of any negro, mulatto, or person of color, for a slave, or to be held to service or labor, who shall have been imported into the United States in violation of our laws; and, in general, the prohibitions in these cases extend to all persons, who shall abet or aid in these illegal designs. These offences are visited, as well with severe pecuniary and personal penalties, as with the forfeiture of the vessels and their equipments, which have been employed in the furtherance of these illegal projects; and, in general, a moiety of the pecuniary penalties and forfeitures is given to any person, who shall inform against the offenders, and prosecute them to conviction. The President of the United States is also authorized to employ our armed vessels and revenue cutters to cruise on the seas, for the purpose of arresting all vessels and persons, engaged in this traffic in violation of our laws; and bounties, as well as a moiety of the captured property, are given to the captors to stimulate them in the discharge of their duty.

Under such circumstances, it might well be supposed, that the slave-trade would in practice be extinguished; that virtuous men would by their abhorrence stay its polluted march, and wicked men would be overawed by its potent punishments. But, unfortunately, the case is far otherwise. We have but too many melancholy proofs, from unquestioned sources, that it is still carried on with all the implacable ferocity and insatiable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtile in its evasions; and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite, quickened, rather than suppressed, by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped up to their very mouths (I scarcely use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity. They throng to the coasts of Africa under the stained flags of Spain and Portugal, sometimes selling abroad "their cargoes of despair," and sometimes bringing them into some of our Southern ports, and there, under the forms of the law, defeating the purposes of the law itself, and legalizing their inhuman, but profitable, adventures. I wish I could say, that New England and New England men were free from this deep pollution. But there is reason to believe, that they, who drive a loathsome traffic, "and buy the muscles and the bones of men," are to be found here also. It is to be hoped the number is small; but our cheeks may well burn with shame, while a solitary case is permitted to go unpunished.

And, Gentlemen, how can we justify ourselves or apologize for an indifference to this subject? Our constitutions of government have declared, that all men are born free and equal, and have cer

tain unalienable rights, among which are the right of enjoying their lives, liberties, and property, and of seeking and obtaining their own safety and happiness. May not the miserable African aşk, "Am I not a man and a brother?" We boast of our noble struggle against the encroachments of tyranny; but do we forget, that it assumed the mildest form, in which authority ever assailed the rights of its subjects; and yet that there are men among us, who think it no wrong to condemn the shivering African to perpetual slavery?

We believe in the Christian Religion. It commands us to have good-will to all men; to love our neighbours, as ourselves; and to do unto all men, as we would they should do unto us. It declares our accountability to the Supreme God for all our actions, and holds out to us a state of future rewards and punishments, as the sanction, by which our conduct is to be regulated. And yet there are men, calling themselves Christians, who degrade the negro by ignorance to a level with the brutes, and deprive him of all the consolations of religion. He alone, of all the rational creation, they seem to think, is to be at once accountable for his actions, and yet his actions are not to be at his own disposal; but his mind, his body, and his feelings, are to be sold to perpetual bondage. To me it appears perfectly clear, that the slave-trade is equally repugnant to the dictates of reason and religion, and is an offence equally against the laws of God and man. Yet, strange to tell, one of the pretences, upon which the modern slavery of the Africans has been justified, is the "duty of converting the heathen."

I have called this an inhuman traffic; and, Gentlemen, with a view to enlist your sympathies, as well as your judgments, in its suppression, permit me to pass from these cold generalities, to some of those details, which are the ordinary attendants upon this trade. Here, indeed, there is no room for the play of imagination. The records of the British Parliament present us a body of evidence on this subject, taken with the most scrupulous care, while the subject of the abolition was before it; taken, too, from persons, who had been engaged in, or eyewitnesses of the trade; taken, too, year after year, in the presence of those, whose interests or passions were most strenuously engaged to oppose it. That it was not contradicted or disproved can be accounted for only upon the ground, that it was the truth, and nothing but the truth. I shall briefly state to you on this subject, will be drawn principally from those records; and I am free to confess, that, great as was my detestation of the trade, I had no conception, until I recently read

What, therefore,

an abstract of this evidence, of the vast extent of misery and cruelty occasioned by its ravages. And if, Gentlemen, this detail shall awaken your minds to the absolute necessity of constant vigilance in the enforcement of the laws on this subject, we may hope, that public opinion, following these laws, will very soon extirpate the trade among our citizens.

The number of slaves taken from Africa in 1768 amounted to one hundred and four thousand; and though the numbers somewhat fluctuated in different years afterwards, yet it is in the highest degree probable, that the average, until the abolition, was not much below one hundred thousand a year. England alone, in the year 1786, employed one hundred and thirty ships, and carried off about forty-two thousand slaves.

