Page:Thorpe (1819) A commentary on the treaties.pdf/56

52 in life, and left' without a consolation but in death; and all this continued after the whole civilized world have declared their abhorrence of this trafﬁc in human beings. The promise of the delinquent may be nugatory, but a pledge from the combined alliance to arrest the delinquency is too sacred for delusion ! !

If a white man is caught in Africa by the natives, he is enslaved, and we consider this a certain mark of their barbarous condition, but when a black man is found at the Havanna or in the Brazils, and sold to slavery, we are told he is a negro brute, ﬁt only to be a slave, and that the blacks are used as such by all civilized nations: when the Africans carry from the coasts of Sicily and Italy the white inhabitants and sell them to slavery, the depredators are denominated pirates, and if seized punished as such; but if a Spaniard or a Portuguese carries from the coast of Africa the black inhabitants and sells them to slavery, it is considered a legitimate trade, in which if any person presumes to interrupt him, the interloper shall, by an august mixed tribunal of judges and arbitrators of different civilized nations, be punished with heavy damages; the crime of piracy is deﬁned by the law of nations, but I never heard of any law, which directed the guilt or innocence of the perpetrator, to be regulat-