report, to give effect to this provision, being ascribable, in part, to a jealousy of the views of the former, corroborated by the language and conduct of one of the principal maritime powers of Europe, in relation to the same topic, the committee referred to the decision of Sir William Scott, in the case of the French ship Le Louis, to demonstrate that Great Britain claimed no right of search, in peace, but such as the consent of other nations should accord to her by treaty; and sought it by a fair exchange, in this tranquil mode, for the beneficent purpose of an enlarged humanity.

Certain facts, disclosed by the diplomatic correspondence of France and England, during the pendency of that case in the British Court of Admiralty, were calculated to guard the sympathies of America from being misguided by the language of the former power.

The painful truth was elicited, that France had evaded the execution of her promise at Vienna, to Europe and mankind. That she had, long after the date of that promise, tolerated, if she had not cherished, several branches of a traffic, which she had concurred in denouncing to be the opprobrium of Christendom, and which she had subsequently bound herself, by the higher obligations of a solemn treaty, to abolish, as inconsistent with the laws of God and nature.

Succeeding events in the councils of the French nation, have not impaired the force of this testimony. What authority can be accorded to the moral influence of a government which insults the humanity of a generous and gallant people, by pleading, in apology for the breach of its plighted faith, that its subjects required the indulgence of this guilty traffic!

The Emperor Napoleon, who re-established this commerce on the ruins of the French Republic, also abolished it again, when he sought to conciliate the people of France, during that transient reign, which immediately preceded his final overthrow.

Congress adjourned without acting on this report.

By an instruction to the committee on the suppression of the slave trade, of the 15th of January, 1822, the same subject was a third time brought directly before the House of Representatives. The instruction called the attention of the committee to the present condition of the African slave trade; to the defects of any of the existing laws for its suppression, and to their appropriate remedies. In the report, made in obe

dience to this instruction, on the 12th of April, 1822, the committee state, that after having consulted all the evidence within their reach, they are brought to the mournful conclusion, that the traffic prevailed to a greater extent than ever, and with increased malignity; that its total suppression, or even sensible diminution, cannot be expected from the separate and disunited efforts of one or more States, so long as a single flag remains to cover it from detection and punishment. They renew, therefore, as the only practicable and efficient remedy, the concurrence of the United States with the maritime powers of Europe, in a modified and reciprocal exercise of the right of search.

In closing their report, the committee add, in effect, that they "cannot doubt that the people of America have the intelligence to distinguish between the right of searching a neutral on the high seas, in time of war, claimed by some belligerents, and that mutual, restricted, and peaceful concession, by treaty, suggested by the committee, and which is demanded in the name of suffering humanity." The committee had before intimated, that the remedy which they recommended to the House of Representatives, presupposed the exercise of the authority of another department of the government; and that objections to the exercise of this authority, in the mode which they had presumed to suggest, had hitherto existed in that department. Their report, also annexed, closed with a resolution differing in no other respect from that of the preceding session, than that it did not require the concurrence of the Senate, for the reason already suggested. (C.)

The report and resolution were referred to a committee of the whole, and never farther considered.

After a delay till the 20th of the succeeding February, a resolution was submitted to the House, which was evidently a part of the same system of measures, for the suppression of the slave trade, which had been begun by the act of the 3d of March, 1819, and followed up by the connected series of reports and resolutions, which the committee have reviewed, and which breathe the same spirt.

This resolution, in proposing to make the slave trade piracy, by the consent of mankind, sought to supplant, by a measure of greater rigour, the qualified international exchange of the right of search for the apprehension of the African slave dealer, and the British system of mixed tribunals,created for his trial and punishment: a system of which experience, and the recent extension of the traffic that it sought to limit, had disclosed the entire inefficacy.

The United States had already established the true denomination and

grade of this offence, by a municipal law. The resolution contemplated, as did the report which accompanied and expounded that law, the extension of its principle, by negotiation, to the code of all nations.

It denounced the authors of this stupendous iniquity, as the enemies of the human race, and armed all men with authority to detect, pursue, arrest, and punish them.

Such a measure, to succeed to its fullest extent, must have a beginning somewhere. Commencing with the consent of any two states, to regard it as binding on themselves only, it would, by the gradual accession of others, enlarge the sphere of its operation, until it embraced, as the resolution contemplated, all the maritime powers of the civilized world.

While it involved of necessity the visit and search of piratical vessels, as belligerent rights against the common enemies of man, it avoided all complexity, difficulty, and delay, in the seizure, condemnation, and punishment of the pirate himself. It made no distinction in favour of those pirates who prey upon the property, against those who seize, torture, and kill, or consign to interminable and hereditary slavery, the persons of their enemies.

Your committee are at a loss for the foundation of any such discrimination. It is believed, that the most ancient piracies consisted in converting innocent captives into slaves; and those were not attended with the destruction of one third of their victims, by loathsome confinement and mortal disease.

While the modern, therefore, accords with the ancient denomination of this crime, its punishment is not disproportionate to its guilt. It has robbery and murder for its mere accessories, and moistens one continent with blood and tears, in order to curse another, by slow consuming ruin, physical and moral.

One high consolation attends upon the new remedy for this frightful and prolific evil. If once successful, it will for ever remain so, until, being unexerted, its very application will be found in history alone.

Can it be doubted, that if ever legitimate commerce shall supplant the source of this evil in Africa, and a reliance on other supplies of labour, its use elsewhere, a revival of the slave trade will be as impracticable as a reversion to barbarism ?—that, after the lapse of a century from its extinction, except where the consequences of the crime shall survive, the stories of the African slave trade will become as improbable among the unlearned, as the expeditions of the heroes of Homer?

The principle of the law of 1820, making the slave trade a statutory piracy, and of the resolution of the House of Representatives, of May, VOL. X.

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