CHAPTER II

=Origin of Slavery in the United States=

The first permanent settlement within the limits of the United States--as they became afterwards--to be established, was that of Florida, which was begun by the Spaniards in the year 1564. Slavery was introduced into Florida, as it was into all the Spanish colonies, and that colony remained under the control of Spain until the year 1763, when it was ceded to Great Britain, at the close of the war which resulted in the cession of Canada, and the territory east of the Mississippi by France to the same power, but in 1783, after the recognition of the independence of the United States, Florida along with that part of Louisiana east of the Mississippi and south of the 31st degree of latitude, which had been ceded by France, was re-ceded to Spain, and remained a Spanish colony until the year 1821, when it was ceded to the United States; slavery continuing to exist there under all these changes.

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The next permanent settlement in point of time, was that of Virginia by the English in the year 1607. In the year 1620, twenty negro slaves were brought to Jamestown in Virginia by a Dutch man-of-war and sold to the colonists, but the number of slaves in that colony remained so small for a long time, that there was no legislative enactment recognizing the existence of slavery for more than forty years after the first introduction of it.

The reduction of Indians to slavery was prohibited in Virginia from the beginning, and in the year 1658 by the revised laws adopted in that colony, the Indians were protected in the possession of their lands, and in order to secure the Indian children, placed with the colonists for education, from being sold as slaves, the transfer of their service was forbidden. In the revised code adopted in 1662, very humane provisions were contained for the protection of the Indians, in the enjoyment of their lands, and it was enacted that no Indians entertained as servants should be sold into slavery for a longer period than English indented servants of like age. In the same year, the first act was passed by the colonial legislature recognizing the existence of slavery, and it was to the effect that children should be held as bond or free "according to the condition of the mothers."

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This law recognized the generally received principle that slavery was valid according to the laws of nations, but did not itself enact slavery. That principle prevailed universally, all over the world at that time, and had prevailed since the foundation, being recognized in the bible.

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In the year 1667, a law was passed providing that negro slaves converted and baptized should not thereby become free. The motive for the adoption of this law, was to secure to slaves religious instruction, as an idea prevailed among some that it was not lawful to hold a Christian in slavery, and it was apprehended that masters might be indisposed, under such impressions, to encourage their slaves to become converted. In the same year it was provided by law that "all servants, not being Christians, imported by shipping shall be slaves for life."

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In 1671, there were in Virginia, according to a statement furnished by Governor Berkeley, 40,000 inhabitants, including in that number 2,000 "black slaves" and 6,000 Christian servants. The latter consisted of English servants brought into the colony as indented servants for a term of years, and sold--as was the practice in all of the colonies at that day--to pay the expenses of their passage.

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During what was known as Bacon's rebellion in 1676, the Virginia Assembly, acting under the coercion of Bacon's followers, passed an act for the prosecution of a war against the Indians, and one of its provisions was that all Indians taken prisoners in war should be held and accounted slaves for life. This was the first and only provision of the laws of that colony authorizing the reduction of Indians to slavery, though Indian slaves, not being Christians, brought in by shipping might be held, under the law of 1667; but there were no slaves made under this forced enactment of Bacon's, as the war was not prosecuted, the rebellion having come to an end, by the death of its leader, the same year.

A law was enacted in the year 1682, by which negroes, Moors, mulattoes or Indians, brought into the colony as servants, by sea or land, were recognized as slaves "whether converted to Christianity or not, provided they were not of Christian parentage or country, or Turks or Moors in amity with his majesty."

In the year 1692, an act was passed providing for "a free and open trade for all persons, at all times and at all places with all Indians whatsoever," under which the Virginia courts decided that no Indian could be reduced to slavery, or brought into Virginia as a slave, after the passage of the act.

In the revised Code of Virginia, adopted in the year 1705, is contained the final enactment upon the subject of slavery during the colonial state, except some acts imposing duties on imported slaves, and by that enactment it was provided that "all servants imported or brought into this country by sea or land, who were not Christians in their native country (except Turks and Moors in amity with his majesty, and others who can make due proof of their being free in England or any other Christian country before they were shipped in order to transportation thither) shall be accounted and be slaves, notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity afterwards"; and it was further provided--as in the first act on the subject--for "all children to be bond or free according to the condition of their mothers."

The Virginia Assembly had passed, from time to time, acts imposing a duty of twenty shillings a head on all imported slaves, and this being renewed in 1723, was repealed by royal proclamation, but the Board of Trade in England intimated that they had no objection to a duty on imported negroes, provided it was exacted from the colonial purchaser, and not from the English seller; and in 1734 an act was passed imposing a duty of five per cent. to be paid by the purchaser, which was subsequently increased and reached as high as twenty per cent.

