CHAPTER XLI.

RIGHT REVEREND BROTHER: The public feeling in England, with respect to negro slavery, at the time when our Constitution was established, is set forth with great ability in a manuscript defense of the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott, which has been sent to me by a friend. And from this I shall take a few additional facts, in corroboration of the preceding statements.

The treaty of Utrecht, which crowned the victories of Marlborough, in the reign of Queen Anne, A.D. 1713, was distinguished by a special regard to the slave-trade, securing to the English African company a monopoly in the introduction of negroes into the several ports of Spanish America, for the term of thirty years. And the first Article of this treaty stipulated that this company should bring into the West-Indies one hundred and forty-four thousand negroes, within that period, being at the rate of four thousand eight hundred in every year, one fourth part of the commercial profits being reserved to the King of Spain, and another fourth part to the Queen of England. The negro race was then held to be a proper subject of commerce by the universal sentiment of Europe. The transferring them from their deplorable savage state to the mastership of civilized men, was considered to be a benefit of the highest value to the negroes themselves. And had it been otherwise, the "good Queen Anne," who was certainly a religious and excellent woman, would never have been an actual partner in the trade of the English African company.

The provisions of the treaty of Utrecht on this subject were kept in view by the subsequent treaties, in the reigns of George I. and George II., clearly proving that there was no change of English sentiment down to 1749, when the monopoly of the English company having expired, the slave-trade was thrown open to every British subject who chose to embark in it. This was done by statute twenty-third George Second, chapter thirty-one. And the result produced

so great an influx of negroes into the colonies, that the Legislature of South-Carolina passed an act prohibiting the further importation. But the British government disallowed this act, and reprimanded the governor for having assented to it.

The American Revolution having been successfully accomplished, and peace proclaimed in 1783, we find the British Parliament passing another act, granting certain privileges of trade to the ports of the West-Indies. The fourth section of this, (statute twenty-seven, George Third, chapter twenty-seven, 1787,) authorizes the exporting of merchandise from the English islands to any foreign colony, and in this merchandise there is special mention of rum and negroes. This was thirteen years after the decision of Lord Mansfield in the case of Somerset, and only two years before the adoption of our present Constitution.

In the year 1773, when that famous case was decided, there were no less than fourteen thousand negro slaves in London alone. And the opinion of Lord Mansfield was denied to be law by several great authorities, Lord Hardwicke and Lord Stowell being clearly opposed to it. We have seen the statement of Mr. Wilberforce, that all the lawyers were against him, and we know that it cost more than twenty years of struggle before the slave-trade was abolished, while it was not until 1833 that emancipation was granted to the British slaves in the West-Indies, through the pressure, as the historian Alison states, of the new popular feeling.

The success of the Republican theory in the establishment of the United States was undoubtedly the first great step which led the minds of men in this direction. But that went no further than the abolition of the slave-trade, leaving the domestic institution alone, and even providing for its protection. The great blow against slavery was reserved for the French Revolution, which freed the negroes of St. Domingo, and led to the horrid massacre of the whites, and threw all Europe into alarm and consternation by the conflicts which arose in every quarter, between popular rights and the old systems of monarchy. In all this the Church of Christ took no part, save by prayer and loyal sufferance. The atheism of France, which uprooted slavery, did not spare the altar. Liberty, equality, and fraternity became the new trinity which men adored, instead of the God of the Bible. And hanging, drowning, and the guillotine were the prompt punishment of those who refused to bow down and worship them.

That the Church of England held slavery to be perfectly lawful in itself, as well as the Church of Rome and all the Christian denominations of Europe and America, through the whole period of their history, down to the end of the last century, and far into the present, is therefore as incontrovertible as any fact can be. The bishops of that Church saw no sin in the treaty of Utrecht, to which the religious Queen Anne was a party. They concurred in the Act of Parliament under George the Third, which regarded the negroes as lawful merchandise. The Puritans of New-England sold the Indians as slaves, and were the chief importers of the Africans for the Southern market. Even the Quakers of Pennsylvania had slaves, and William Penn was a slaveholder, though that was the first State which passed an act of gradual abolition, and this estimable people have been among the most ardent and constant friends of the measure. Their principles, however, were in no substantial respect at variance with my own. They did not denounce slavery as a sin in itself, and the "sum of all villainies." They did not denounce the Constitution as a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." They did not insist on immediate emancipation. And, above all, they sought to accomplish their object only by the use of kind persuasion and friendly argument, on the ground of a wise expediency, without bringing it into the region of party politics, without kindling hatred, discord, and strife between brethren, and with that love of "peace and good-will to men" which has so honorably marked their character.

