trade was a regular branch of commerce among the ancients; and a great object of Athenian traffic with the Greek settlements on the Euxine, was procuring slaves from the barbarians for the Greek market. (a) In modern times, treaties have been framed, and national monopolies sought, to facilitate and extend commerce in this species of property. (b) It has been interwoven 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 the 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 them to be men, we should soon come to believe that we ourselves were not Christians. Why has

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(a) Mitford's Hist. vol. iv. p. 236. Cattle and slaves constituted the principal riches of the early ages of Greece. The Byzantines, says Polybius, (General History, b. 4, c. 5,) supplied, from the Pontus, the Greeks with honey, wax, salted meats, leather, and great numbers of very serviceable slaves. It is mentioned in Scripture, that the Tyrians traded with the Caucasian provinces for slaves: " Javan, Tubal and Meshech, traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market; " Ezek. xxvii. 13; and that they stole the children of the Jews, and sold them as slaves to the Greeks. Joel, iii. 6. So the Carthaginians exchanged black slaves from the interior of Africa, in their commerce and barter with the cities of Italy and Greece. The great extent of the slave-trade, which was carried on by the polished nations of antiquity settled on the coasts of the Mediterranean, with Central Africa, by means of caravans, appears from Heeren, in his Historical Researches, vol. i. on the land trade of the Carthaginians.

(b) By the Assiento Treaty of March 26th, 1713, between Great Britain and Spain, the latter power granted to the English South Sea Company, for thirty years, the right of supplying the Spanish colonies in America with negro slaves, at the rate of 4,800 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's Collection of Treaties, London, 1775, vol. i. 375, vol. ii. 179.

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 modern 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 March 22d, 1794, and May 10th, 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, 1808; and, on the 20th April, 1818, the pen- * 194 alties and punishments were increased, and the prohibition

(a) L'Esprit des Loix, liv. 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, vol. i. p. 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's History, vol. i. App. note 16. Jones's Defence of the Revolutionary History of North Carolina, p. 145.

1 A ship which is employed in the service of slavers, is engaged in the transportation of slaves, within the meaning of the act of 1800, though no slaves are taken on board. The Porpoise, 2 Curtis, C. C. 307; see, too, United States v. Schooner Catharine, 2 Paine, C. C. 721.

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 3d, 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 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.'

(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.

1 As to what acts and participation will warrant a conviction under this act, see the case

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 foreigners on board of American vessels. Declaring the crime piracy does not make it so, within the pur- 195 view of the law 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 slave-trade 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 slavetrade 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)

The first British statute that declared the slave-trade unlawful was in March, 1807. (b) This was a great triumph of Brit

(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 slave-holding states. Some of them permit a traffic in slaves as between 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

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

of The United States v. Libby, 1 Wood. & Minot's R. 221, where the subject is discussed by Mr. Justice Woodbury. See also United States v. Battiste, 2 Sumner, C. C. 240.

1 By an act to suppress the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, passed Sept. 20, 1850, it is made unlawful to bring any slave within the District for the purpose of being sold; and slaves so brought in become free.

ish 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. (a) 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 *196 the powers of Christendom * to decree the abolition of the

trade, and that it 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 slavetrade 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 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

(a) 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 respecting 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.