In the year 1772, the House of Burgesses of Virginia adopted an address to George III, declaring the importation of negroes from Africa to be an inhuman trade and asking that all restraints be removed from the passage of acts to check "that pernicious commerce," which request was not granted.

After the commencement of the difficulties which led to the Revolution, the Virginia convention, which assembled the 1st of August, 1774, and took upon itself the actual management of the affairs of the colony, adopted among its first acts, a resolution to import "no more slaves, nor British goods, nor tea." Practically this resolution put an end forever to the African slave trade so far as Virginia was concerned, and its abolition was subsequently confirmed during the war of the Revolution by a more formal act passed by the legislature in the year 1778, prohibiting the importation of slaves from any quarter, whether by sea or land, and providing that all brought into the State in violation of the law should be free. Slaves brought in by citizens of other of the United States coming into Virginia as actual residents, and those inherited by citizens of Virginia in other States of the Union and brought in by them being exempted from the operation of the act. In addition to the grant of freedom to the slaves themselves heavy penalties were imposed on both the buyer and seller who violated the act. In adopting this prohibition, Virginia was ahead of all the States in the Union except the little State of Delaware, and its action preceded the abolition of the slave trade, by England, thirty years.

The citizens of Virginia had never engaged in the slave trade as importers, and were merely the purchasers from others--its legislature being prohibited from interfering with the trade.

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About the year 1610, trading posts were established by the Dutch within the present limits of New York, and the name of New Netherland was given to the territory claimed, including that of New York, New Jersey, or the Jersey, and some other. Actual colonization began within the present limits of New York, under the authority of the Dutch government in the year 1629, the traders located in those limits having been previously engaged only in trade with the Indians. Slavery was introduced with the first settlers and was recognized and protected by law. In the year 1664, New Netherland was conquered from its Dutch rulers, by an English expedition under the authority of the Duke of York, subsequently James II, to whom a royal grant of the territory had been made. The province of New York was then created out of New Netherland, though it came again, temporarily, under the Dutch for portions of the years 1673 and 1674.

Slavery was continued as it before existed until after the Revolution. Vessels were fitted out in the port of New York (first called New Amsterdam), for the slave trade at an early period, and the merchants of that city engaged in it without scruple; some of them continued to be so engaged until the traffic was prohibited by Congressional enactment.

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The settlement next in point of time was that of Plymouth, in the year 1620, within the present limits of the State of Massachusetts. Slavery of the Indians and also of negroes existed in this province from the beginning. The settlement at Plymouth by the passengers of the May Flower, though first in point of time, was not by any means, the leading one in Massachusetts, and the Province of Plymouth played comparatively an unimportant part in the history of Massachusetts. The main settlement in that colony was made in the year 1629, by John Winthrop and his followers, Puritans emigrating directly from England, professedly for the purpose of securing to themselves, and their posterity, religious freedom. It was this settlement which gave tone and character to Massachusetts, as well as to all the other New England provinces, which were chiefly offshoots from Massachusetts.

Though professing to be seeking a home in this wilderness for the purpose of enjoying and establishing religious liberty, the settlers of Massachusetts established as proscriptive and despotic a theocracy as the world has ever seen. A celebrated humorist has aptly said that their idea of religious liberty consisted in enjoying their own opinions to the fullest extent and preventing any body else from enjoying theirs.

Under their charter a government was established by the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, which was entirely theocratic in form and substance. To be a freeman, that is a citizen and voter, it was necessary to be a member of the established church, which was the Congregational, and was supported at the public expense. The members of that church claimed to be God's elect, and they showed no mercy to any other sect and allowed of no dissent whatever; all others were heretics or heathens.

From the beginning, the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, as well as those at Plymouth, regarded the "heathen around them" and all their possessions as fit spoil for the "Saints." Accordingly they began at a very early period to help themselves. In the year 1637, in a war begun against the Piquods, that tribe of Indians was exterminated by slaughter and capture. Of several hundred prisoners taken, the adult males, constituting but a small portion of the captives, were sent to the West Indies and sold into slavery, while the women and children were distributed among the colonists as slaves also; this was done by the constituted authorities.

