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This lesson was learned long ago. What did all the laws against man-stealing and slave-trading ever accomplish so long as the slave owner was allowed to keep his slave? As soon as slave-holding was declared impossible in the United States, there was no more trouble with slave-traders.
The "underground railway," or chain of friendly houses by which fugitive slaves were stealthily passed on to Canada, became famous. Methodist professors riotously attempted to rescue an arrested fugitive at Oberlin. A Southern grand jury threw out the bill of indictment against a slave-trading crew caught red-handed.
It is curious, by the way, that the tender-hearted, philanthropic Oglethorpe at the very time of his founding Georgia was the manager of the great slave-trading corporation, the Royal African Company. The conflict of the two functions cannot be relieved except by one of the greatest of all reconciling considerations, the spirit of the time.
After describing an interview with an American captain, he continues: 'Reports are rife of a semi-legalised slave-trading between the South Sea Islands and New Caledonia and the white settlers in Fiji. I have made a little move in the matter. I am told that Government sanctions natives being brought upon agreement to work for pay, &c., and passage home in two years.
Therefore, besides the enormous evils to slave-trading countries themselves, the lowering of their moral tone, the substitution of piracy for legitimate commerce, and the degradation of the countries which bought the slaves, the superior race has not even been able to suppress the inferior.
The west coast still requires watching; each harbour on the east coast from which slaves are shipped must be blockaded, till every Arab dhow manned by a slave-trading crew is captured and destroyed.
Lord Ashley had carried a motion in the House of Lords to suppress Sunday labor in the post-office, by a vote of 93 to 68. Sir Edward Buxton on the 31st of June, moved a resolution against exposing the free-grown sugar of the British colonies to unrestricted competition with the sugar of slave-trading countries. It failed, however, by 275 to 234.
Political chicanery in Congress reinforced the clamor from without, and though act after act for the destruction of the traffic was passed, none proved to be enforcible in each was what the politicians of a later day called a "little joker," making it ineffective. But in 1820 a law was passed declaring slave-trading piracy, and punishable with death.
These creatures brought the plague to Khartoum, which, like a curse visited upon this country of slavery and abomination, spread like a fire throughout the town, and consumed the regiments that had received this horrible legacy from the dying cargo of slaves. Among others captured by the authorities on a charge of slave-trading was an Austrian subject, who was then in the custody of the consul.
"So you see, Claudia, that we have got this man completely in our power. Look at his crimes. First, complicity in the murder of Ailsie Dunbar; secondly, conspiracy against your honor; thirdly, kidnaping and slave-trading. The man is already ruined; and you, my dear, are saved."
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