in the municipal institutions of all the European colonies in America, and with the approbation and sanction of the parent states. It forms to this day the foundation of large masses of property in the southern parts of these United States. But, for half a century past, the African slave-trade began to awaken a spirit of remorse and sympathy in the breasts of men, and a conviction that the traffic was repugnant to the principles of Christian duty, and the maxims of justice and humanity.

Montesquieu, who has disclosed so many admirable truths and so much profound reflection, in his Spirit of Laws, not only condemned all slavery as useless and unjust, but he animadverted upon the African slave-trade by the most pungent reproaches. It was impossible, he observed, that we could admit the negroes

to be human beings, because if we were once to admit *193 them to be men we should soon come to believe that we

ourselves were not Christians. Why has it not, says he, entered into the heads of European princes who make so many useless conventions, to make one general stipulation in favor of humanity? (a) We shall see presently that this suggestion was, in some degree, carried into practice by a moderm European

congress.

The Constitution of the United States laid the foundation of a series of provisions to put a final stop to the progress of this great moral pestilence, by admitting a power in Congress to prohibit the importation of slaves after the expiration of the year 1807. The Constitution evidently looked forward to the year 1808 as the commencement of an epoch in the history of human improvement. Prior to that time Congress did all on this subject that it was within their competence to do. (b) By the acts of 4800 annually. This Assiento contract was explained and confirmed by a convention between England and Spain, in May, 1716. A similar contract had been previously agreed on by Spain with the Royal Guinea Company settled in France. Jenkins, Collection of Treaties, London, 1775, i. 375; ii. 179.

(a) Esprit des Lois, l. 15, c. 5.

(b) The continental congress, which assembled at Philadelphia in 1774, gave the first general and authoritative condemnation of the slave-trade by the resolution not to import or purchase any slave imported after the first day of December, in that year, and wholly to discontinue the trade. Journals of Congress, i. 32. The convention of delegates of the people of Virginia, and the provincial congress of North Carolina, had anticipated this measure; for in August preceding they resolved to discontinue the importation of slaves. Pitkin, History, i. App. n. 16; Jones, Defence of the Revolutionary History of North Carolina, 145.

March 22, 1794, and May 10, 1800, the citizens of the United States, and residents within them, were prohibited from engaging in the transportation of slaves from the United States to any foreign place or country, or from one foreign country or place to another, for the purpose of traffic. These provisions prohibited our citizens from all concern in the slave-trade, with the exception of direct importation into the United States; and the most prompt and early steps were taken, within the limits of the Constitution, to interdict also that part of the traffic. By the act of 2d March, 1807, it was prohibited, under severe penalties, to import slaves into the United States after the 1st January,

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1808; and, on the 20th April, 1818, the penalties and 194 punishments were increased, and the prohibition extended not only to importation, but generally against any citizen of the United States being concerned in the slave-trade. It has been decided (a) that these statute prohibitions extend as well to carrying slaves on freight, as to cases where they were the property of American citizens, and to carrying them from one port to another of the same foreign empire, as well as from one foreign country to another. The object was to prevent, on the part of our citizens, all concern whatever in such a trade.

The act of March 3, 1819, went a step further, and authorized national armed vessels to be sent to the coast of Africa to stop the slave-trade so far as citizens or residents of the United States were engaged in that trade; and their vessels and effects were made liable to seizure and confiscation. The act of 15th May, 1820, (b) went still further, and declared, that if any citizen of the United States, being of the crew of any foreign vessel engaged in the slave-trade, or any person whatever, being of the crew of any vessel owned in whole or in part, or navigated for or on behalf of any citizen of the United States, should land on any foreign shore, and seize any negro or mulatto, not held to service or labor by the laws of either of the states or territories of the United States, with intent to make him a slave; or should decoy, or forcibly bring or receive, such person on board such.

(a) The Merino, 9 Wheaton, 391. The declarations of the master connected with his acts in furtherance of the voyage have been held to be evidence on an indictment against the owner of the ship, under the act of 20th April, 1818. United States v. Gooding, 12 Wheaton, 460.

(b) C. 113, sec. 4, 5.

vessel with like intent; or should forcibly confine or detain on board any negro or mulatto, not lawfully held to service, with intent to make him a slave; or should, on board any such vessel, offer to sell as a slave any negro or mulatto, not held to service as aforesaid; or should, on the high seas, or on any tide water, transfer or deliver over, to any other vessel, any such negro or mulatto, with intent to make him a slave, or should deliver on shore, from on board any such vessel, any negro or mulatto, with like intent, such citizen or person should be adjudged a pirate, and, on conviction, should suffer death.

It is to be observed that the statute operates only where our municipal jurisdiction might be applied, consistently with the general theory of public law, to the persons of our citizens, or to

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foreigners on board of American vessels. Declaring the *195 crime piracy does not make it so, within the purview of the laws of nations, if it were not so without the statute; and the legislature intended to legislate only where they had a right to legislate, over their own citizens and vessels. The question, notwithstanding these expressions in the statute, still remained to be discussed and settled, whether the African slavetrade could be adjudged piracy, or any other crime, within the contemplation of the code of international law. It has been attempted, by negotiation between this country and Great Britain, to agree that both nations should consider the slave-trade piratical; but the convention for that purpose between the two nations has not as yet been ratified, though the British nation have carried their statute denunciation of the trade as far as the law of the United States. (a)1

(a) All these acts of Congress apply exclusively to external commerce in slaves. The internal commerce within the United States in slaves is left to the control and discretion of the state governments; and the Northern States, which have abolished slavery, admit of no internal commerce in slaves within their respective states. It is not so in the slaveholding states. Some of them permit a traffic in slaves as be tween citizens of different states; but in Maryland, as early as 1796, it was declared by law to be unlawful to import or bring into the state, by land or water, any slave for sale or to reside within the state; and every slave brought in contrary to the statute was declared to be free. And in the Constitution of Mississippi of 1833, the introduction of slaves into the state as merchandise, or for sale, was prohibited, though actual settlers were allowed until 1845 to purchase slaves from any state in the Union, and bring them into that state for their individual use.

