and the danger to which they might be exposed from its continuance and increase.

As early as the year 1641, attempts were made by the General Court of Massachusetts to put an end to this iniquitous trade; and from that time until the Revolution similar efforts were repeatedly made by this and the other New England colonies, and also by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia; all which were frustrated by the British Government, who refused to ratify any acts passed to check a commerce so lucrative to the mother country. That, however, which could not be done by legislative interference, would ultimately have been effected in this province by the sentiments of the people, operating through the medium of their Courts of Judicature, whose decisions bear equal testimony to the humanity and sense of justice characteristic of our forefathers, and the imbecility of all laws or institutions dissonant to the feelings and principles of the people among whom they exist.*

Soon after the provinces above mentioned became free and independent sovereignties, they respectively enacted laws interdicting the slave trade under the severest penalties. And in 1794, the congress of the United States prohibited it from being carried on froin American ports, either by citizens or foreigners resident in them. Several additional laws were afterwards enacted; and finally, in the year 1807, the importation of slaves into the United States was totally prohibited after the first day of January in the year 1808. The infraction of this law subjected the vessel to condemnation, and the persons engaged to heavy penalties and imprisonment. Various other laws have been made in reference to this subject; and finally, on the 15th day of May, 1820, it was enacted, that if any citizen of the United States, being of the crew or ship's company of any foreign vessel engaged in the slave-trade, or any person whatever being of the crew or ship's company of any ship or vessel owned in the whole or in part, or navigated for or in behalf of any citizen or citizens of the United States, shall land from any such ship or vessel, and on any foreign shore seize, any negro or mulatto, not held to service or hard labour by the laws of either of the states or territories of the United States, with intent to make such negro or mulatto a slave, or shall decoy or forcibly bring or

* In 1770, negroes began to sue their masters for their freedom and for payment of all services rendered after the age of twenty-one. Many ac tions for that purpose were brought between this time and the Revolution, all of which were successful.

See Report to the House of Representatives of this Commonwealth, Jan. 16, 1822., which gives an interesting history of slavery in this state. New-Series-vol. IV.

6

carry, or shall receive such negro or mulatto on board any such ship or vessel with intent as aforesaid, such citizen or person shall be adjudged a pirate, and on conviction shall suffer death.

Thus have the United States led the way in terminating this horrible traffic, and affixing upon it the deepest brand of infamy by abandoning all her citizens who may be engaged in it, as pi rales, enemies of the human race, whom it is lawful for any nation to capture and put to death.

In England, while those of her subjects who were engaged in the trade, plied it with the most busy activity and relentless cruelty, the great majority for a long time had but a general knowledge of its existence, and saw its effects only in the increase of the commercial enterprize and wealth of their country. The atrocities attending it had not reached their ears, and the miseries inflicted upon the wretched Africans in the British West India Islands, were at a distance too remote to attract attention, or excite much sympathy in the bosoms of men, whose feelings were absorbed in their domestic and national concerns.

At length, in the year 1787, an attempt, originating among the Quakers, was made in the British Parliament to procure an amelioration of the trade with a view to its ultimate abolition; but although moved by Wilberforce, and supported by Fox, and Pitt then at the height of his power, it failed utterly. Subsequent efforts were made with gradual success, and, finally, after a struggle of twenty years, which called forth all the talent and eloquence of the nation, a vote was obtained on the 25th day of March, 1807, by which a total prohibition, to take effect after the first day of March, 1808, was ordained. A subsequent act of parliament has since rendered the trade by British subjects, or in British vessels, felony. In the year 1792, Denmark prohibited it to her subjects after the year 1803, and has faithfully enforced the law. Sweden abolished it in the year 1813. In 1814 Spain engaged by treaty with England to prohibit her subjects from supplying with slaves any islands or possessions not belonging to her, and to prevent the Spanish flag from protecting foreigners engaged in the traffic. And in 1817 she further engaged thenceforth not to carry on the slave trade north of the equator, and that it should be abolished throughout the Spanish dominions on the 30th day of May 1820. In the same year the king of the Netherlands also agreed to abolish it, but it was not until the year 1818, that he adopted any effectual measures for that purpose. Buonaparte, on his return from Elba in 1814, interdicted the slave-trade; and Louis, on his return in July 1815, confirmed the decree, and declared the traffic to be thence

forth forever and universally prohibited to all his subjects, and throughout the French dominions.

In the year 1815 a treaty was entered into between Portugal and England, by which the former agreed to the abolition of the trade north of the equator, and in 1817 entered into further stipulations in order to secure the performance of the contract.

In the same year the Congress of Vienna issued their celebrated manifesto, in which the European powers proclaimed their abhorrence of the traffic, and their wishes to effect its abolition.

By the treaty entered into between Great Britain and the King of the Netherlands, the parties agreed to a mutual right of search of their respective merchant vessels within prescribed limits; and also to the right of seizure, provided any slaves should be actually found on board. Certain mixed courts of justice were also established, consisting of an equal number of members of each nation for the trial of vessels thus seized: one of which courts was to be established on the coast of Africa, and one in some colony of the King of the Netherlands. Simi lar arrangements were made with Spain and Portugal; limited, however, by the latter, to such of her vessels as should be found to the north of the equator, she still retaining the right to carry on the trade to the south of the line. The other European powers and America have refused assent to the right of search in time of peace.

