his island is one that must necessarily exist,"
because "slaves are a hundred _per cent_, or more, higher in
the United States than in Cuba," and this profit "is a
temptation which it is not in human nature as modified by
American institutions to withstand": _Ibid._

[62] _Statutes at Large_, V. 674.

[63] Cf. above, p. 157, note 1.

[64] Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and its Remedy_, pp.
44-5. Cf. _2d Report of the London African Soc._, p. 22.

[65] I.e., Bay Island in the Gulf of Mexico, near the coast of
Honduras.

[66] _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, p. 98.

[67] Mr. H. Moulton in _Slavery as it is_, p. 140; cited in
_Facts and Observations on the Slave Trade_ (Friends' ed.
1841), p. 8.

[68] In a memorial to Congress, 1840: _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 1
sess. VI. No. 211.

[69] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1845-6, pp. 883, 968,
989-90. The governor wrote in reply: "The United States, if
properly served by their law officers in the Floridas, will
not experience any difficulty in obtaining the requisite
knowledge of these illegal transactions, which, I have reason
to believe, were the subject of common notoriety in the
neighbourhood where they occurred, and of boast on the part of
those concerned in them": _British and Foreign State Papers_,
1845-6, p. 990.

* * * * *

_Chapter XI_

THE FINAL CRISIS. 1850-1870.

80. The Movement against the Slave-Trade Laws.
81. Commercial Conventions of 1855-56.
82. Commercial Conventions of 1857-58.
83. Commercial Convention of 1859.
84. Public Opinion in the South.
85. The Question in Congress.
86. Southern Policy in 1860.
87. Increase of the Slave-Trade from 1850 to 1860.
88. Notorious Infractions of the Laws.
89. Apathy of the Federal Government.
90. Attitude of the Southern Confederacy.
91. Attitude of the United States.

80. ~The Movement against the Slave-Trade Laws.~ It was not altogether a
mistaken judgment that led the constitutional fathers to consider the
slave-trade as the backbone of slavery. An economic system based on
slave labor will find, sooner or later, that the demand for the cheapest
slave labor cannot long be withstood. Once degrade the laborer so that
he cannot assert his own rights, and there is but one limit below which
his price cannot be redu