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 been the state of the public mind, in the past, on the question before us.

But the inquiry is made, how far the laws against the slave trade, passed by Great Britain, the United States, and other nations, were successful in suppressing the traffic.

As we have already intimated, the answer to this question opens a melancholy chapter in the history of human nature. But before entering upon it, we can not but pay a passing tribute to the noble philanthropy of Great Britain, and to the efforts of our ancestors to sweep from the earth the curse of the traffic in human beings.

Whatever may have been the course of England in regard to her other great national interests, we must allow, that in her hostility to slavery and the slave trade, she has been firm, consistent, and self-sacrificing; and deserves the hearty applause of the civilized world. She has grappled with this evil boldly, manfully, as under a solemn consciousness of her obligations to society, and accountability to God. Mistress of the seas, she has struck this