The wars in which all Europe was lately involved, and to which America also finally became a party, operated in great measure to check the prosecution of this traffic. But no sooner was peace declared, than the desperate and unprincipled of all the nations who had been previously engaged in it, resumed their murderous employment with redoubled zeal and activity. So great was the number of vessels immediately engaged in this trade, that in 1817, only three years after the peace, notwithstanding all the laws and treaties above mentioned, two hundred and forty thousand slaves were exported from the coast of Africa. Two hundred and forty thousand of our fellow-beings, in one short year, torn from their homes and reduced to a cruel, lingering, hopeless bondage in foreign lands; and this too, by the subjects of nations calling themselves Christian!

Of the cruelties still inflicted upon these devoted beings, and which, if not authorized, are at least tolerated by Christian nations in the nineteenth century, the boasted age of humanity, civilization and refinement, the following specimens may suffice.

In March, 1820, the Tartar, commanded by Sir George Collier, boarded a French vessel called La Jeune Estelle, of

Martinique, after a long chase. The captain admitted that he had been engaged in the slave-trade, but denied that he had any slaves on board, declaring that he had been plundered of his cargo. The English officers, however, observed that all the French seamen appeared agitated and alarmed; and this led to an examination of the hold. Nothing, however, was found; and they would have departed with the belief that the captain's story was a true one, had not a sailor happened to strike a cask, and hear, or fancy he heard, a faint voice issue from within. The cask was opened, and two negro girls were found crammed into it, and in the last stage of suffocation. Being brought upon the deck of the Tartar, they were recognized by a person who had before seen them in the possession of an American who had died on the coast. An investigation now took place; and it was ascertained that they formed part of a cargo of fourteen slaves, whom the French captain had carried off by an attack which he and his crew made on the American's property after his decease. This led to a new search of the slave-ship for the other twelve, whom he was thus proved to have obtained by the robbery; when a platform was discovered, on which negroes must have been laid in a space twenty-three inches in height, and beneath it a negro was found, not, however, one of the twelve, jammed into the crevice between two water casks. Still there were no traces of those twelve slaves; and the French captain persisted in his story, that he had been plundered by a Spanish pirate. But suddenly a most horrid idea darted across the minds of the English officers and men; they recollected that when the chase began, they had seen several casks floating past them, which at the time they could not account for; but now, after the examination of the one which remained on board the Jeune Estelle, little doubt could be entertained that those casks contained the wretched slaves whom the infernal monster had thus thrown overboard, to prevent the detection that would have ensued, either upon their being found in his ship, or by their bodies floating upon the sea.'

The above, and the following account of the voyage of the French ship Le Rodeur are extracted from the Edinburgh Review for Oct. 1821. The vessel had now approached the line, when a frightful malady broke out. At first the symptoms were slight, little more than a redness of the eyes: and this being confined to the negroes, was ascribed to the want of air in the hold, and the narrow space between the decks, into which so large a number of those unhappy beings were crowded something, too, was imagined to arise from the scarcity of water, which had thus early begun to be felt, and

that

pressed chiefly upon the slaves; for they were allowed only eight ounces, which was soon reduced to half a wine glass per day. By the surgeon's advice, therefore, they were suffered for the first time to breathe the purer air upon the deck, where they were brought in succession; but many of these poor creatures being afflicted with that mighty desire of returning to their native country, which is so strong as to form a disease, termed nostalgia by the physicians, no sooner found they were at liberty, than they threw themselves into the sea locked in each other's arms, in the vain hope, known to prevail among them, of thus being swiftly transported again to their homes. With the view of counteracting this propensity, the captain ordered several who were stopt in the attempt to be shot or hanged in the sight of their companions; but this terrible example was unavailing to deter them; and it became necessary once more to confine them to the hold. The disease proved to be a virulent opthalmia, and it now spread with irresistible rapidity among the Africans, all of whom were seized: but it soon attacked the crew and its ravages were attended, perhaps its violence exasperated, by a dysentery, which the use of rain water was found to have produced.' The consternation now became general and horrid but it did not preclude calculation; for thirty-six of the negroes having become quite blind, were thrown into the sea and drowned, in order to save the expense of supporting slaves rendered unsaleable, and to obtain grounds for a claim against the underwriters.'

Fancy can add nothing to the horror of these realities: they seem to call for deeper indignation than the heart can conceive, and lead instinctively to an appeal to heaven with the involuntary inquiry, whether the vengeance of God will sleep forever.

Portugal, France, Spain, Holland, England and America are still polluted and disgraced by this infamous traffic. Portugal alone extends to it the sanction of her laws : already stained with the blood of millions, she ceases not to swell the tide of retribution which must sooner or later overwhelm her. France has indeed protested against the trade as repugnant to religion and humanity, and promulgated a formal prohibition. Yet vessels, notoriously intended for this purpose, are daily fitted out in her busiest ports with scarcely a thought of concealment: French citizens and vessels under French flags swarm the coast of Africa, and yearly bear away thousands and tens of thousands of its devoted inhabitants. We know not how a nation priding itself upon its honour, can tolerate this public disgrace, and trust that the popular leaders, by attracting the attention of the people to