



IMPORTATION Of SLAVES. 277 



of the northern parts of the United States, will extend by 

 decrees southward and towards those western regions, where, 

 by the effect of an imprudent and fatal law, slavery and ita 

 'niquities have passed the chain of the Alleghanies and the 

 banks of the Mississippi : let us hope that the force of 

 public opinion, the progress of knowledge, the softening of 

 manners, the legislation of the new continental republics, 

 and the great and happy event of the recognition of Hayti 

 by the French government, will, either from motives of 

 prudence and fear, or from more noble and disinterested 

 sentiments, exercise a happy influence on the ameliora- 

 tion of the state of the blacks in the rest of the West 

 Indies, in the Carolinas, Guiana, and Brazil. 



In order to slacken gradually the bonds of slavery, the 

 laws against the slave-trade must be most strictly enforced, 

 and punishments inflicted for their infringement; mixed 

 tribunals must be formed, and the right of search exercised 

 witli equitable reciprocity. It is melancholy to learn, that 

 owing to the culpable indifference of some of the govern- 

 ments of Europe, the slave-trade (more cruel from having 

 become more secret) has dragged from Africa, within ten years, 

 almost the same number of negroes as before 1807; but we 

 must not from this fact infer the inutility, or, as the secret 

 partisans of slavery assert, the practical impossibility of 

 the beneficent measures adopted first by Denmark, the 

 United States, and Great Britain, and successively by all 

 the rest of Europe. What passed from 1807 till the time 

 when France recovered possession of her ancient colonies, 

 and what passes in our days in nations whose governments 

 sincerely desire the abolition of the slave-trade and it3 

 abominable practices, proves the fallacy of this conclusion. 

 Besides, is it reasonable to compare numerically the importa 

 tion of slaves in 1825 and in 1806? With the activity 

 prevailing in every enterprise of industry, what an increase 

 would the importation of negroes have taken in the English 

 West Indies, and the southern provinces of the United 

 States, if the slave-trade, entirely free, had continued to 

 supply new slaves, and had rendered the care of their pre- 

 servation, and the increase of the old population, super- 

 fluous? ('mi we believe that the English trade would have 

 been limited, as in 1806, to the sale of 53,000 slaves; and 



