been the state of the public mind, in the past, on the question before us.
But the inquiry is made, how far the laws against the slave trade, passed by Great Britain, the United States, and other nations,[1] were successful in suppressing the traffic.
As we have already intimated, the answer to this question opens a melancholy chapter in the history of human nature. But before entering upon it, we can not but pay a passing tribute to the noble philanthropy of Great Britain, and to the efforts of our ancestors to sweep from the earth the curse of the traffic in human beings.
Whatever may have been the course of England in regard to her other great national interests, we must allow, that in her hostility to slavery and the slave trade, she has been firm, consistent, and self-sacrificing; and deserves the hearty applause of the civilized world. She has grappled with this evil boldly, manfully, as under a solemn consciousness of her obligations to society, and accountability to God. Mistress of the seas, she has struck this infa-
- ↑ In 1815, Louis XVIII, by the treaty of Paris, consented to the immediate abolition of the slave trade. Denmark, as early as 1804, declared the trade unlawful. Sweden did the same in 1813, and in 1831 conferred upon the free negroes in the island of St Bartholomew, all the privileges that the whites enjoyed, Portugal, having received the promise of £300,000 from England, provided for the abolition of the slave trade in 1823. Spain came into the measure in 1820, her citizens having been paid £400,000 by England. On the 24th of December 1814, the United States engaged, according to the treaty of Ghent, t( do all in their power to suppress the traffic. We shall soon see how the promise was fulfilled.
