Page:The African Slave Trade (Clark).djvu/71

 traffic from the roll of her commerce. Sovereign of vast territories, she has decreed that no lave shall breathe the air of her realms.

Her diplomatic influence has been used to arouse their governments to a sense of their duty, and secure their coöperation in this great work of humanity. For years she has, at great expense, sustained her cruisers along the coast of Africa, and Lear the West Indies, to break up the vile traffic. She has poured out her money like water, in the cause, having, in 1833, borrowed twenty millions of pounds, to purchase the freedom of slaves in her colonies, and up to 1843, having expended fifteen millions of pounds sterling in payment to foreign governments and courts, to effect the extinction of the lave trade.

Had the other European nations come up to the work as they ought to have done, and had the good beginning made in America been prosecuted with a perseverance and zeal commensurate with the growth of our national power, and the increase of our educational and religious privileges, this great wickedless might have been annihilated.

And why has America retrograded? What has chilled her heart, and palsied her energies, and made her pause in the career of fame and glory? What has blinded the eyes of her citizens to their true interests, corrupted her government, struck dumb he ministers at the altar, and clothed oppression nth such power?