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Impatient of the delay which might take the honour of this crowning act out of the hands of his party and unquestionably, in any shape, it was an honour to any party he hurried it forward without securing the concert, or compelling the acquiescence, of any one of the European kingdoms engaged in the slave-trade.
Schoelcher seems to think that these first slaves were so difficult to manage because they had been reared in a civilized country; and he notices that Cardinal Ximenes, who was well acquainted with the Spanish negro, constantly refused to authorize a direct slave-trade with Hayti, because it would introduce into the colony so many enterprising and prolific people, who would revolt when they became too numerous, and bring the Spaniards themselves under the yoke.
Such utterances were not to dominate the convention, however; it was a day of expediency, not of morality. A bargain was made between the commercial interests of the North and the slave-holding interests of the South, the granting to Congress of unrestricted power to enact navigation laws being conceded in exchange for twenty years' continuance of the slave-trade.
These objectors can readily believe the fact, that in the city of New York, less than a hundred years since, thirteen persons were publicly burned to death, over a slow fire: and that the legislature of the same State took under its paternal care the African slave-trade, and declared that "all encouragement should be given to the direct importation of slaves; that all smuggling of slaves should be condemned, as an eminent discouragement to the fair trader."
The plantations of coffee, which, previous to the commencement of the slave-trade, yielded one material for exportation, are now deserted, and it is difficult to find a single tree. Calumba-root, which is found in abundance in some parts farther down the river, is bought by the Americans, it is said, to use as a dye-stuff.
It was scarcely possible to lay a duty on any one article, which might not in some way affect the property of individuals. But if the laws respecting the Slave-trade implied a contract for its perpetual continuance, the House could never regulate any other of the branches of our national commerce.
Nothing would be easier than to send a few officers and two hundred men from Khartoum to form a military government, and thus impede the slave-trade; but a bribe from the traders to the authorities is sufficient to insure an uninterrupted asylum for any amount of villany.
Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, which is not either common-place or absurd. His dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, and on the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples.
But if this statement was just, would not the abolition be beneficial to them? That it would, was the opinion of Mr. Long, their own historian. "If the Slave-trade," says he, "was prohibited for four or five years, it would enable them, to retrieve their affairs by preventing them from running into debt, either by renting or purchasing Negros."
From the beginning of the Session of this year, when, at the instance of his constituents, he appeared in his place to oppose the Assessed Taxes Bill, till the month of February, 1800, he raised his voice in the House but upon two questions, each "dignus vindice," the Abolition of the Slave-Trade, and a Change of System in Ireland.
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