276 FATE OF SLAVERY IN THE 



to some of these countries, (to Spain ^400,000,) with- 

 the view of securing this end. Continued agitation 

 finally secured the purchase of freedom to the West 

 India slaves, (in 1833,) at an expense of twenty millions 

 sterling ; and subsequently the abolition, among the 

 millions of India, of forms of slavery which were already 

 ancient in the days of Alexander the Great. 



The progress of knowledge among the people of Great 

 Britain has been gradually tending to the repression of 

 slavery, and to the making of such amends as a nation 

 can, for a long course of evil inflicted by a part of the 

 community on the coloured race. One wrong and incon 

 sistent step we certainly took, in allowing the newer free- 

 trade policy to interfere with our older slavery-repres 

 sion measures, so as to admit slave sugar (in 1846) to 

 compete with that produced by free labour. But we 

 may still retrieve this step, and bring back hope again 

 to our West India colonies, by insisting upon the speedy 

 and literal fulfilment of our slave-treaties with Spain and 

 the Brazils. 



But what has been the fate of the slavery question in 

 the United States since the Revolution ? The general 

 sentiment on the subject, at the commencement of the 

 struggle in 1773, was at least as advanced in the colonies 

 as at home. But under republican institutions it grew 

 no faster than with us, since it was not till 1807 that the 

 foreign slave-trade was forbidden, while the internal 

 trade still continued. And though, since the year 1772, 

 any man not accused of crime could claim his freedom 

 the moment he touched the British shore, and though 

 the same liberty-giving power of mere territorial surface 

 has been gradually spreading till from the snowy 

 Himalaya to the treeless Zetland, not a slave can exist 

 beneath the shadow of the British flag still there does not 

 yet exist a spot beneath the wide dominion of the &quot; stars 

 and stripes,&quot; where the hunted slave can rest his wearied 



