d in by the parties to the present convention. In
the meantime, and with a view to a fair experiment, the obvious course
seems to be to carry into effect with every power such treaty as may be
made with each in succession.

In presenting this alternative to the British Government it was made
an indispensable condition that the trade should be made piratical
by act of Parliament, as it had been by an act of Congress. This was
provided for in the convention, and has since been complied with. In
this respect, therefore, the nations rest on the same ground. Suitable
provisions have also been adopted to protect each party from the abuse
of the power granted to the public ships of the other. Instead of
subjecting the persons detected in the slave trade to trial by the
courts of the captors, as would be the case if such trade was piracy by
the laws of nations, it is stipulated that until that event they shall
be tried by the courts of their own country only. Hence there could be
no motive for an abuse of the right of search, since such abuse could
not fail to terminate to the injury of the captor.

Should this convention be adopted, there is every reason to believe
that it will be the commencement of a system destined to accomplish the
entire abolition of the slave trade. Great Britain, by making it her
own, confessedly adopted at the suggestion of the United States, and
being pledged to propose and urge its adoption by other nations in
concert with the United States, will find it for her interest to abandon
the less-effective system of her previous treaties with Spain, Portugal,
and the Netherlands, and to urge on those and other powers their
accession to this. The crime will then be universally proscribed as
piracy, and the traffic be suppressed forever.

Other considerations of high importance urge the adoption of this
convention. We have at this moment pending with Great Britain sundry
other negotiations intimately connected with the welfare and even the
peace of our Union. In one of them nearly a third part of the territory
of the State of Maine is in contestation. In another the navigation of
the St. Lawrence, the admission of consuls into the British islands, and
a system of commercial intercourse between the United States and all the
British possessions in this hemisphere are subjects of discussion. In a
third our territorial and other rights upon the northwest coast are to
be adjusted, while a negotiation on the sam