other to the master with "a permit,” endorsed on it," authorizing him to proceed to the port of destination." If the master presumes to transport a slave without such permit, not only is the vessel forfeited, but the master is to pay a penalty of $1000 for each slave shipped. On the arrival of the vessel at the port of destination, the manifest, with the permit, is to be handed to the collector, who thereupon is to grant a "permit" for the landing of the slaves, and if any are landed without such permit, the master forfeits one thousand dollars. So it seems Congress may prohibit the slave trade in vessels under forty tons; but according to northern politicians, it would be unconstitutional to prohibit it in vessels over forty tons; and according to the slaveholders, such a prohibition would cause the dissolution of the Union! But alas! the permission, regulation, and protection of this traffic is in perfect keeping with

THE DUPLICITY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN REGARD TO THE SUPPRESSION OF THE AFRI

CAN SLAVE TRADE.

The great struggle for the abstract principles of human liberty, in which our fathers engaged with so much zeal, had, at the close of the revolutionary

war, excited a very general conviction of the injustice of slavery. When the convention appointed to form a Federal Constitution assembled, the northern and many of the southern delegates were disposed to give the new government such unqualified power over the commerce of the nation, as would enable it to abolish a traffic no less at variance with our republican professions than with the precepts of humanity and religion. A portion of the southern delegates however, insisted on a temporary restriction of this power as the price of their adhesion to the Union; and their threat of marring the beauty, symmetry, and strength of the fair fabric about to be erected by withdrawing from it the support of the States they represented, unfortunately induced the convention to yield to their wishes, and to insert in the constitution a clause restraining Congress from abolishing the African slave trade for twenty years. Mr. Madison has left us the following history of this iniquitous clause. "The southern States would not have entered into the union of America without the temporary permission of that trade. The gentlemen from South Carolina and Georgia, argued in this manner We have now liberty to import this species of property, and much of the property now possessed has been purchased, or

otherwise acquired in contemplation of improving it by the assistance of imported slaves. What would be the consequence of hindering us from it? The slaves of Virginia would rise in value and we should be obliged to go to your markets."" ·Debates in Virginia Convention.

We have here the solution of much contradictory action on the part of slaveholders in regard to this trade. It seems to have been early discovered that its abolition would be advantageous to the slave-breeders, but not to the slave buyers. Owing to climate, soil, and productions, slave labour is less profitable in Maryland and Virginia, than in the more southern States; hence, the greater demand for this labour in the latter States has, since the cessation of importation, caused a constant influx of slaves from the former. The breeders in Maryland and Virginia have, for the most part, striven in good faith for the total suppression of the African trade; while those who originally refused to enter the Union unless permitted for at least twenty years, to import their slaves directly from Africa, have since evinced very little desire to secure to their neighbours the monopoly of the market.

Whenever the opponents of Abolition find it convenient to refer to the action of the Federal

Government on the subject of slavery, they laud and magnify its horror of the African slave trade, and exultingly point to the law of Congress, branding it with the penalties of piracy. And yet we are inclined to believe, that the conduct of our government in relation to this very subject, is one of the foulest stains attached to our national administration. Has the trade been suppressed? Has the Federal Government in good faith endeavoured to suppress it? These are important questions, and we shall endeavour to solve them by an appeal to facts and official documents.

In a debate in Congress in 1819, Mr. Middleton of South Carolina, stated, that in his opinion, 13,000 Africans were annually smuggled into the United States. Mr. Wright of Virginia, estimated the number at 15,000! The same year, Judge Story of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a charge to a Grand Jury, thus expresses himself: "We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it (the African trade) is still carried on with all the implacable ferocity and insatiable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths, (I

can scarcely use too bold a figure,) in this stream of iniquity."

On the 22d Jan. 1811, the Secretary of the Navy wrote to the commanding naval officer at Charleston. "I hear, not without great concern, that the law prohibiting the importation of slaves, has been violated in frequent instances, near St. Mary's, since the gun-boats have been withdrawn from that station."

On the 14th March, 1814, the Collector of Darien, Georgia, thus wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury: "I am in possession of undoubted information, that African and West India negroes are almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, for sale or settlement, or passing through it to the territories of the United States, for similar purposes. These facts are notorious, and it is not unusual to see such negroes in the streets of St. Mary, and such too, recently captured by our vessels of war, and ordered for Savannah, were iljegally bartered by hundreds in that city, for this bartering (or bonding, as it is called, but in reality selling,) actually took place before any decision has passed by the Court respecting them. I cannot but again express to you, sir, that these irregularities, and mocking of the laws by men who understand them, are such that it requires the