e clung with the greatest pertinacity to the trade, he did not
scruple to endeavor to put a constraint upon her which should compel her
submission, and instructed Lord Castlereagh "to induce the Congress to
take the best means in their power to enforce it by the adoption of a
law, on the part of the several states, to exclude the colonial produce
of those countries who should refuse to comply with this system of
abolition."

And exertions so resolutely put forward were so successful, that the
trade was avowedly proscribed by every European nation, though
unquestionably it was still carried on by stealth by merchants and
ship-owners of more than one country--not, if the suspicions of our
statesmen were well founded, without some connivance on the part of
their governments. Nor were our efforts in the cause the fitful display
of impulsive excitement. We have continued them and widened their sphere
as occasions have presented themselves, exerting a successful influence
even over unchristian and semi-civilized governments, of which an
instance has very recently been furnished, in the assurances given by
the Khedive of Egypt to our minister residing at his court, that he is
taking vigorous measures to suppress the slave-trade, which is still
carried on in the interior of Africa; and that we may believe his
promise that he will not relax his exertions till it is extinguished, at
least in the region on the north of the equator.

Individuals, as a rule, are slow to take warning from the experience of
others; slower, perhaps, to follow their example in well-doing. Nations
are slower still. When such an example is followed, still more when it
is adopted by a general imitation, it will usually be found not only
that the good is of a very unusual standard of excellence, but that he
or they who have set the example are endowed with a force of character
that predisposes others to submit to their influence. And credit of this
kind England may fairly claim for the general abolition of the
slave-trade; for the condemnation and abolition of the slave-trade had
this distinguishing feature, that the idea of such a policy was of
exclusively British origin. No nation had ever before conceived the
notion that to make a man a slave was a crime. On the contrary, there
were not wanting those who, from the recognition of such a condition in
the Bible, argued that it was a divine institution. And they who
denounced it, and labored for its suppres