that the stream of general liberty will flow for ever, unpolluted, through the foul mire of partial bondage, or that they who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not in time be base enough to let others lord it over them. If they resist, it will be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principles

There is no maxim in politics more evidently just, than that laws should be relative to the principle of government. But is the encouragement of civil slavery, by legislative acts, correspondent with the principle of a democracy?-Call that principle what you will, the love of equality, as defined by some-of liberty, as understood by others, such conduct is manifestly in violation of it

To leave the principle of a government to its own operation, without attempting either to favor or undermine it, is often dangerous; but to make such direct attacks upon it by striking at the very root, is the perfection of crooked policy. Hear what has been said on this point, by the noblest instructer that ever informed a statesman.

"In despotic countries," says MONTESQUIEU, "where they are already in a state of political slavery, civil slavery is more tolerable than in other governments. Every one ought there to be contented with necessaries and with life. Hence the condition of a slave is hardly more burthensome than that of a subject. But in a monarchical government, where it is of the utmost consequence that human nature should not be debased or dispirited; there ought to be no slavery. In democracies, where they are all upon an equality, and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to endeavor to make them so, as far as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution; it only contributes to give a power and luxury the citizens which they ought not to possess."

Such must have been the idea in England, when the general voice of the nation demanded the repeal of the statute of Edward VI, two years after its passage, by which their rogues and vagabonds were to be enslaved for their punishment. It could not have been compassion for the culprits that excited this aversion to the law, for they deserved none. But the spirit of the people could not brook the idea of bondage, even as a penalty judicially inflicted. They dreaded its consequences-they abhorred the example.-In a word, they reverenced public liberty, and hence detested every species of slavery. Sir, the thing is impolitic in another respect. Nev ever will your country be productive; never will its agriculture, its commerce, or its manufactures flourish, so long as they depend on reluctant bondmen for their progress.

"Even the earth itself," (says the same celebrated author,) “which teems with profusion under the cultivating hand of the freeborn laborer, shrinks into barrenness from the contaminating sweat of a slave." This sentiment is not more figuratively beautiful than sub stantially just.

Survey the countries, sir, where the hand of freedom conducts the ploughshare, and compare their produce with yours. Your granaries in this view appear like the storehouses of emmets, though not sup

plied with equal industry. To trace the cause of this disparity, between the fruits of a freeman's voluntary labors, animated by the hope of profit, and the slow-paced efforts of a slave, who acts from compulsion only-who has no incitement to exertion but fear, no prospect of remuneration to encourage would be insulting the understanding. The cause and the effect are too obvious to escape

observation.

It has been said "that freed men are the convenient tools of usurpation:" and I have heard allusions made to history for the confirmation of this opinion Let, however, the records of ancient and modern events be scrutinized, and I will venture my belief, that no instance can be found to give sanction to any such idea.

In Rome, it was clearly otherwise. We have the evidence of Tiberius Gracchus, confirmed by Cicero, and approved by Montesquieu, that the incorporation of the freed men into the city tribes, reanimated the drooping spirit of democracy in that republic, and checked the career of patrician influence.

So far, therefore, were properly made emancipations from contributing to the downfall of Rome, that they clearly served to procrastinate her existence, by restoring that equipoise in the constitution which an ambitious aristocracy were perpetually laboring to destroy.

How much more rational, Mr. Speaker, would it be to argue that slaves are the fit machines by which an usurper might effect his purposes! and there is, therefore, nothing which a free government ought more to dread than a diffusive private bondage within its territory

A promise of manumission might rouse every bondman to arms, under the conduct of an aspiring leader; and invited by the fascinating prospect of freedom, they might raise such a storm in Maryland as it would be difficult to appease Survey the conduct of the slaves who fought against Hannibal in the second punic war. Relying on the assurances of the senate, who had embodied them with the Roman legions, that conquest should give them liberty, not a man disgraced himself by flight; but though new, perhaps, to the field of battle, they contended with the resolution of veterans.-With the same promptitude and intrepidity would they have turned their arms against the senate themselves, if the same assurances had been given them by enterprising citizens who sought their destruction from motives of ambition or revenge. The love of liberty is inherent in human nature. To stifle or annihilate it, though not impossible, is yet difficult to be accomplished. Easy to be wrought upon, as well as powerful and active in its exertions, wherever it is not gratified there is danger. Gratify it, and you ensure your safety. Thus did Sylla think, who, before he abdicated the dictatorship, gave freedom to ten thousand slaves, and lands to a number of legions. By these means was he enabled, notwithstanding all his preceding enormities, to live unmolested as a private citizen, in the bosom of that very country where he had acted the most hateful deeds of cruelty and usurpation. For, by manumitting these slaves, the usurper secured their fidelity.

and attachment for ever, and disposed them to support and revenge his cause at every possible hazard. Rome knew this, and therefore Sylla was secure in his retirement.

This example shows that slaves are the proper, natural implements of usurpation, and therefore a serious and alarming evil in every free community. With much to hope for by a change, and nothing to lose, they have no fears of consequences. Despoiled of their rights by the acts of government and its citizens, they have no checks of pity, or of conscience, but are stimulated by the desire of revenge, to spread wide the horrors of desolation, and to subvert the foundation of that liberty of which they have never participated, and which they have only been permitted to envy in others.

