man, as of those whom his toils were destined to enrich. They gave just as Arcadian a picture of the slaver's deck and hold, as of the enviable fields whither she was fraught with a cargo of happy creatures, designed by their felicitous destiny to become what are called the cultivators of those romantic regions. "The slaves on board are comfortably lodged," says one gallant officer, "in rooms fitted up for them." 66 They are amused with instruments of music when tired of music, they then go to games of chance." Let the inhabitants or the frequenters of our club houses hear this and envy-those "famous wits," to whom St. James's purlieus are "native or hospitable:" let them cast a longing look on the superior felicity of their sable brethren on the middle passage. They toil not, neither do they spin, yet have they found for them all earthly indulgencies: food and raiment for nothing; music to charm the sense; and when sated with such enjoyment, the mind seeks a change, games of chance are kindly provided by boon traffic to stimulate the lazy appetite. "The slaves," adds the admiral, "are indulged in all their little humours.' Whether one of these caprices might be to have themselves tied up from time to time, and lacerated with a scourge, he has omitted to mention. "He had frequently," he says,

seen them

and as happy as any of the crew, it being the interest of the officers and men to make them so. But it is Admiral Evans who puts the finishing stroke to this fairy picture. "The arrival of a Guineaman," he says, "is known in the West Indies by the dancing and singing of the Negroes on board." It is thus that these cargoes of merry happy creatures, torn from their families, their native fields, and their cottages, celebrate their reaching the land of promise, and that their coming is distinguished from the dismal landing of free English seamen, out of West India traders, or other receptacles of cruelty and wretchedness!

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66

There is a country in which the Slave Trade still flourishes in most portentous vigour, although denounced by the law, and visited with infamous punishment :-the dominions of the Monarch who calls himself Most Christian," and refuses the only measure that can put such wholesale iniquity down. There it must thrive, as long as groundless national jealousies prevent the right of search from being mutually conceded. Let us hope that so foul a stain on the character of so great a nation will soon be wiped away; that the people who now take the lead of all others in the march of liberty, will

cast far from their camp this unclean thing, by all lovers of freedom most abhorred. I have heard with amazement some thoughtless men say, that the French cannot enjoy liberty, because they are unused to it. I protest before God, I could point to no nation more worthy of freedom, or which knew better how to use it, how to gain it, how to defend it. I turn with a grateful heart to contemplate the glorious spectacle now exhibited in France, of patriotism, of undaunted devotion to liberty, of firm, yet temperate resistance to arbitrary power. It is animating to every beholder; it is encouraging to all freemen in every part of the world. I earnestly hope that it may not be lost on the Bourbon Monarch and his Councillors; for the sake of France and of England, for the sake of peace; for the sake of the Bourbon Princes themselves, I pray that they may be wise in time, and yield to the wish, the determination of their people. I pray that bending before the coming breeze, the gathering storm may not sweep them away! But of one thing I would warn that devoted race; let them not flatter themselves that by trampling upon liberty in France, they can escape either the abhorrence of man, or the Divine wrath for the execrable traffic in Slaves, carried on under their flag, and flourishing under their sway in America.

I will tell their ghostly Councillors, in the language of a book with which they ought to be familiar," Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." To what should they lend an ear? To the commands of a God who loves mercy, and will punish injustice, and abhors blood, and will surely avenge it upon their heads; nothing the less because their patronage of slavery, in distant climes, is matched by their hatred of liberty at home.

I trust that at length the time is come, when Parliament will no longer bear to be told, that Slave-owners are the best lawgivers on Slavery; no longer suffer our voice to roll across the Atlantic in empty warnings, and fruitless orders. Tell me not of rights-talk not of the property of the planter in his Slaves. I deny the right— I acknowledge not the property. The prin

ciples, the feelings of our common nature rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes the same throughout the world, the same in all times-such as it was before the

daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth, and knowledge; to another, all ⚫unutterable woes ;-such it is at this day: it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations. The covenants of the Almighty, whether the old covenant or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions. To those laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African Trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for by one shameful compact you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet, in despite of law, and of treaty, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not, assuredly, by Parliament leading the

way; but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled ; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. Now, then, let the planters beware-let their Assemblies beware-let the Government at home beware-let the Parliament beware! The