itself under the necessity of changing this resolution. The slave-trade will hence. forth, we have little doubt, be carried on under that flag of freedom; but as in no country, after our own, have such persevering efforts for its suppression been made, by men the most distinguished for goodness, wisdom, and eloquence, as in the United States, we cannot believe that their flag will long be prostituted to such vile purposes; and either they must combine with other nations, or they must increase the number and efficiency of their naval forces on the coast of Africa and elsewhere, and do their work single handed. We say this the more, because the motives which have actuated the government of the United States in this refusal, clearly have reference to the words, "right of search." They will not choose to see that this is a mutual restricted right, effected by convention, strictly guarded by stipulations for one definite object, and confined in its operations within narrow geographical limits; a right, moreover, which England and France have accorded to each other without derogating from the national honor of either. If we are right in our conjecture of the motive, and there is evidence to support us, we must consider that the President and his ministers have been, in this instance, actuated by a narrow provincial jealousy, and totally unworthy of a great and independent nation. ELIZABETH MARGARET CHANDLER. The Domestic Slave-trade.—This is the most indefensible, as well as the most detestable feature in the system of slavery. It will not admit of even an attempt at justification. There are many who profess to deplore the existence of slavery, who yet consider its abolition impracticable, or unjust to the owners of the slaves, or dangerous to the community. Others again, will descant largely on the blessings and advantages of slavery to those who are favored with the enjoyment of its benefits, ending with a declaration that their situation, if restored to freedom, would be infinitely more deplorable. But none of these reasons can be urged in behalf of this shameful traffic. It is a guilt and an infamy for which our country has no excuse. If her slave population was entailed upon her against her will, and cannot now be got rid of, she is at least, under no compulsion to permit herself to be disgraced by this infamous traffic. If the state of the slaves is a happy one, their happiness cannot possibly be increased by their being torn from their homes and friends, manacled and driven in gangs across the country, exposed to the gaze and insults of an unfeeling rabble, or hurried on board a slave-ship, and conveyed they know not whither, save that it is far from all they have ever known or loved. If they are unfit for the station of freemen, it does not necessarily follow that they should be treated as brutes; now, though there may be dangerous consequences to be feared from their emancipation, can the security of the present state of things be in any wise increased by goading them to madness with excessive cruelty? Hard as the lot of the slave is, and ever must be, still while he is surrounded by those he loves, with the security that this blessing, at least, will be spared to him to soothe the darkness of his lot, and while the familiar faces and scenery which he has been accustomed to gaze on from childhood are still before him, he will probably indulge in an apathetic acquiescence with his fate, nor risk his present enjoyments for a doubtful future. But he who feels that his dearest ties of life are broken, never more to be united, and is driven by anguish and a sense of injustice, into an utter recklessness of his fate, is a fit instrument to plan desperate deeds, and to infuse into the bosoms of others a portion of his own spirit. Thus should we allow entire validity, which we do not, to all the arguments that are urged in favor of the continuance of slavery, no one of them affords the slightest plea for this unchristian practice. It is utterly at variance with every law of humanity and religion, and in its very existence is a curse to the land in which it is tolerated. Slave produce. That, if there were no consumers of slave produce, there would be no slaves, is an axiom too self-evident to the meanest capacity, to require us to use a single argument in its demonstration. But that the class of consumers share equally in the guilt of slavery with those who are the more immediate upholders of the system, will not probably, by the multitude, be so readily admitted. Even while they acknowledge themselves to be the main supporters of this scheme of oppression, they would exonerate themselves from any portion of its turpitude; as if it were possible for them to be innocent of a crime of which they are wilfully the cause! Can they employ another in the commission of evil, enjoy the advantage of his villany, and yet suppose that the stain of iniquity clings only to him who was but the agent of their will? Were they disinterested reasoners, we think such would not be their decision. Their own hands do not, it is true, wield the blood-extorting lash, or rivet the fetter, but they know that it is done by others, in order to afford at the cheapest rate the luxuries which they will neither resign, nor make one exertion to obtain from the hands of freemen. They have no hesitation in branding the