that the
slave departed, and refused to serve; whereupon, he was kept to be
sold abroad." "So high an act of dominion must be recognised by the
law of the country where it is used. The power of the master over his
slave has been extremely different in different countries." "The state
of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being
introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive
law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and
time itself, from whence it was created, are erased from the memory.
It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but
positive law." That there is a difference in the systems of States,
which recognise and which do not recognise the institution of slavery,
cannot be disguised. Constitutional law, punitive law, police,
domestic economy, industrial pursuits, and amusements, the modes of
thinking and of belief of the population of the respective
communities, all show the profound influence exerted upon society by
this single arrangement. This influence was discovered in the Federal
Convention, in the deliberations on the plan of the Constitution. Mr.
Madison observed, "that the States were divided into different
interests, not by their difference of size, but by other
circumstances; the most material of which resulted partly from
climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not
having slaves. These two causes concur in forming the great division
of interests in the United States."

The question to be raised with the opinion of Lord Mansfield,
therefore, is not in respect to the incongruity of the two systems,
but whether slavery was absolutely contrary to the law of England; for
if it was so, clearly, the American laws could not operate there.
Historical research ascertains that at the date of the Conquest the
rural population of England were generally in a servile condition, and
under various names, denoting slight variances in condition, they were
sold with the land like cattle, and were a part of its living money.
Traces of the existence of African slaves are to be found in the early
chronicles. Parliament in the time of Richard II, and also of Henry
VIII, refused to adopt a general law of emancipation. Acts of
emancipation by the last-named monarch and by Elizabeth are preserved.

The African slave trade had been carried on, under the unbounded
protection of the Crown, for near two centuries, when the case of