But where slaves are manumitted by government, or in consequence of its provisions, the same motives which have attached them to tyrants, when the act of emancipation has flowed from them, would then attach them to government. They are then no longer the creatures of despotism. They are bound by gratitude, as well as by interest, to seek the welfare of that country from which they have derived the restoration of their plundered rights, and with whose prosperity their own is inseparably involved. All apostacy from these principles, which form the good citizen, would, under such circumstances, be next to impossible. When we see freed men scru

pulously faithful to a lawless, abandoned villain, from whom they have received their liberty, can we suppose that they will reward the like bounty of a free government with the turbulence of faction, or the seditious plots of treason? He who best knows the value of a blessing, is generally the most assiduous in its preservation; and no man is so competent to judge of that value as he from whom the blessing has deen detained. Hence the man that has felt the yoke of bondage must for ever prove the asserter of freedom, if he is fairly admitted to the equal enjoyment of its benefits.-Speech in the Maryland House of Delegates, 1789.

WARNER MIFFLIN.

A serious expostulation with the members of the House of Represent. atives of the United States.-But whether you will hear or forbear, I think it my duty to tell you plainly, that I believe that the blood of the slain, and the oppression exercised in Africa, promoted by Americans, and in this country also, will stick to the skirts of every individual of your body, who exercise the powers of legislation, and do not exert their talents to clear themselves of this abomination, when they shall be arraigned before the tremendous bar of the judgment seat of Him who will not fail to do right, in rendering unto every man his due ; even Him who early declared, "at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man ;" before whom the natural black skin of the body will never occasion such degradation. I desire to ap

proach you with proper and due respect, in the temper of a Christian, and the firmness of a veteran American freeman, to plead the cause of injured innocence, and open my mouth for my oppressed brethren, who cannot open theirs for themselves. I ask no pecuniary advantage for myself; neither post nor pension. I feel the sweets of American liberty; I trust I am sensible of, and thankful for the favor; and am not easy to partake of mine so partially, and see, and hear, and know of my brethren and fellow mortals being so arbitrarily and cruelly deprived of theirs, and not enter my protest. I desire to have this favor and blessing continued to myself and posterity, and cannot but view the tenure, both to myself and countrymen, as very precarious, while a plea is founded on the general constitution, in bar of the rights of man, and the equal distribution of justice being confirmed; that the views of a righteous government would be to promote the welfare of mankind universally, as well those of other nations, as the subjects or citizens of its own; and, therefore, that it is obligatory on the United States, to prevent the citizens thereof injuring the inhabitants of Africa, as those of one state the citizens of another; and I doubt not, in the least, if Africa was in a situation to send fleets and armies here to retaliate, but congress would soon devise means, without violating the constitution, to prevent our citizens from aggravating them. The almost daily accounts I have of the inhumanity perpetrated in these states, on this race of men, distresses me night and day, and brings the subject of the slave-trade with more pressure on my spirit; and I believe I feel a measure of the same obligation that the prophet did when he was ordered to "cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, aud show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins." And here I think I can show that our nation is revolting from the law of God, the law of reason and humanity, and the just principles of govern ment, and with rapid strides establishing tyranny and oppression. In a pamphlet, entitled "Observations on the American Revolution," published by order of Congress, in 1779, the following sentiments are declared to the world, viz:

The great principle (of government) is and ever will remain in force, that men are by nature free; as accountable to him that made them, they must be so; and so long as we have any idea of divine justice, we must associate that of human freedom. Whether men can part with their liberty, is among the questions which have exercised the ablest writers; but it is concluded on all hands, that the right to be free can never be alienated-still less is it practicable for one generation to mortgage the privileges of another.

Humane petitions have been presented to excite in congress benevolent feelings for the sufferings of our fellow-citizens under cruel bondage to the Turks and Algerines, and that the national power and influence might be exerted for their relief; with this virtuous application I unite, but lament that any of my countrymen, who are distinguished as men eminently qualified for public stations,

should be so enslaved by illiberal prejudice as to treat with contempt a like solicitude for another class of men still more grievously oppressed.

I profess freely, and am willing my profession was known over the world, that I feel the calls of humanity as strong towards an African in America, as an American in Algiers, both being my brethren ; especially as I am informed the Algerine treats his slave with more humanity; and I believe the sin of oppression on the part of the American is greatest in the sight of the Father of the family of mankind.

I hope some will excuse my inserting, in this apologetic expostulation, a few texts of scripture as they revive-I trust there are some of our rulers who yet believe in the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures; what revives now, is the declaration of our Lord, Matt. 25th chapter and 41st verse: “Then shall he say also to them on the left hand, depart from me ye cursed," &c. They also shall answer him, saying "When saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?" His answer then you may read, "Inasmuch as you did it not to the least of these, ye did it not to me."

WARNER MIFFLIN.

Kent County, Delaware, 2d of 1st mo. 1793.

WILLIAM EATON.

[The Tunisians had captured nine hundred and twenty Sardinian slaves, of whom General Eaton thus makes mention :]

"Many have died of grief, and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death. Alas-remorse seizes my whole soul when I reflect, that this is indeed but a copy of the very barbarity which my eyes have seen in my own native country. And yet we boast of liberty and national justice. How frequently in the southern states of my own country, have I seen weeping mothers leading the guiltless infant to the sales with as deep anguish as if they led them to the slaughter; and yet felt my bosom tranquil in the view of these aggressions on defenceless humanity. But when I see the same enormities practised upon beings whose complexions and blood claim kindred with my own, I curse the perpetrators, and weep over the wretched victims of their rapacity. Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession, that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa, are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among professing Christians of civilized America; and yet here sensibility bleeds at every pore for the wretches whom fate has doomed to slavery."-Letter to his wife.