IMPOBTATIOS OP SLAVES. 
277 
ot' tlie northern parts of the United States, will extend by 
degrees southward and towards those western regions, wliere, 
by the effect of an imprudent and fatal law, slavery and its 
'uiquities have passed the chain of the Alleghanies and the 
banks of the Mississippi : let us hope that the foi’ce of 
public opinion, the progress of knowledge, the softening of 
Planners, the legislation of the new continental repnhlics, 
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 Fra/il. 
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 
■"ith equitable reciprocity. It is melancholy to learn, that 
owing to the culpable indifference of some of the govern- 
nients 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 tlie inutility, or, as the secret 
partisans of slavery assert, the practical impossibility of 
the beneficent measures adopted first by Benmark, the 
Ihiited States, and Great Britain, and successively by all 
the rest of Europe. AVhat passed from 180/ till the time 
when France recovered possession of her ancient colonies, 
and what passes in our days, in nations whose governments 
sincerelv desire the abolition of the slave-trade and^ its 
abomi.nable practices, proves the fallacy of this conclusion. 
Besides, is it reasonable to com])are n umericallv the importa 
tion of slaves in 1825 and in 1800? With the activity 
prevailing in every enterprise of industiw, wdiat 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 eontiiuied to 
supply new slaves, and had rende/’ed the care ot their pre- 
servation, and the inerea.se of the old ])opulation, super- 
fluous ? Can we believe that the English trade would have 
been limited, as in 1806, to the sale of 53,000 slaves; and 
