REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 73 



search thus prevented the two great English- 

 speaking peoples from uniting for the effective 

 suppression of a business that was admitted by 

 both to be a scandal to civilization. Nor was 

 the situation improved when Parliament enacted 

 the laws that practically put an end to impress 

 ment, of which the right of search was an inci 

 dent. Nothing in this legislation formally abol 

 ished the old system of recruiting, and the 

 Foreign Office remained as tenacious of the claim 

 to take British sailors from foreign ships as Par 

 liament was of the undoubted right to take 

 them by force wherever the royal jurisdiction 

 extended. Whatever the era of reform effected 

 in respect to the practice, the time had not yet 

 come when the theory of personal liberty for 

 Britons would extend to that class on whose 

 service the safety of the empire was believed to 

 be in a special way dependent. 



Conditions in the United States also contrib 

 uted to prevent the harmony of the gov 

 ernments in respect to the slave-trade. The 

 slaveholding interest, concentrated in the cot 

 ton-growing States, became a powerful factor 

 in politics during the twenties and thirties. 

 Though there was no important sentiment in 

 favor of the African slave-trade, there was al- 



