ness of such numbers of your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects.

"Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your Majesty to remove all those restraints on your Majesty's governors of this colony which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce." The petition was rejected.

Massachusetts exhibited equal boldness and ardour in her opposition to the slave-trade. In 1645, two citizens of Boston, one a member of the church, fitted out a ship and sailed for Guinea, to trade for negroes. It is somewhat remarkable that the first instance of participation in the traffic, on the part of the colonies, is to be referred to that state which has since become the favourite laboratory of the abolitionists and incendiaries. The colonial commerce in slaves was always confined, principally, if not wholly, to the traders of the North. Whatever might have been the conduct of individuals, the colony manifested the most anxious determination to discourage the trade. When the vessel, above referred to, arrived, the traders were committed for the offence; and the General Court directed that the negroes be restored to their native country. About the same time, a law was passed prohibiting commerce in slaves, except such as were taken in lawful war or condemned to servitude for their crimes; and, at a much earlier date, the colony incorporated with its penal code, an enactment punishing manstealing with death. In 1703, Massachusetts imposed a duty of £4 upon every negro imported into the colony. Other efforts were made, but failed in consequence of the opposition of the crown. The instructions to Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire, dated June 30th, 1761, contained this clause: "You are not to give your assent to, or pass any

law, imposing duties on negroes imported into New Hampshire." This appears to have been the tenor of the orders of all the governors on this subject. In 1774, when the legislature of Massachusetts passed a bill, entitled, "An act to prevent the importation of negroes and others, as slaves into this province," Governor Huchinson refused his sanction and dissolved the assembly. He afterwards, in answer to a deputation of blacks, stated that he had acted under his instructions. His successor, General Gage, was also instructed to refuse his sanction to any law, the object of which was the discouragement of the slave-trade.

Pennsylvania adopted a similar policy, and passed various laws intended to discourage the introduction of slaves. All the colonies, in short, united in deprecating and abhorring the introduction of negro slavery into the country, and passed ineffectual enactments for its discouragement. The efforts of the colonies, stripped as they were of all power of legislation on the subject without the royal assent, necessarily proved unavailing. The mother country was not to be turned aside from her purpose. If the shrieks of afflicted Africa were unable to move her, if she was willing to glut her "omnivorous avarice," as Mr. Walsh has justly termed it, on the tears and blood of the slave, it was not to be expected that the prayers and remonstrances of her feeble colonies-always the victim of her selfish and merciless policy-could shake or soften her stern and unscrupulous pursuit of gold.

That the policy of England on this subject, and her cold and sneering disregard of the interests and anxiety of the colonies, did much to accelerate their subsequent alienation-we have every reason to believe. Mr. Burke, in his speech on the conciliation with America, referred to her "refusal to

deal any more in the inhuman traffic of the negro slaves, as one of the causes of her quarrel with Great Britain." The first clause of the constitution of the state of Virginia, framed immediately after the commencement of the revolution, mentions "the inhuman use of the royal negative" to prevent the discouragement of the slave-trade, as one of the grievances which induced a recourse to the desperate remedy of revolution. The course of Great Britain on this subject is detailed, with great force and justice, in Mr. Jefferson's original draught of the Declaration of American Independence.

"He (King George) has waged civil war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people who never offended him: captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain: determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce; and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes, committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

This, it must be reluctantly admitted, is a correct portraiture of the policy of Great Britain towards this country, in relation to the subject of slavery. While it was her interest to darken our shores with

African slaves, the inhumanity of the commerce was disregarded; the prayers of the colonies were repulsed; and her government and people united to entail upon us for ever a servile population. No sooner, however, is the commerce checked by the oppressed colonies, than, in a sudden burst of piety, she is agonized at the existence of slavery; shocked at our turpitude in holding in bondage those whom she has forced upon us in such numbers, that to free them would involve both them and us in common ruin; and, by a policy the most insidious, she endeavours, of course from motives of the purest philanthropy, to excite the slaves to insurrection and murder! Such was her policy during the revolution, such was her policy in the late war-such is her policy now.

CHAPTER VI.

English Slave Trade-Extent-Cruelty-Motives of Abolition-Violation of the Law Abolishing the Trade.

We

Of the various nations who have stained their escutcheon with the blood of Africa, who have torn her children from their homes, and sold them into slavery-England is the most profoundly guilty. "The truth is," said Mr. Pitt, in the English parliament, "there is no nation in Europe which has plunged so deeply into this guilt as Britain. stopped the natural progress of civilization in Africa. We cut her off from the opportunity of improvement. We kept her down in a state of darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every national barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and perfidy against his neighbour. Thus has the perversion of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the globe." The humiliating confession was true. In the extent and atrocity of her human traffic, England had no rival.

England may be considered as having been the slave merchant of the world. She engrossed twothirds of the trade. She trafficked in flesh and blood with every country, and became the unfeeling factor of the slave dealers in all sections of the world. England furnished the French colonies with ne