who have engaged
in this scheme of philanthropy have had more than a lukewarm interest in
the matter, and the puny efforts they have made have been more for the
purpose of pacifying a few clamorous philanthropists, than with a real
design to stop the horrid traffic. For one slave-ship that is captured
at least twenty pass free, landing their emaciated thousands upon the
shores of the western world. Nay--worse than ever--the tyrant who, with
railroad speed, is demoralising the millions of France, lends his
ill-gotten power to re-establish this barter of human souls, and the
slave-trade will ere long flourish as luxuriantly as ever.

It would have been an easy matter for Great Britain long since to have
crushed out every vestige of the slave-trade, even without adding one
item to her expenditure. What can be more absurd than the payment of
300,000 pounds to Portuguese slave-merchants to induce them to abandon
the traffic in slaves? Why it is a positive premium upon crime--an
indemnity for giving up the trade of pillage and murder! I say nothing
would have been easier than for England to have put an end to the very
existence of this horror years ago. It would only have required her to
have acted with more earnestness, and a little more energy--to have
declared that a slave-dealer was a pirate, and to have dealt with him
accordingly--that is, hanged him and his crew, when taken, from the
yard-arm of their ship--and there was not a nation in the world that
would have dared to raise voice against such a course. Indeed it is a
perfect absurdity to hang a pirate and let a slaver escape: for if it be
admitted that a black man's life is of as much value as a white man's,
then is the slaver doubly a murderer, for it is a well-known fact, that
out of every slave cargo that crosses the Atlantic, full one-third
become victims of the middle passage. It is, therefore, a positive
absurdity to treat the captain and crew of a slave-ship in any milder
way than the captain and crew of a pirate ship; and if a like measure of
justice had been constantly served out to both, it is but natural to
suppose that slavers would now have been as scarce as pirates are, if
not a good deal scarcer. How the wiseacres who legislate for the world
can make a distinction between the two sorts of ruffians is beyond my
logic to understand, and why a slaver should not be hanged as soon as
caught is equally a puzzle to me.

In years past this might hav