Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/268

 citizen of the United States, should land on any foreign shore, to seize any negro, or mulatto, not held to service by the laws of either of the states or territories of the United States, with intent to make him a slave, or should decoy forcibly carry off such negro, or mulatto, or receive him on board any such vessel, with the intent aforesaid, he should be adjudged a pirate, and, on conviction, should suffer death. The same penalty was extended to those of the ship's company who should aid in confining such negro, or mulatto, on board of such vessel, or transfer him, on the sea or tide-water, to any other ship or vessel, or land him, with intent to sell, or having previously sold him.

In Denmark, king Christian VII., in 1794, declared the slave-trade unlawful after January 1, 1804; and Frederic VI. promised, at the peace of Tilsit, to prohibit his subjects from taking pare in the foreign slave-trade. In France, Napoleon, when first consul, promised the continuance of their liberty to the inhabitants of St. Domingo, whilst he praised the inhabitants of Isle de France for not having freed their slaves, and promised that France would never again decree the slavery of the whites by the liberation of the negroes. After the successes of the French on St. Domingo, the slave-trade was once more established. In 1814, Lord Castlereagh obtained from Louis XVIII. a promise that France would abolish the slave-trade; but, by the influence of the chamber of commerce at Nantes, this traffic was permitted for five years more. Public opinion obliged Lord Castlereagh to press upon the congress of Vienna the adoption of general measures for the abolition of the slave-trade; but all that he could effect was that Spain and Portugal promised to give up the slavetrade north of the line. — See the treaty between England and Portugal, Vienna, January 22, 1815. But a paper was drawn up and signed by Castlereagh, Stewart, Wellington, Nesselrode, Lowenhielm, Gomez Labrador, Palmella, Saldanha, Lobo, Humboldt, Metternich and Talleyrand, (Vienna, February 8, 1815,) stating that the great powers would make arrangements to fix a term for the general abolition of the slave-trade, since public opinion condemned it as a stain on European civilization. February 6, 1815, Portugal provided for the total abolition of the slave-trade on January 21, 1823, and England promised to pay £300,000 as an indemnification to Portuguese subjects. Louis XVIII., by the treaty of Paris, November 20, 1815, consented to its immediate abolition, for which Napoleon had declared himself prepared, in April, 1815. Spain promised, by the treaty of September 30, 1817, to abolish the slave-trade entirely, October 31, 1820, in all the Spanish territories, even south of the line; and England, February 9, 1818, paid £400,000 as an indemnification to Spanish subjects. The king of the Netherlands prohibited his subjects from taking part in the slave-trade after the provisions of the treaty of August 13, 1814, had been rendered more precise and extensive by the treaty concluded with England, at the Hague, May 4, 1818. Sweden had already done the same, according to the treaty of March 3, 1813. The United States engaged, in the treaty of Ghent, December 24, 1814, to do all in their power for the entire suppression of the slave-trade. November 23, 1826,