will become, as I have observed, a free person, and will be punished for any breach or break of the laws of this colony; while if you conduct yourself with propriety, soberness, honesty, and industry, you will meet with encouragement from the whole community. Do you therefore wish to remain and be a free person, or continue your voyage to the vessel's destined port and remain a slave?"
All of the slaves save a woman with five children declared they would remain. This one family went on to their destination as slaves.
The expressive phrase of "twisting the lion's tail" had not been invented in those days, but twisting the lion's tail was much more common then than even in those recent years before our war with Spain had shown us what a real and natural bond of sympathy existed between the two English-speaking nations. And the manner in which members of Congress turned and twisted the lion's tail in connection with these slave-ship deliveries was memorable.
As to the British, their attitude was admirably portrayed by the picture of the true griffin in Ruskin's "Modern Painters." They were at once reposeful and alert, and withal ready to fulfil national obligations.
International law, which is presumably founded on natural rights, demanded that all the property on those vessels should be held sacred for the owners, but straightway there arose a question as to the property right of masters in their slaves. Under the laws of the United States that right was granted [See the fugitive slave laws]. Under the laws of Great Britain that right had been everywhere abolished within her jurisdiction on August 1, 1834.
