or three different systems of policy have been adopted-others have been contemplated. Dreams have been dreamed-visions have been seen-bold imaginations have been put forth-and then men have marvelled that the slave trade did not cease! We think it is not strange that it still continues. And we propose impartially to examine the leading policies which have been adopted for the suppression of this fearful evil; and thence to draw the inference that the one which has done and promises to do the most, demands the cordial support of every friend of the human race.

There are three principal schemes advocated in different circles. 1st. The employment of a naval force. 2d. The destruction of slavery, and thus to cut off the demand for slaves. 3d. The Colonization of the African coast, and regeneration of the native tribes.

A few facts connected with each of these schemes may serve to show their relative importance.

1st. It will be recollected that in 1807 and 1808 a strong effort was made to put an end to the slave trade. The American Congress laid hold of the subject with a giant grasp. That body of noble minded men showed an anxious desire to put an end to the trade at the earliest hour the Constitution would permit. Certain acts were passed, and a plan was agreed upon between the American and British Governments, in which the French, Spanish, and Portuguese, were aftewards included.

That plan confined the right of search and seizure, and bringing into port for condemnation, ships taken in this employment, to the cruisers of the United States and of Great Britain. It was thought, however, that some good effect would result from holding out a strong inducement to the officers commanding men-of-war to capture slavers. Hence a bounty was offered in order to quicken their diligence and zeal in the performance of this excellent office. They were allowed not only to share in the captured vessel as a prize, but also to receive five pounds per head for every slave taken on board.

Now let us mark how this additional inducement has operated. It did not relax the diligence of those who commanded the cruisers against those desperate miscreants to whose hands this traffic of murder and felony was intrusted. It did not make them less vigilant in watching the slave ships —but it did make them unwilling to capture an empty vessel. For the purpose of obtaining the largest possible sum of head-money, the cruisers had a direct and evident interest in not seizing the slave ship till she had gone into port and gotten her cargo of slaves on board. It is the clear interest of the cruisers that the slave ship should have a full cargo of "heads"-that she should sail from the African coast-and that till then she should not be captured. The vessel goes toward the coast fitted up with all the horrid means of carrying on this felonious traffic. She has abundance of chains and fetters for the intended victims-and all the infernale of a slave ship. She is allowed to make her way unmolested toward the coast.

No step is taken by the cruisers to prevent the captives

from being put on board. Of late there has been one or two exceptions. But as a universal rule the cruisers do not go to the port where the slaver is about to take in slaves. The practice is for the cruiser to lie off so far that she can barely keep the harbor in sight, while she herself cannot be seen from the harbor. There she watches the slaver, while committing the crime of tearing these poor creatures from the land that gave them birth.

If it were as profitable for the cruiser to take the slaver empty as full, can we believe she would thus lie still and see the work of death commence in circumstances when she could easily and certainly arrest it? If the only motive by which the cruiser is governed is to break up the traffic and save the children of Africa in their own land, would she allow the slaver quietly to take his cargo on board, weigh his anchor, spread his canvass to the breeze, and take his chance upon the broad ocean, with a vessel built expressly for speed?

Here then we see one radical defect in this scheme. Until the award of head-money is taken away, and the cruisers made to act upon a high sense of duty and an inveterate horror of the slave trade, and an invincible determination to break it up, nothing of good will be accomplished. Even more than this is manifestly true. Under the clumsy and preposterous course which has been adopted, this disgraceful traffic has become more and more flourishing, more and more extensive, and more and more cruelties have been perpetrated.

It is only necessary here to state the fact that the slave trade has been increasing rapidly during the last few years. In a single year eighty-five slave ships were fitted out at the Havana, seventy-five of which returned safely with cargoes on board varying from one hundred and fifty to seven hundred and eighty to each vessel.

Do the slavers never escape? A more pertinent question would be, are they ever caught?

