"NEGROES FOR SALE.-A negro woman, 24 years of age, and her two children, one eight and the other three years old. Said negroes will be sold SEPARATELY or together, as desired. The woman is a good seamstress. She will be sold low for cash, or EXCHANGED FOR GROCERIES. For terms, apply to

"MATTHEW BLISS & Co., 1 Front Levee."

[New-Orleans Bee.

"I will give the highest cash price for likely Negroes, from 10 to 25 years of age.

"GEORGE KEPHART."

[Alexandria (D. C.) Gazette.

"FIFTY NEGROES WANTED IMMEDIATELY.-The subscriber will give a good market price for fifty likely negroes, from 10 to 30 years of age.

"HENRY DAVIS."

[Petersburg (Va.) Constellation.

Having obtained their supplies and driven or shipped them South, the dealers offer them for sale, in advertisements like the following, which appeared in the papers of Charleston, S. C.:

"ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NEGROES FOR SALE.--The subscriber has just arrived from Petersburg, Virginia, with one hundred and twenty likely young negroes of both sexes and every description, which he offers for sale on the most reasonable terms. The lot now on hand consists of plough-boys, several likely and well-qualified house servants of both sexes, several women with children, small girls suitable for nurses, and SEVERAL SMALL BOYS WITHOUT THEIR

MOTHERS. Planters and traders are earnestly requested to give the subscriber a call previously to making purchases elsewhere, as he is enabled to sell as cheap or cheaper than can be sold by any other person in the trade. BENJAMIN DAVIS. "Hamburg, S. C., September 28, 1838."

The respectability and profitableness of the traffic may be inferred from the fact, that some of the largest shipping merchants are slave merchants, that they own, and charter, and freight numerous vessels to transport their slaves coastwise, and invest princely fortunes as capital in the business.

The importance of this branch of commerce will be apparent from the speeches of leading statesmen, and the paragraphs of prominent editors.

HENRY CLAY, in his speech before the Colonization Society, in 1829, said:

"It is believed that no where, in the farming portion of the United States, would slave labor be generally employed, if the proprietor were not tempted to RAISE slaves, by the HIGH PRICE of the SOUTHERN MARKET which keeps it up in his own."

Mr. GHOLSON, of Virginia, in the same speech in the State Legislature before quoted, after claiming his negro women as his property, like his "brood mares," expatiated upon the profitableness and the rightfulness of the investment. "The owner of land had a reasonable right to its annual products, the owner of brood mares to their product, and the owner of female slaves to their increase." "The value of

the property justifies the expense; and I do not hesitate to say that in it consists much of our wealth."

The Editor of the Virginia Times, in 1836, made a calculation that 120,000 slaves went out of that State during the year, that 80,000 of them went with their owners who removed, leaving 40,000 who were SOLD, at an average price of $600; amounting to twenty-four millions of dollars.

Similar estimates and testimonies might be added. The annexation of Texas and the conquest of Mexico were openly advocated, and notoriously prosecuted, for the object of extending the area of slavery, and thereby opening a new slave market for the breeders of slaves. And the coastwise slavetrade has been protected by the National Government, and its diplomacy prostituted to this purpose. The particulars may be found in Jay's "View of the Action of the Federal Government in behalf of Slavery," and Jay's "Review of the Mexican War;" also (briefly) in Goodell's "History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery."

Of the character of this traffic little more need be said. By our own National Government the African slave-trade is branded "piracy." But Thomas Jefferson Randolph, in the Virginia Legislature, in 1832, declared the domestic slave-trade to be "much worse."

About 1100 citizens of the Federal District, including Judge Cranch and the principal clergy of the District, petitioned Congress against it, (as there existing;) and, comparing it with the African slave

trade, they said that it is "scarcely less disgraceful in its character, and even more demoralizing in its influence." This was in 1828. The Grand Jury of the District had, many years before, (1802,) presented it as a nuisance.* Its character there, at that time, differs nothing from its character in the different States, at present.

The New-Orleans Courier, February 15th, 1839, says: "The United States law" (prohibiting the African slave-trade) "may, and probably does put MILLIONS into the pockets of the people living between the Roanoke and Mason and Dixon's line; still we think it would require some casuistry to show that the present slave-trade from that quarter is a whit better than the one from Africa."

in

It may be asked, who are they, at the South, that prosecute this domestic slave-trade? The Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, describing its extent, its common occurrence and its barbarities, inform us, the same paragraph, that "professors of the religion of mercy," "who hold to our communion," have "torn the mother from the children, and sent them into returnless exile. Yet acts of discipline have rarely" [nevert] "followed such conduct." In the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1835, it was stated

*By the Act of Congress of 1850, the slave dealers are prohibited from making the Federal District a deposit for slaves. But this does not prevent any citizen of the District from selling his slave, or purchasing a slaye from abroad.

James G. Birney, long resident in Kentucky, and a Presby terian, says "never."

by an elder, Mr. Stewart, of Illinois, and without contradiction, that "even ministers of the gospel and Doctors of Divinity may engage in this unholy traffic, and yet sustain their high and holy calling." "Elders," said he, "ministers and Doctors of Divinity, are, with both hands, engaged in the practice.” Yet nothing was done or said by the Assembly in condemnation of it. The testimony of Rev. James Smylie, already cited for another purpose, implicates "three fourths" of four leading religious sects in the practice.

If a distinction be set up between the Virginian breeders and Mississippi purchasers, gentlemen planters, on the one hand, and the human drovers, commonly called "soul-drivers," on the other, who ply between the two, disposing at the far South of their "stock" purchased at the North, we maintain that there is no legal or moral distinction between them. "The legal relation" is as innocent and as criminal in the one as in the other. The "growers," the "con sumers" and "dealers" so necessary to them, stand on the same level.

Besides, the "dealers" are sometimes esteemed as respectable and as pious as the "growers" and "consumers.' A number of authentic narratives assure us that itinerant preachers, in more sects than one, carry on the double avocation of converting souls, and buying up the souls and bodies of men, women and children, for sale. An instance, in "the fine old Methodist preacher who dealt in slaves," may be found in Weld's "Slavery as it is," p. 180. In the higher