ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE. 149 hibited by Congress prior to the year 1808; but a tax, not exceeding ten dollars a head, may be imposed on such importation. In the Northern and Middle States, the slaves are few: Massachusetts has, by statute, abolished slavery altogether within her jurisdiction; New-York, NewJersey, and Pennsylvania, have passed acts for its gradual abolition within their territories; Ohio has prohibited, by her constitution, its existence within her precincts; Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, keep up a large body of slaves within their respective sovereignties, amounting to about onethird of their whole population, and making about onesixth of the population of all the United States; namely, Maryland, 150,000; Virginia, 460,000; North Carolina, 254,000; South Carolina, 246,000; Georgia, 173,000; Kentucky, 238,000; Tennessee, 102,000; Louisiana, 57,000; Mississippi, 31,000 :Making a total of 1,711,000, If a Heathen poet could exclaim σε Ημισυ γας T' αρετης αποαινεται ευρύοπα Ζευς Ανερος ευτ ὰν μιν κατα δουλιον ημας έλησιν,” ཟ་ what ought a Christian philosopher to think? During the session of Congress, in the winter of 1816-7, a society was established at Washington, for the purpose of colonizing the free people of colour. The citizens of the Southern States have long experienced the evils resulting from the slave system. They are kept in continual alarm and fear of an insurrection of the slaves themselves; and the free blacks are so numerous and profligate, as to be a curse and pestilence to all our large cities. Nay, even in the Northern and Middle States, where they are better educated than in the South, their habits are so vitious, as to render them a burden on the poor-rates, and continual candidates for the state-prison. It is said, that some of the Southern planters begin to be convinced that their lands may be tilled to greater advantage by free white labourers than by negro slaves. If this conviction should spread, it may eventually lead to the abolition of slavery all over the United States. The intention, at present, on the part of the Colonization Company, is to settle as many free blacks as they can induce to go on the banks of the river Sherborough, some distance south of Sierra Leone, under the protection of England, and supply them with suitable agricultural implements, schoolmasters, and religious teachers. If this benevolent scheme should succeed, it may become a powerful means of christianizing and civilizing the immense continent of Africa, containing a hundred and fifty millions of Mahomedans and Pagans, steeped in ignorance, superstition, brutality, vice, and crime. Sir James Lucas Yeo's late letter to the British Admiralty throws much light on the slave trade as it now exists, and on the state of Africa. The nations of antiquity most celebrated for countėnancing the system of domestic slavery were the Jews, Greeks, Romans, and ancient Germans; but it has been of almost universal prevalence. Its beginning may be dated from the remotest periods in which there are any traces of the history of mankind. It commenced in the barbarous stages of human society; and was retained even among nations far advanced in civilization. By the ancient Germans it was continued in the countries which they over-ran, and was thus transmitted to the various kingdoms and states that arose in Europe out of the ruins of Western Rome. In process of time, however, this species of servitude gradually fell into decay in most parts of Europe; and, amongst the various causes which contributed to this essential alteration in the whole system of European society, none, probably, were more effectual than the uniform experience of the disadvantages of slavery itself; the difficulty of continuing it, amidst the growing civilization of commercial enterprise and industry, and a progressive persuasion that the op ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE. 151 pression and cruelty, necessarily incident to its existence, were incompatible with the religious doctrines and the pure morality of the Christian dispensation. Such was the expiring state of domestic slavery in Europe at the commencement of the sixteenth century, when the discovery of America, and of the western and eastern coasts of Africa, gave occasion to the introduction of a new species of slavery, which took its rise from the Portuguese, who, in order to supply the Spaniards with persons able to sustain the fatigue of cultivating their new possessions in America, particularly in the West-India islands, opened a trade between Africa and America, for the sale of negro slaves. This execrable commerce in the blood and sinews-the bones and marrow of the human species, was begun in the year 1508, when the first importation of negro slaves was made into Hispaniola, (now St. Domingo) from the Portuguese settlements on the western coasts of Africa. The employment of slaves in colonial labour was not long confined to the Spaniards, but was soon adopted by the other European nations, as they acquired possessions in America. In consequence of this general practice, negroes became a very considerable article