CHAPTER XLII.

RIGHT REVEREND BROTHER: I now come to consider the treatment of the Southern slaves, which, in the popular mind, constitutes the main ground of the horror expressed by so many persons with regard to the institution. And here, I trust that I may claim as strong an antipathy to all cruelty and oppression, as becomes the character of a Christian minister. But this charge of cruelty concerns the religious consistency of thousands amongst my brethren : men who, though now unhappily separated from us by this deplorable war, are yet belonging to the same spiritual fraternity. Justice is due to those slaveholders, as well as to the slaves. I only ask that the evidence brought against them shall be tested fairly, by the same rules which apply to human conduct in general. And this can only be done by a comparison of the evils which the slaves suffer from their masters, with those to which the laboring classes are liable in the state of freedom.

The Journal of Mrs. Kemble, during her residence on the Georgia plantation of her husband, is one of the most popular books on the evils of negro slavery; and deservedly so, not only from its literary merits, and the wide-spread reputation of the writer, but mainly because it deals in facts, with actual knowledge, on the spot, of the practical results of the institution. And yet, passing from its perusal to the recent work of Joseph Kay, Esq., on the social condition of the people of England, no intelligent and candid mind can avoid the conviction that her picture of misery and degradation amongst the slaves falls far short of the delineations of brutalized licentiousness and debasement amongst the lower class of English freemen. I shall make a copious selection of extracts from this sadly interesting book, to prove the assertion.

"I speak it," saith Mr. Kay, "with sorrow and with shame, but with not the less confidence, that our peasantry are more ignorant, more demoralized, less capable of helping themselves, and more pauperized, than those of any country in Europe, if we except Russia,

Turkey, South Italy, and some parts of the Austrian Empire." (p. 24,
Harper's New-York ed.)

“The laborer has no longer any connection with the land he cultivates; he has no stake in the country; he has nothing to lose, nothing to defend, and nothing to hope for." (p. 16.) "His position is one of hopeless and irremedial dependence. The work-house stands near him, pointing out his dismal fate if he falls one step lower." (p. 17.) "In the civilized world there are few sadder spectacles than the present contrast in Great Britain of unbounded wealth and luxury, with the starvation of thousands and tens of thousands, crowded into cellars and dens, without ventilation or light, compared with which the wigwam of the Indian is a palace. Misery, famine, brutal degradation, in the neighborhood of stately mansions which ring with gayety and dazzle with pomp and unbounded profusion, shock us as no other wretchedness does.-It is a striking fact that the private charity of England, though almost incredible, makes little impression on this mass of misery." (p. 28.)

The writer gives the following statement on the amount of pauperism, which is truly astounding:

"Before the enactment of the new poor-law," saith he, "we were expending annually between six and seven millions of pounds sterling for the relief of abject pauperism in England and Wales alone. Since then, we have been expending, in the same cause, between four and five millions per annum - without reckoning the vast sums which have been sunk in the administration of the poor-law in the different Unions, or the immense sums which have been given away annually by charitable individuals and societies... All this, be it remembered, has been required to alleviate the miserable condition of our laboring population, and to keep crowds from actual starvation. Their independence is destroyed; they can not live unless they depend upon the charity of the higher classes." (p. 29.)

Our author proceeds to show, from a carefully prepared table, the comparative increase of crime in the agricultural districts. "The proportional amount of crime to population," saith he, "in 1841 and 1847 was greater in almost all the agricultural counties of England than it was in the manufacturing and mining districts." This table "also shows how fearfully the amount of crime is increasing in the agricultural districts of Westmoreland, Lincoln, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Leicestershire, Rutland, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Wor.