These colonists commenced the building of ships in the year 1634, and engaged in commerce, the African slave trade, being, from the beginning, a part of that commerce. By the year 1640, six large vessels had been built, and fitted out by the Boston merchants, which were sent on voyages to Spain, Madeira and the Canaries with cargoes of fish and staves, and brought back, among other things, cargoes of negroes from the coast of Africa for sale at Barbadoes and the other British West India Islands.

It was not a great while before the religious persecution in Massachusetts drove off a number of dissenters from the established faith, among them being the celebrated Roger Williams, the founder of the Baptists in America. These "heretics," as they were called, took refuge within the present limits of Rhode Island, where they established, at different points, separate governments for themselves, all of which were subsequently merged in that of Rhode Island. Emigrants from Massachusetts also established themselves at different points in the present limits of Connecticut and formed two separate governments, one called New Haven and the other Connecticut, which were afterwards united under that of Connecticut. Massachusetts set up a claim of jurisdiction over all of these settlements, but finally had to abandon it.

In the year 1641, the general court of Massachusetts, in which the legislative power was vested, adopted a code of fundamental laws called "Fundamentals" or "Body of Liberties," which were compiled from two separate drafts reported by those "Godly ministers," "the great Cotton" as he was called, and Nathaniel Ward, who had been appointed commissioners for that purpose. One of the "Liberties" provided that "There shall never be any bond-slavery, villanage nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold unto us, and these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God, established in Israel, requires. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority." This surely was a one-sided idea of religious liberty; the "elect" gave themselves abundant liberty to do as they pleased in the matter. This "Fundamental" was twenty years in advance of any legislative enactment in Virginia recognizing the existence of slavery.

A confederacy was formed, in the year 1643, between the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, called the "United Colonies of New England" into which the "heretics" of Rhode Island were not permitted to enter. Slavery existed by law everywhere now in New England, including Rhode Island, and one of the stipulations of the compact, by which the United Colonies were bound, was that fugitive servants or slaves should be delivered up when fleeing from one province to another. The stipulation was almost in the identical terms of that long afterwards incorporated into the United States Constitution upon the same subject.

The harsh treatment pursued towards dissenters, including the most delicate females, who were sometimes stripped naked and whipped through the streets, and the trials and execution of persons as witches, furnish revolting details of the conduct of the "elect," but it is not intended to refer more particularly to that here. One fact, however, in regard to the history of Virginia and Massachusetts may be properly mentioned--as descendants of the latter's colonists have arraigned at the bar of public opinion, the people of Virginia, as well as the whole South upon the subject of slavery--and that fact is very suggestive.

In the year 1644, the Indians in Virginia, under the instigation of Opechancanough, successor of Powhatan, undertook to exterminate the colonists in that province, when five hundred persons, who were engaged in celebrating a victory of the king over the Parliamentary army in the war then raging, were massacred at the first surprise. A ship was sent to Boston to procure powder for the defence of the colony, but the general court declined to furnish it. This refusal was owing to the fact that the people of Virginia sympathized with the king in the pending struggle, and to the further fact that three ministers sent out from New England at the instance of some of the "elect," who had found their way into Virginia, were sent out of the province by Governor Berkeley for violating the law--Governor Winthrop declaring that the massacre of the Virginians was a punishment "for their reviling the Gospel and those faithful ministers."

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A law was adopted in Connecticut, 1650, for selling debtors for debt, which remained in force more than a century and a half; and at the same time a law was adopted, upon the recommendation of the commissioners for the United Colonies of New England, providing that Indians refusing or neglecting satisfaction for injuries might be seized and delivered to the party injured "either to serve, or to be shipped out and exchanged for negroes, as the case will justly bear." About this time, the "heretics" at Warwick, one of the settlements in Rhode Island, complained that the authorities of Massachusetts had instigated the Indians to commit depredations upon them, and Easton, subsequently governor of Rhode Island, was reported to have said of the people of Massachusetts, that "the elect had the Holy Ghost and the devil indwelling." Upon hearing of the execution of two persons for witchcraft, the people of Warwick exclaimed "There are no witches on earth, nor devils, but the ministers of New England and such as they."

In 1676, a large number of captives, taken in the war against King Philip, in which all of New England was united, were made slaves of, many of them were sent from Boston to Bermuda and sold, including the infant son of King Philip, who, some of the most prominent ministers insisted, should be slain for his father's sins, though the more remunerative expedient of selling him was adopted. The captives who fell into the hands of the Rhode Islanders were distributed as slaves, and Roger Williams, the expelled "heretic" from Massachusetts, received a boy for his share. A large body of Indians assembled at Dover, at the conclusion of the war, to make peace, were treacherously captured and some two hundred of them were sent to Boston, where some were hung and the rest shipped off to be sold as slaves.