The unhappy slaves have been divided into seven classes. The most considerable, and that which contains at least half of the whole number transported, consists of kidnapped people. This mode of procuring them includes every species of treachery and knavery. Husbands are stolen from their wives, children from their parents, and bosom-friends from each other. So generally prevalent are these robberies, that it is a first principle of the natives not to go unarmed, while a slave-ship is on the coast, for fear of being stolen. -The second class of slaves, and that not inconsiderable, consists of those, whose villages have been depopulated for obtaining them. The parties employed in these predatory expeditions go out at night, set fire to the villages, which they find, and carry off the wretched inhabitants, thus suddenly thrown into their power, as slaves. The practice is, indeed, so common, that the remains of deserted and burnt villages are every where to be seen on the coast. The third class consists of such persons as are said to have been convicted of crimes, and are sold on this account for the benefit of their kings; and it is not uncommon to impute crimes to them falsely, and to bring on mock trials, for the purpose of bringing them within the reach of the royal traders. The fourth class includes prisoners of war, captured sometimes in ordinary wars, and sometimes in wars originated for the very purposes of slavery. -The fifth class comprehends those, who are slaves by birth; and some traders on the coast make a practice of breeding froin their own slaves, for the purpose of selling them, like cattle, when they are arrived at a suitable age. The sixth class comprehends such as have sacrificed their liberty to the spirit of gaming. The seventh and last class consists of those, who, being in debt, are seized ac

cording to the laws of the country, and sold to their creditors. But the two last classes are very inconsiderable, and scarcely deserve mention.

Having lost their liberty in one of the ways already mentioned, the slaves are conveyed to the banks of the rivers or seacoast. Some belong to the neighbourhood; others have lived in distant parts; and others are brought a thousand miles from their homes. Those, who come from a distance, march in droves or caufles, as they are called. They are secured from rising or running away by pieces of wood, which attach the necks of two and two together; or by other pieces, which are fastened by staples to their arms. They are made to carry their own water and provisions; and are watched and followed by drivers, who by force compel the weak to keep up with the strong.

They are sold, immediately upon their arrival on the rivers or coasts, either to land-factors, at depots for that purpose, or directly to the ships engaged in the trade. They are then carried in boats to the various ships, whose captains have purchased them. The men are immediately confined two and two together, either by the neck, leg, or arm, with fetters of solid iron. They are then put into their apartments, the men occupying the forepart, the women the afterpart, and the boys the middle of the vessel. The tops of these apartments are grated, for the admission of light and air; and the slaves are stowed like any other lumber, occupying only an allotted portion of room. Many of them, while the ships are waiting for their full lading in sight of their native shore, manifest great appearance of distress and oppression; and some instances have occurred, where they have sought relief by suicide, and others, where they have been afflicted with delirium and madness. In the daytime, if the weather be fine, they are brought upon deck for air. They are placed in a long row of two and two together, on each side of the ship, a long chain is then made to pass through the shackles of each pair, and by this means each row is secured, to the deck. In this state they eat their miserable meals, consisting of horsebeans, rice, and yams, with a little pepper and palm oil. After their meals, it is a custom to make them jump for exercise as high as their fetters will allow them; and if they refuse, they are whipped until they comply. This the slave-merchants call dancing, and it would seem literally to be the dance of death.

When the number of slaves is completed, the ships begin what is called the middle passage, to transport them to the colonies. The

height of the apartments in the ships is different, according to the size of the vessel, and is from six feet to three feet; so that it is impossible to stand erect in most of the vessels, and in some scarcely possible to sit down in the same posture. If the vessel be full, the situation of the slaves is truly deplorable. In the best regulated ships, a grown person is allowed but sixteen inches in width, thirtytwo inches in height, and five feet eleven inches in length; or, to use the expressive language of a witness, not so much room as a man has in his coffin. They are, indeed, so crowded below, that it is almost impossible to walk through the groups, without treading on some of them; and if they are reluctant to get into their places, they are compelled by the lash of a whip. And here their situation becomes wretched beyond description. The space between decks, where they are confined, often becomes so hot, that persons, who have visited them there, have found their shirts so wet with perspiration, that water might be wrung from them; and the steam from their confined bodies comes up through the gratings like smoke from a furnace. The bad effects of such confinement and want of air are soon visible in the weakness and faintness, which overcome the unhappy victims. Some go down apparently well at night, and are found dead in the morning. Some faint below, and die from suffocation, before they can be brought upon deck. As the slaves, whether well or ill, always lie upon bare planks, the motion of the ship rubs the flesh from the prominent parts of their body, and leaves their bones almost bare. The pestilential breath of so many, in so confined a state, renders them also very sickly, and the vicissitudes of heat and cold generate a flux. When this is the case, (which happens frequently,) the whole place becomes covered with blood and mucus, like a slaughter-house; and as the slaves are fettered and wedged close together, the utmost disorder arises from endeavours to relieve themselves in the necessities of nature; and the disorder is still further increased by the healthy being not unfrequently chained to the diseased, the dying, and the dead. When the scuttles in the ship's sides are shut in bad weather, the gratings are not sufficient for airing the room; and the slaves are then seen drawing their breath with all that anxious and laborious effort for life, which we observe in animals subjected to experiments in foul air or in an exhausted receiver of an airpump. Many of them. expire in this situation, crying out, in their native tongue, “We are dying." During the time, that elapses from the slaves being put on board on the African coast to their sale in the colonies, about