trafficker in human flesh with the stigma of shame and cruelty, but while they would not for the universe engage personally in the exercise of so much barbarity, they will not relinquish one single iota of the comforts it procures for them. Is this consistency? Is such fastidiousness the result of humanity! or has it not rather, if fairly examined, its root in mere selfishness? Their education has unfitted them for mingling actively in scenes of cruelty, they would sicken and shudder at the sight of wantonly shed blood, and the agonizing cries of a breaking heart would frighten sleep from their pillows, or were like a haunting spirit to their dreams. Is it so vastly meritorious, then, to consign to other hands what would be revolting to their feelings? Or may such sensibility claim its spring from the nobler principles of beneficence and justice, while they unhesitatingly receive from the hands of another, that which they have not nerve enough to obtain for themselves? Let them remember when they execrate the enormities of the slave system, that it is themselves who hold out the inducements for their perpetration. Guilty as the slaveholder may be, let them not flatter themselves that he alone is guilty. To them the criminality and hideousness of slavery are clearly discernible. But he is mentally benighted. The bribe which they have given him, the unrighteous mammon, hath "perverted his judg ment." He is compassed about with the iron bands of prejudice,he fancies that to break the fetters of his slaves would be to insure his own ruin. But it is the purchasers of his ill-gotten produce who have woven around him the filmy web of prejudice. Let them but make it his interest to be just, and his moral perceptions will be clear as the daylight. Emancipation will no longer appear to him a visionary scheme, ruinous and impracticable. His opinions will be grounded on wiser and juster reasoning, and he will make haste to render back their liberty to those from whom he has so long withheld it. He who clings with so tenacious a grasp to his gathered stores of human wealth, while we hate his crime, may claim our pity for his self-delusion and his unhappy situation. But what have those to advance in behalf of their heartless conduct, who, with the full light of conviction around them, obstinately persist to abet him in his error? Nothing, absolutely nothing, beyond the miserable and even criminal plea of self-convenience, or a disinclination to encounter a trivial portion of salutary self-denial! And, they who can so lightly weigh their own gratification against the intolerable anguish of their sister's lot, who count the sacrifice of a few paltry luxuries, too vast a ransom for the redemption of thousands and tens of thousands of their fellow-creatures from a state of servitude and darkness, are the good, the amiable, and the gentle of the earth. Such a maze of inconsistency is the human heart! We could fling away the pen, and weep in very shame and bitterness for the hard-heartedness of our sex. One would suppose that the bare knowledge of the terrible price at which those cherished comforts have been procured, would cause a woman to turn shuddering and loathingly away, as though they were infected with a taint of blood. And the curse of blood is upon them! Though the dark red stain may not be there visibly, yet the blood of all the many thousands of the slain, who have died amid the horrors and loathsomeness of the slave-ship-been hurled by capricious cruelty to the yawning wave, or sprang to its bosom in the madness of their proud despair of those who have pined away to death beneath the slow tortures of a broken heart, who have perished beneath the tortures of inventive tyranny, or on the ignominious gibbet-all this lies with a fearful weight upon this most foul and unnatural system, and that insatiable thirst for luxury and wealth in which it first originated, and by which it is still perpetuated. Think of our country's glory, All dimm'd with Afric's tears- Think of the frantic mother, Think of the prayers ascending, TO PRUDENCE CRANDALL. Heaven bless thee, noble lady, In thy purpose, good and high! For those from whom dark pride, Still bear thou up unyielding, E. M. C. MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY. We have a goodly clime, Broad vales and streams we boast, Suns bless our harvest fair, But a dark shade is gathering there!- We have a birthright proud, Our banner o'er the sea Looks forth with starry eye, What hand, with shameful stain, The yoke! the fetters! and the chain! This day* doth music rare Swell through our nation s bound, Bid our loved land the lesson learn- WILLIAM B. TAPPAN. Lift ye my country's banner high, Blood, blood, is on its spangled fold, These glorious stars and stripes that led Vailed only to the honored dead Beaming where fields and fame were won : These symbols that to kings could tell No! let the earthquake-utterance be Up then! determine, dare and do, What justice claims, what freemen may; What frowning heaven demands of you While yet its muttering thunders stay; That thou, for ever from this soil Bid SLAVERY'S withering blight depart; And to the wretch restore the spoil, Though thou may'st not the broken heart; That thou thy brother from the dust Lift up, and speak his spirit free! Then to the universe wide spread * Fourth of July. |