In the reign of James II, the charter of Massachusetts was vacated by legal proceedings, and in the year 1691, a new charter was issued providing for the appointment of the governor by the crown and for toleration to all religious sects. This gave great dissatisfaction to the ruling church; and the theocratic power was in a great measure destroyed, but the controlling influence of the old religious party still prevailed in the general court, though restrained by the royal governor. By this charter the province of Plymouth was incorporated with that of Massachusetts, as was the district of Maine, but New Hampshire, previously under the government of Massachusetts, was soon created into a separate province.

In 1701, the town of Boston instructed its representatives to propose "putting a period to negroes being slaves," but no action was taken, and these scruples were very short lived, the enslaving of Indians and the prosecution of the slave trade being still continued. The manufacture of New England rum, which was in progress, furnished a very easy means of prosecuting the trade, as that article was freely exchanged on the coast of Africa with the natives for slaves. One part of the inhabitants being imbruited by the detestable liquor, while the other was carried off into bondage. The traders of New England, composed of all classes, including church dignitaries, participated largely in the profits resulting from the impulse given to the slave trade in 1698, and it was sustained by public sentiment in those colonies as well as in the mother country.

In 1704, in the intercolonial war with Canada, Massachusetts offered a reward of $66 per head for Indian prisoners under ten years of age and double as much for older prisoners or for scalps.

In 1712, Massachusetts passed an act prohibiting the further importation of Indian slaves on pain of the forfeiture of the slaves, but this prohibition did not arise from feelings of humanity for the Indians; the reasons given for it were, that the Indians were "of a surly and revengeful spirit, rude and insolent in their behavior, and very ungovernable" and because "this province being differently circumstanced from the plantations in the islands, and having great numbers of the Indian natives of the country within and about them and at this time under the sorrowful effects of their rebellion and hostilities."

The merchants of England having complained that the New Englanders were infringing upon their rights by engaging in the slave trade, which the New England traders now mainly carried on with rum, for the manufacture of which molasses was imported from elsewhere than the British West India Islands, an act of Parliament was passed in 1733, imposing a duty on molasses, sugar and rum imported from the French and Dutch West Indies. This act was called the "Molasses Act," and was the first of the series of Acts bringing about the discontent which led to the Revolution. The traders of New England managed to elude this act as they had done the restrictions put upon the slave trade for the benefit of the English merchants. The manufacture of rum and the trade from all the ports of New England still continued with great activity up to the commencement of the Revolution, and served to build up the commerce of that section, as the same trade had built up the commerce of the mother country.

Some slaves were imported into all the New England colonies, but as there was not very profitable employment for them there, and it was vastly more remunerative to sell than to work them, the former was preferred to the latter mode of dealing with the subject and in it they found a rich reward. The markets for the slaves were found in the West Indies and in the Southern colonies, where the soil, climate and productions were much more suitable for African slave labor, than in the cold regions of the north. There were, however, in the year 1754, 2,448 negro slaves in Massachusetts over 16 years of age, 1,000 of them being in Boston, and the whole number exceeded 4,000, while in Connecticut and Rhode Island the proportion of slaves to the white population was greater than in Massachusetts.

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Maryland was settled under the proprietorship of Lord Baltimore in the year 1634, and slavery was introduced into that colony also, the laws recognizing and regulating it being very similar to those of Virginia. In 1649, an act was passed by which the kidnapping of Indians to make them slaves, was made felony, and in 1663, the first act recognizing slavery was passed, being similar in its features to that of Virginia. The people of Maryland did not engage in the slave trade and were merely purchasers.

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The first settlement in the Carolinas was within the limits of what became South Carolina, and was made in the latter half of the 16th century by French Huguenots, but that settlement proved a failure. An attempt to make a settlement in North Carolina under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh also proved abortive. The first permanent settlement in North Carolina was by Virginia emigrants to the northern part of it, some years previous to the charter, which was granted to some English noblemen and others for both of the Carolinas. In 1665, North Carolina was taken possession of under this charter, and a government was established therefor. In 1670, South Carolina was permanently settled. Though embraced in the same charter, North and South Carolina now became separate provinces with distinct governments. Slavery was introduced into both provinces and was recognized by law; the number of slaves continuing to increase as the population increased and the capacities of the soil became known, which proved to be very suitable for slave labor. There was nothing special in the history of slavery in these provinces during the colonial state. The people did not engage in the slave trade, but were merely purchasers from English and New England traders; nor did they make slaves of the Indians by whom they were surrounded.