1 The abolition of slavery in the United States by the 13th amendment of the

Constitution makes it unnecessary to further investigate this subject.

The first British statute that declared the slave-trade unlawful was in March, 1807. (b) This was a great triumph of British justice. It was called for by the sense of the nation, which had become deeply convinced of the impolicy and injustice of the slave-trade; and by the subsequent statute of 51 Geo. III. the trade was declared to be contrary to the principles of justice, humanity, and sound policy; and lastly, by the act of Parliament of 31st March, 1824, the trade is declared to be piracy. (c) England is thus, equally with the United States, honestly and zealously engaged in promoting the universal abolition of the trade, and in holding out to the world her sense of its extreme criminality. Almost every maritime nation in Europe has deliberately and solemnly, either by legislative acts, or by treaties and other formal engagements, acknowledged the injustice and inhumanity of the trade, and pledged itself to promote its abolition. By the treaty of Paris of the 30th May, 1814, between Great Britain and France, Louis XVIII. agreed that the traffic was repugnant to the principles of natural justice, and he engaged to unite his efforts at the ensuing congress to induce all the powers of Christendom to decree the abolition of the trade, and that it * 196 should cease definitively, on the part of the French government, in the course of five years. The ministers of the eight principal European powers, who met in congress at Vienna on the 8th February, 1815, solemnly declared, in the face of Europe and the world, that the African slave-trade had been regarded, by just and enlightened men, in all ages, as repugnant to the principles of humanity and of universal morality, and that the public voice in all civilized countries demanded that it should be suppressed; and that the universal abolition of it was conformable to the spirit of the age and the generous principles of the allied powers. In March, 1815, the Emperor Napoleon decreed that the slave-trade should be abolished; but this effort of ephemeral power was afterwards held to be null and void, as being the act

(b) Stat. 47 Geo. III. Denmark abolished, in 1792, the foreign slave-trade, and the importation of slaves into her colonies, though the prohibitions were not to take effect until 1804. Wheaton, Inquiry into the Right of Search, 1842.

(c) Stat. 5 Geo. IV. c. 113. The statute of 3 and 4 Wm. IV. c. 73, for the extinction of slavery, has some new and important penal provisions respecting the dealing in slaves on the high seas, or any traffic in them; and the statute of 1 Vict. c. 91, as well as the preceding statute, repeated the declaration, that British subjects concerned in the slave-trade should be adjudged pirates, and punishable accordingly.

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of an usurper; and in July following, Louis XVIII. gave directions that this odious and wicked traffic should from that present time cease. The first French decree, however, that was made public, abolishing the trade, was of the date of the 8th January, 1817, and that was only a partial and modified decree. (a) In December, 1817, the Spanish government prohibited the purchase of slaves on any part of the coast of Africa, after the 31st of May, 1820; and this was in pursuance of the treaty between Great Britain and Spain of the 23d September, 1817, made for the abolition of the slave-trade immediately, north of the equator,

(a) By the convention between Great Britain and France, of the 30th November, 1841, the mutual right of search was allowed on board the vessels of each of the two nations, within certain specified waters, i. e. along the western coast of Africa from Cape Verd, or 15 degrees north latitude, to 10 degrees south of the equator, — all around the island of Madagascar to the extent of 20 leagues from the island, — to the same distance from the coasts of Brazil, and from the coasts of the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. The right of searching merchant vessels to be confined to ships of war, under special authority from each of the two governments, and never to be exercised upon the ships of war of either nation. The United States have refused to become a party to any convention authorizing the mutual right of search, and France afterwards refused to ratify the treaty of 1841, conceding the mutual right of search. Vide supra, 153. The efforts and the failure of the efforts to sanction the mutual right of search, in respect to the slave-trade, form an instructive item in modern diplomatic history. In 1818, the British government proposed to France the mutual right of search of merchant vessels on the high seas, with a view to the more effectual suppression of the slave-trade, and which had been conceded by Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. The proposition was at the same time made to the United States, and rejected by both powers. In November of that year, the British government proposed to the congress of the five great powers, at Aix-la-Chapelle, the following propositions: (1.) The mutual right of search of merchant vessels engaged in the slave-trade; (2.) The declaration that the slave-trade was piracy, under the law of nations. Both propositions were rejected on the part of France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The propositions were renewed at the congress at Verona, in 1822, but without success. Afterwards, in 1841, the mutual right of search was conceded by the northern European powers, parties to the Quintuple Treaty, as see supra, 153. Though the government of the United States has uniformly objected to the admission of the right of visitation and search, in time of peace, even in respect to the African slave-trade, yet they agreed, in furtherance of efficient measures for its suppression, by the treaty of Washington, in 1842, with Great Britain, that each party should "prepare, equip, and maintain in service, on the coast of Africa, a sufficient and adequate squadron, or naval force of vessels, of suitable numbers and descriptions, to carry, in all, not less than eighty guns, to enforce, separately and respectively, the laws, rights, and obligations of each of the two countries, for the suppression of the slave-trade, the said squadrons to be independent of each other; but the two governments stipulating, nevertheless, to give such orders to the officers commanding their respective forces as shall enable them most effectually to act in concert and co-operation, upon mutual consultation, as exigencies may arise.”