of merchandise, in the commerce between Africa and America; and domestic slavery struck so deep a root, that the nineteenth century had actually commenced before the powers of Christendom interfered to restrain the progress of the slave trade. In the year 1803 the general government of the United States passed an act of Congress, prohibiting the importation of negro slaves into any part of the Union, after the commencement of the year 1808; in the year 1806, the British parliament abolished the importation of negro slaves into any part of the territories, home or colonial, of the empire. In 1815, Napoleon, on his return from Elba, abolished the slave trade in France; which abolition was confirmed by a subsequent decree of the present king. The Spaniards and Portuguese still continue this detestable traffic in human flesh; and the domestic slavery of the negroes is main tained in nearly all the American colonies of Europe, whether continental or insular, and in these United States, particularly those of the south and west. Slavery is an absolute evil, unqualified by any alloy of good: it implies an obligation of perpetual service, which nothing but the consent of the master can dissolve. It also generally gives the master an arbitrary power of administering every sort of bodily correction, however severe and inhuman, not immediately affecting the life or limb of the slave. Nay, sometimes even these are left exposed to the unrestrained will of a capricious master; or they are protected by paltry fines, and other slight punishments, too inconsiderable to prevent excessive cruelty; as was exemplified in that South Carolina master, who, in the year 1811, after lashing his negro slave most unmercifully, compelled another of his negroes (the intimate companion and friend of the person punished) to sever his head from his body with an axe, while he was held down on a block by his fellowslaves. For this atrocious and deliberate murder the master was punished by the imposition of a small fine, prescribed by statute. If he had stolen a horse in South Carolina, and had been found guilty of the offence, the laws of that state would have hanged him; but the deliberate murder of his fellow-creature was commuted for a few dollars. God made of one blood all the nations of the earth; but the Bible is not often the manual of a slave-holder. Slavery creates a legal incapacity of acquiring property, except for the master's benefit. It allows the master to transfer over, and alienate the person of the slave, in the same manner as he alienates and transfers any other species of goods and chattels. Servitude descends from parent to child, with all its severe appendages. This catalogue of misery is nothing more than a faithful description of every kind of personal slavery, whether existing under the municipal laws of ancient Greece and Rome, or the institution of villenage in feudal Europe, during the dark ages, or the present condition of negro bondmen; excepting that the remnant of villeyn lavery, which is altogether abolished in England and France, but still lingers, under various denominations, in some of the countries of continental Europe, particularly in Italy, Austria, and Russia, is considerably qualified in favour of the slave, by the humane provisions, and growing civilization of modern times. The bare view of the condition of slavery is sufficient to point out its pernicious consequences to those communities where it is suffered to exist. It corrupts the morals of the master, by freeing him from those legal restraints, with respect to his slave, so necessary for the control of the human passions, so beneficial in promoting the practice, and confirming the habit of virtue. It is also dangerous to the master; because his systematic oppression excites all the worst emotions of implacable resentment and hatred in the bosom of the slave; the extreme misery of whose condition continually prompts him to hazard every peril for the gratification of revenge; and his situ ation furnishes him with frequent opportunities of slaking his thirst of vengeance in the blood of his oppressor. Accordingly, the planters of our southern states, and of the West-Indies generally, are kept in perpetual alarm and horror, lest an insurrection of their slaves should consign them to the doom which the French masters experienced in the massacres of St. Domingo. To the slave himself, personal bondage communicates all the afflictions of life, without affording him the recompense of a single delight, physical, intellectual, or moral. It stifles all the growth of native excellence, by denying the ordinary means and motives of human improvement. It is likewise full of peril to the commonwealth, by the radical, the heart corruption of those citizens on whose exertions of virtuous patriotism its prosperity so essentially depends; and by admitting within its bosom a vast multitude of persons, who, being excluded from the common benefits of its political constitution, are necessarily interested in de vising the means of its destruction. In whatever light we view it, domestic slavery is a most pernicious institution; more immediately to the victim, who writhes in |