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The first settlers within the limits of New Jersey were Swedes, who came over prior to 1630. New Jersey, or East and West Jersey as it was called then, was settled in 1665 by English emigrants, and two governments were organized therefor under grants from the Duke of York, which were subsequently consolidated into one. Slavery was introduced into that province as it had been in all of the others, but the number of slaves did not become as numerous as in the more Southern colonies, because the soil and climate were not as suitable for slave labor.

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Pennsylvania was settled in 1682 under the proprietorship of William Penn, and the government was organized by him, including within its jurisdiction Delaware also. Slavery was introduced into this colony, and slaves were held without scruple by the Quaker followers of Penn. In 1692, George Keith, a Scotch Quaker who had been the champion of the Quakers against their persecutors--the Reverend Cotton Mather of witch notoriety, and the other Massachusetts divines--attacked negro slavery as inconsistent with Quaker principles. For this he was "_disavowed_" by the yearly meeting of the Quakers of Pennsylvania, as a schismatic, and he instituted a meeting of his own called "Christian Quakers." For publishing a reply to a publication against him, he was fined by the Quaker magistrates of Philadelphia and he subsequently became disgusted with the whole sect, turned Episcopalian, went to England and took orders there, and was one of the first missionaries sent to the American colonies by the "Society for propagating the gospel in foreign parts."

In 1699, Penn proposed to provide by law for the marriage, religious instruction and kind treatment of slaves, but he met with no response from the Quaker legislature of Pennsylvania. The "spirit" had not then moved the Quakers to "bear their testimony" against slavery and consequently they did not "testify." In 1712, the legislature imposed a duty of £20 on all negroes and Indians brought into the province by land or water, a drawback to be allowed in case of re-exportation within twenty days, and slaves brought in and concealed were to be sold. This act did not owe its origin to abhorrence of slavery itself, but was passed in a fright at some alleged plots for insurrections, which were apprehended in consequence of one which had been discovered in New York. The act was disallowed by Queen Anne, and the same legislature replied to a petition in favor of emancipating the negroes, "That it was neither just nor expedient to set them at liberty." This was the only "testimony" borne by the Quakers of Pennsylvania against slavery prior to the war of the Revolution.

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Delaware was originally settled by Swedes at the same time the settlement was made in New Jersey, and it had been embraced under the same government with Pennsylvania at the time of Penn's settlement, but it was made a separate province, by his consent, in the year 1691. Delaware is entitled to the credit of being not only the first of the provinces but the first country in the world to adopt an express enactment prohibiting the introduction of slaves within its limits. This it did in the year 1771, but the act was vetoed by Governor Penn, the grandson of Wm. Penn, and the representative of the crown. The prohibition was incorporated into the first State Constitution adopted in the year 1776. Delaware was, however, a slave colony and remained a slave State.

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The first permanent settlement within the limits of the territory of Louisiana, which embraced a very large tract of country, was made under the auspices of D'Ibberville, a French Canadian, at Mobile, within the limits of the present State of Alabama in the year 1702. Bienville, governor of Louisiana, located New Orleans, the first permanent settlement within the limits of the State of Louisiana, in the year 1718. Slavery was introduced into the province of Louisiana under the direction of the French government, a contract being made for that purpose with Anthony Crozat, a French merchant, to whom the province and a monopoly of its trade were granted. Crozat resigned his patent in 1717, and a monopoly of the trade for twenty-five years was granted to "the company of the West," commonly called "The Mississippi Company," with which the famous Law was connected. By its contract, the company undertook to introduce 6,000 whites and half as many negro slaves into the province. Slavery thus became established in Louisiana under the express stipulation of the French government, and continued to exist under its authority. In 1763, by the treaty made between England, France and Spain, at the close of the war in which all three nations had been engaged, France ceded to England, Canada and all of the territory east of the Mississippi river, except the island of Orleans, and to Spain all of Louisiana which had not been ceded to England, while Spain ceded Florida to England. In 1783, England re-ceded Florida to Spain, and at the same time ceded to the same power that part of Louisiana north of the 31st degree of latitude which had been acquired from France. The parts of the original province of Louisiana thus re-united, remained a Spanish province until the year 1801, when it was re-ceded to France, and in 1803 it was ceded to the United States. Slavery had continued to exist in the province, and the different parts of it, and to be recognized as legal, during all of these changes.