A remark ought to be made in this connexion in regard to the effect of a capture on the slaves in the ship. Is their condition made better? Are they essentially benefitted? This certainly admits of doubt. One would think that in justice they ought to be restored to their homes and their friends in Africa, and have appropriated to their benefit the vessel and goods on board. But a policy far otherwise prevails. If the slaver is caught in the neighborhood of the Islands, the treaty between England and Spain provides that the vessel shall be taken into port to be tried by the court of "mixed commissions," that is, half British and half Spanish, and if she is condemned the captives are taken by the laws of Spain, made under the treaty, and apprenticed out on the plantations of the neighborhood. They are instructed, by the priests, in religion, and after a certain time, are baptised and receive christian names. When the time of their apprenticeship has expired, the priests always report the captive Africans dead and buried, (deal to their old name, and buried in baptism,) while the fact is,

that under their new names they have been actually sold into perpetual slavery. So their condition is ultimately the same as if they had never been captured by the cruiser. What then has been gained to the cause of benevolence, humanity and freedom, by this operation? Nothing! But on the contrary the world has been convinced that all such efforts to put down the slave trade, originate in selfishness, and that those engaged in making them, are satisfied when the head-money is obtained.

If the slaver is caught on the African coast, the poor victims on board fare no better. She is carried to Sierra Leone, and, if condemned, the officers receive their five pounds a head for all the slaves on board. But the slaves-are they carried back to their own part of the coast, or sent to their own tribe? By no means. A part of them, all who are well built and of good constitution, are enlisted in the British army, and in a few months they are taught to turn their toes out and carry their head and shoulders erect, and are first-rate British soldiers, and from that day till the day of their death they cannot call themselves their own-they are to all intents and purposes the bond-slaves of the British Government.

But the inferior men and the women and children on board, are sold for about $1.50 each, to an apprenticeship of seven years in the Sierra Leone Colony, and very few of them are to be found there when their time is out. It is known to be a fact, that many of them are carried across to the Bullom shore, where are always to be found petty slave traders who belong to, or communicate with, the large factories on the coast, who buy them, and they are soon again shipped on board the slaver; and all the good done to them by the capture is, to give them the privilege of undergoing the torture of reshipment and a second exposure.

How many of those who are apprenticed out are thus sold again to the slaver, we have not the means of knowing. There are, however, reasons While the commander of one

for believing that the number is very large. of our men-of-war was at Sierra Leone, there was one man taken on board a slaver, who proved to the satisfaction of the court that he had been recaptured four times. Three times then he must have been apprenticed out, and three times carried to the Bullom shore and sold to the slaver!

A gentleman of great respectability and unimpeachable veracity, while at the Havana last spring, went on board a slave ship that had just arrived from the coast of Africa with a large cargo of slaves. Passing among them he heard several speaking the English language. Surprised at this. he inquired where they were from, and was answered from the "Colony of Sierra Leone." There they were, with all the marks of native born Africans, speaking the English language, and yet captives brought from Africa on board of a slave ship!

We must again put the question, what benefit is there in a capture? What does the cause of humanity gain? What does Africa gain? What actual good is accomplished by the cruisers engaged in this service? We see it is no part of their plan to restore the captive African to his home!

They do not endeavor to convince the natives that it is wrong to sell their kith and kin." They do not lighten the woes to which the captives are subject. What good then, in the name of humanity, what good do they perform? Is one tear less shed? Is one groan less heard, or one sigh less heaved? Who can tell? Who that can, may.

But we pass on to consider the manner in which all such efforts to break up this traffic increases its horrors, and inevitably exasperates the miseries to which its unhappy victims are subjected.

From the peculiar policy pursued by the cruisers, the only or the chief danger to the slaver is in being run down in a fair chase and thus caught. Hence the great object in the construction and outfitting of a slave ship is swiftness of sailing. To this end every other consideration is sacrificed. Any thing like comfort or humanity for the slaves never enters into the thought of those who are engaged in this mystery of iniquity. The vessel is not constructed on the principle necessary for carrying passengers. She is made as narrow as possible-being only broad enough to give her a hold of the water with her sails set. Her between-decks is, indeed must be, so narrow, that the slaves have to be forced in by absolute pressure, as if they were dead goods. Jammed thus into the smallest, tightest place possible, the miseries they endure are unutterable!

