Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 140.pdf/462

Rh "forcing slavery upon them." It is very certain that they were glad to be "forced;" but their plea suggests that some of our ministries went beyond connivance, and actually promoted the pernicious and horrible institution. One glaring fact may here be pointed at, as showing against what a power in Parliament itself an English ministry had to struggle in the first quarter of this century. St. Domingo or Hayti had effected its actual liberation from France, but was often threatened by the French arms. During our many wars with France or Spain, we had zealously seized Canada and Acadia on the continent, and among islands the Mauritius, Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Trinidad, yet we rejected all the overtures of free Hayti, and would in no way acknowledge her independence. The Haytians were ready to make every concession for the advantage of our commerce and our acknowledgment; many said they would have even adopted our language; but to their earnest entreaties for friendship we replied by an act of Parliament which prohibited all intercourse between Hayti and Jamaica! When Mr. Canning recognized the independence of Spanish America, no mention was made of Hayti, which at last was in consequence forced to compromise with France. As late as 1825 an act was passed declaring the forfeiture of any British ship, with its cargo, which should sail from Jamaica to St. Domingo or from St. Domingo to Jamaica, and forbidding any foreign ship that had touched at St. Domingo to enter any port of Jamaica. So powerful was West India sentiment in both Houses of Parliament! Yet the planters never dared to try to obtain any act that should directly legitimate slavery.

The American lawyers who wrote and spoke in the interest of the slaveholders were well aware that slavery rested on no other basis than custom and local law. Henry Clay, in 1839, summed up the argument thus: "Two hundred years of legislation have sanctified (!) and sanctioned negro slaves as property." But no early American colony passed any enactment to originate the relation of master and slave; they did but assume the relation and make laws to secure or regulate it. No slaveholder was able to prove in court that a particular man or woman was his slave according to law. Hence Mr. Mason, of Virginia, when the Fugitive Slave Bill was pending, resisted the claim of trial by jury, because it would bring up the question of the legality of slavery, which (he said) it would be impossible to prove! On this ground, Congress struck out the jury trial!

When the question came on in the British Parliament concerning the slave trade, Mr. Pitt cited the act (23 George II.), and insisted that it was a direct prohibition of the slave trade in the fact that it prohibited fraud and violence; and it gradually become impossible to hold any other view. Mr. Canning, in 1799, signalized himself by his usual eloquence, of which some sentences must be here recorded: "Trust not the masters of slaves in legislation for slavery. However specious their laws may appear, depend upon it they must be ineffectual in their operation. It is in the nature of things that they should be so. Let then the British House of Commons do their part themselves. Let them not delegate the trust of doing it to those who cannot execute that trust fairly. Let the evil be remedied by an assembly of freemen, by the government of a free people, not by the masters of slaves. Their laws can never reach the evil. There is something in the nature of absolute authority, in the relation between master and slave, which makes despotism in all cases and in all circumstances an incompetent and unsure executor even of its own provisions in favor of the object of its power." Of course, this presumed that the masters did not wish to get rid of their despotism. Mr. Canning knew the West Indies too well. His words were sadly justified in the sequel. Yet it was not given to the Tory party to abolish even the slave trade. The West Indian interest was to them then nearly what the publican interest is now. Mr. Pitt died in January 1806, broken-hearted by the successes of Napoleon, and Lord Grenville succeeded him as prime minister, with Fox (ever the advocate of peace) as foreign secretary, who, in June, moved a resolution against the slave trade. But he was