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In 1733, Georgia was settled under the patronage of General Oglethorpe, of the British Army, and it was intended as a humanitarian scheme for furnishing refuge to impoverished meritorious persons, and persecuted Continental Protestants. The territory, together with the power to legislate for twenty-one years, was granted to trustees resident in England. The trustees at first prohibited the introduction of slaves, but under the humanitarian ideas with which the colony was begun, it languished and proved a miserable failure until the year 1749. The trustees were then induced to permit the introduction of slaves, at the instance, among others, of the celebrated preacher, Whitfield, and his follower, Habersham, who earnestly interceded for the permission--Habersham stating as a reason for the introduction of slavery that "Many of the poor slaves in America have already been made freemen of the Heavenly Jerusalem."

Slavery was thus introduced into Georgia, and the Colony began at once to prosper and advanced with rapid strides.

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The institution of slavery, it will thus be perceived, existed at the time of the Revolution, not only in all of the revolting colonies, acknowledged by law and sustained by public sentiment at home and in the mother country, but it existed in all of the territories, which afterwards became a part of the United States, and was sanctioned by the sentiment of all of the Christian world.

But before this review of the slave trade and of slavery in the British colonies in North America, is closed, it is proper that England should receive credit for one incident in her judicial history in regard to the subject. In the year 1763, the celebrated case of Somerset, a slave who had been carried to England by his master from one of the British West India Islands, came up before Lord Mansfield in Westminster Hall on a writ of _habeas corpus_, and that distinguished Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in delivering his opinion discharging the petition, said: "The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man who breathes it is free."

This declaration is the source of much pride to Englishmen and Lord Campbell in his "Lives of the Chief Justices" goes into ecstasies over it. It is regarded as the enunciation of the great principle that the common law of England establishes universal freedom, and that wherever it prevails it knocks the shackles from the slave and turns him loose, a free man. Yet it was most probable that Somerset himself, and it was certain that his ancestor, if not himself, had been carried from Africa, in a ship that had been fitted out under the protection of that very common law by men breathing that same pure air, and sold into slavery in a colony to which the same law under which he was released, had followed the colonists. Was ever so absurd a farce enacted as that which was enacted by the Chief Justice of England, when he announced in Westminster Hall before the assembled bar of London, that the air breathed by a nation of slave-traders was too pure for the slave himself. None but an Englishman would have failed to discover its absurdity. Where then, was that "genius of universal emancipation" referred to at a later period at the Irish Bar by Curran, in such eloquent language, that it did not waft these words on the wings of that pure air across the channel to the Emerald Isle, to the coasts of Africa, to the plantations of America and the West Indies, or to the banks of the Ganges? Could not a breath of that pure air be afforded at least for the ships of the British Navy, then so sedulously guarding English slave ships through the horrors of the "Middle Passage" from French cruisers? No! that pure air was "fixed air" which could not extend beyond the shores of England, and the wings of the "genius of universal emancipation" were so clipped that it was a more clumsy domestic bird than the barnyard fowl.

At the same time that these celebrated words were uttered in Westminster Hall, the ministers of State, and king, lords and commons in Parliament, were cherishing with a fostering hand that very trade which had consigned Somerset to slavery, and was then consigning thousands upon thousands of his native countrymen to the same fate while the boasted navy of the "Mistress of the Seas" was escorting the human cargoes in safety and triumph to their destination, and in the colonies writs and executions were being issued, according to forms framed in Westminster Hall, to enforce from the sale of the bodies of human beings, the collection of debts, due to men who breathed the "pure air of England," and prided themselves on the liberties of the common law.

This decision of Lord Mansfield was one of those acts of judicial legislation for which he was so famous, and it was not the law. Quite as able judges as himself had previously decided the validity and legality of slavery even in England, and Lord Stowell, as able a judge and purer man than he was, subsequently ruled very differently from the decision in the Somerset case. England had no use for slaves at home, as her toiling millions supplied every demand for labor or service. Had it been to her interest to have had African slaves within her own limits, her pure air would have accommodated itself to their constitution. She never sacrificed her material interests to her philanthropy. Notwithstanding the decision of Lord Mansfield, it was twenty-five years before the prime minister of England (the younger Pitt) ventured to go even so far, as to bring in a bill to mitigate the horrors "of the Middle Passage," by limiting the number of slaves to be taken on board a ship--it was forty-five years before another prime minister ventured to advocate the abolition of the slave trade, and seventy-one years before slavery was abolished in the limited slave colonies left to England after the American Revolution, and that was not done until this small interest was so far overshadowed by other interests as to make it of no importance to her.