Who then does not see that if this system of operations was altered or abandoned, the slavers would be built differently, more room would be allowed, and the health and comfort of the slaves on board vastly promoted?

This brings us to another part of this enormous system of robbery and murder. When a slaver is chased by a cruiser and is in danger of being seized, she must be lightened. And as the slaves on board are less valuable than any other part of the cargo, the heaviest of them are thrown overboard first. If more is necessary in trying to escape the pursuing cruiser, men, women and children are hurried overboard without remorse, and in numbers proportionate to the danger. In some instances, when seizure becomes certain, every slave on board is thrown over, in the hope that the cruiser finding no chance for head-money will let her pass, and then she can return to port, take on board another cargo, and try again. The slaves are thrown over with the fetters that were placed on them before they were brought on board. To lessen the chance of their escape, they are sometimes cast in, fetters and all, in large companies. And to insure their sinking before the cruiser can come and pick them up, weights are sometimes added to sink them immediately.

But this is not the only mode of lightening the vessel. Often three or four slaves are crowded into a cask, which is thrown over with weights attached to it. One vessel threw over twelve such casks before she was captured. One vessel had five hundred slaves on board and threw them all over. These scenes occur principally on the Western African station. And it is said that even the sharks know this field of blood-shed; they are often known to follow the slave ship from the port; and the track of that

ship could be traced across the Atlantic by the blood of its murdered victims hurled into the occan to facilitate escape from its pursuers. What multiplied atrocities attend this horrid system! Sometimes disease arises from their crowded and confined condition, and whole companies of them die. And often when one or two of a company of fettered slaves die on board, the corpse is left bound to the survivors, so that they realize the very last infliction of the horrific, as described by the great Roman poet: "Mortua quin etiam gungebat corpora vivis."

If we were asked to what we ascribe these enormities, we would reply, to the system of allowing head-money on the recapture of slaves. Take this away, and the cruisers will go and blockade the ports and seize the slavers as they are coming in, or before the slaves are taken on board; and thus these victims of cruelty and death will be left in their own country or remove entirely the cruisers from the Atlantic, and the slaves will have comparatively a safe and happy passage.

If we mistake not we have established incontrovertibly, that this whole system, pursued for the suppression of the slave trade, is fundamentally in error, and can never attain the desired end. As prosecuted thus far, it has only increased the amount, and immeasurably aggravated the miseries, of the traffic. The whole policy then had better be changed or abolished entirely. We can entertain no reasonable expectations of overturning this gigantic evil through its agency. Erroneous in itself, its operations must always be attended with disappointment and disaster. We are driven to the fearful conviction that it is in a great degree responsible for the extent of the trade, and intensity of its miseries and the awful havoc it makes of human life.

We are therefore led to inquire, is there not some other system which can be adopted with better prospects of success?

2. This brings us to consider the second scheme which has been proposed, viz. The destruction of slavery in order to cut off the demand for slaves.

Here, however, the specific plans of operation are so indefinite, and the deas of their advocates so confused, that it is difficult to ascertain precisely what they intend. There is only one fact on record in the premises-one substantial reality that we can take hold of and reason about; and that is, the British emancipation act in the West Indies. In regard to this we may remark that, thus far, certainly, it has not had any beneficial influence on the slave trade; for, it has not in the least diminished the demand for slave labor. On this point the London Quarterly Review for March, 1839, holds this language: "the slave emancipation has given an extraordinary impulse to the slave trade, and weakened the hopes of seeing it crushed." On this same point BUXTON remarks: "strange as it may seem, this trade is rendered more active, and the demand for slaves increased, not only by the operation of the law for its suppression, but by the emancipation act for the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies."