the subject. We must admit, however, they suffered, against the consent of the most active men in the revolutionary struggle, this piracy to continue twenty years after our present government was established, and, by so doing, laid the foundation of the troubles we now experience; though the very manner they worded this permission shows they did not feel over-anxious to leave on record any justification, on their part, of its being done; and that the present ideas in regard to it are but of late growth. The idea of its being a blessing, as a permanent institution, does not appear to have entered their heads. It was solely the want of laborers in the more southern States that induced them to consent to have it continued, and not because they had any sympathy for the system. It was urged that the white man could not work on the rice plains of the South; and, unless there could be a colored population there, they would have to remain a wilderness; and that the African would be better off in this country than in his own. These ideas, with the fear they should not be able to maintain their liberties and the best good of the country without a union of the States, induced them to consent to its temporary continuance. Its perpetuation, however, was not thought of, saving, perhaps, in the minds of some, the young giant was discovered while it was but a suckling.

But it is asked how it is, then, that that which was considered so great an evil, at the time of which we are speaking, should in so short a time

become to be considered of so much utility that it must not be spoken of but with approbation, and that the statesmen in both of the great political parties of our country so universally uncover their heads in its presence, and bow down to it as to a god from whom they have received their very existence.

Mr. Birney, in his letter to the Hon. Mr. Elmore, of South Carolina, in answer to certain inquiries made of him respecting, the intentions and prospects of the abolitionists of the North, states the case in a clear and distinct light. He says,

"The ascendency that slavery has acquired and exercises, in the administration of the government, and the apprehension now prevailing among the sober and intelligent, irrespective of party, that it will soon overmatch the Constitution itself, may be ranked among the events of the last two or three years that effect the cause of the abolitionist. The abolitionists regard the Constitution with unabated affection. They hold in no common veneration the memory of those who made it. They would be the last to brand Franklin, and King, and Morris, and Wilton, and Sherman, and Hamilton, with the ineffable infamy of attempting to engraft on the Constitution, and therefore to perpetuate, a system of oppres sion in absolute antagonism to its high and professed objects, one which their own practice condemned; and this, too, when they had scarcely wiped away the dust and sweat of the Revolution from their brows.

"Whilst abolitionists speak thus of our constitutional fathers, they do not justify the dereliction from principles into which they were betrayed, when they imparted to the works of their hands any power to contribute to the

continuance of such a system. They can only palliate it, by supposing that they thought slavery was already a waning institution, destined soon to pass away. In their time, (1787,) slaves were comparatively of little value, there being then no great slave staple (as cotton is now) to make them profitable to the slaveholder.1

"Had the circumstances of the country remained as they then were, slave labor, always and every where the most expensive, would have disappeared before the competition of free labor. They had seen, too, the principles of liberty embodied in most of the State Constitutions; they had seen slavery utterly forbidden in that of Vermont, instantaneously abolished in that of Massachusetts, and laws enacted in the other New England States, and in Pennsylvania, for its gradual abolition. Well might they have anticipated that justice and humanity, now starting forth with fresh vigor, would, in their march, sweep away the whole system; more especially as freedom of speech and the press, the legitimate abolisher, not only of the vice of slavery, but of every other that time should reveal in our institutions or practice, had been fully secured to the people. Again, power was conferred on congress to put a stop to the African slavetrade, without which it was thought at that time to be impossible to maintain slavery as a system on this continent, so great was the havoc on human life. Authority was also granted to congress to prevent the transfer of slaves, as articles of commerce, from one State to another, and the introduction of slavery into the Territories.2 All this was crowned by the power to prevent the admis

1 The cultivation of cotton was almost unknown in the United States before 1787. It was not till two years afterwards that it began to be raised and exported. (See report of the secretary of the treasury, July 29, 1836.)

2 The following is the opinion of the late Chief Justice Jay as to this part of the constitutional question. It is contained in a letter

sion into the Union of any new State, whose form of government was repugnant to the principles of liberty set forth in the Constitution of the United States. The faithful execution by congress of these powers, it was reasonably enough supposed, would, at least, prevent the growth of slavery, if it did not entirely remove it. Congress did, at the same time, execute one of them, - deemed then the most effectual of the whole, but, as it turned out, the least so."

from him to the venerable Elias Little, and can be added to what has been said and written on the subject of slavery:

'Nov. 17, 1819. I concur in the opinion it ought not to be introduced, nor permitted in any of the new States; and that it ought to be gradually diminished and abolished in them all.

"To use the constitutional authority of congress to prohibit the migration and importation of slaves into any of the States does not appear questionable.

"The first article of the Constitution specifies the legislative powers committed to congress. The ninth section of this article has these words: The migration or importation of such persons as any of the now existing States shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the congress prior to the year 1808; but a tax, or duty, may be imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each person.'

"I understand the sense and meaning of this clause to be, that the power of the congress, although competent to prohibit such migration and importation, was not to be exercised with respect to the THEN existing States, and them only till the year 1808, but that congress were at liberty to make such prohibitions as to any new State which might in the mean time be established. And, further, that, from and after that period, they were authorized to make such prohibition as to all the States, whether new or old.

"Slaves were the persons intended. The name slaves was avoided, on account of the existing toleration of slavery, and its existing discordancy with the principles of the Revolution, and from the consciousness of its being repugnant to those propositions in the Declaration of Independence: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

He then goes on to state that the interdiction of the African slave trade did not diminish the trade itself, or mitigate its horrors. It simply transferred from Africa to America "its profits from African princes to American farmers." He doubted if slavery would have extended over so large a space as it now does, if the trade had not been interdicted; for the cheap rate at which slaves could have been imported would have prevented the rearing them on American soil; and, if the internal commerce could be restricted, slavery would soon die of itself. They could not maintain it on account of the competition of free labor. And the not using by congress of the power it possessed, or rather to the unfaithful application of their power to other points, on which it was expected to act for the limitation and extirpation of slavery, that the hopes of our fathers have not been realized. Slavery has advanced to its present audacious position by steps at first gradual, and for a long time almost unnoticed; afterwards by intimidation and corruption, up to the time of the "Missouri compromise," by which the nation was defrauded of its honor; and that, up to this time, slavery was look upon as an evil that was to yield to the expanding and enlightened influences of our Constitution, principles, and regulations.

He then proceeds:

"It has already been said we have been brought into our present condition by the unfaithfulness of congress, in not exerting the power vested in it, to stop the domestic slave-trade, and in the abuse of the power of