1807-1815. GREAT BRITAIN AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

13

It was, in short, a state colonization law, and under it a host of men who had long been seeking grants of land at last obtained their contracts, and the settlement of Texas by citizens of the United States began in serious earnest.*

While citizens of the United States were thus planting slave colonies in Texas, Great Britain was striving to enlist the United States in an international effort to destroy the slave-trade. To break up this shameful traffic had long been part of British foreign policy. As early as 1807 † Parliament had absolutely forbidden it within the dominions of the British Crown, and from that day forward no treaty was made with any foreign power without an effort to bind the contracting party to take some steps toward the suppression or at least the limitation of the African slave-trade. Between 1810 and 1814 she secured such treaties from Portugal, Denmark, and Sweden; persuaded the Netherlands by royal decree to abolish the slave-trade; induced Spain to limit it to her own colonies; bound France to abolish it within five years; and obtained from the French Government a solemn promise to aid her in persuading the allies when they met in the Congress of Vienna "to decree the abolition of the slave-trade so that it should cease universally and forever."

When that Congress met in 1814, France and Spain refused to go further than they had already gone, and, as the other powers hesitated to press them, little was accomplished. Yet that little was a distinct gain. It was agreed that an an nual conference should be held on the subject, and a declaration was made that all civilized nations demanded the suppression of this traffic in human beings as soon as possible, and that till it was stopped the allied sovereigns would not consider their work done.

This pledge was, if possible, made more binding still by an additional article to the definitive treaty signed at Paris on November thirtieth, 1815. The high contracting parties

Among the grants then made were: April 15, 1825, Robert Leftwich, 200 families; April 18, 1825, Hayden Edwards, 800 families; June 4, 1825, Stephen Austin, 500 families; October 6, 1825, Green Dewitt, 300 families; October 6, 1825, Martin de Leon, 150 families.

+ Statute 46 George III, ch. 52, 119; 47 George III, sess. I, ch. 36.

then declared that they had in their respective dominions prohibited their colonies and their subjects from taking any part in the slave-trave, and agreed to concert by their ministers at the court of London the most effective measures for the entire abolition of "the traffic so odious and so highly reproved by the laws of religion and Nature."

To neither of these solemn engagements would Spain or Portugal consent to be a party. Their flags, therefore, at once became the cover for a trade more cruel, more extensive, and more defiant than ever before. Slavers now came in brigs and swift-sailing schooners, well armed, well manned, and flying the flags of Portugal and Spain, and scoured the coast from Sherbro and the Gallinas to Cape Appolonia. Many of them were American privateers of the late war, and in more than one encounter beat off the Princess Charlotte, one of the armed vessels Great Britain kept on the coast. Another sent an insolent challenge to the Prince Regent to meet her. Others were not taken till a desperate engagement had been fought. Others, by sailing in company, were enabled to defy any force that could be brought against them. The Governor of Sierra Leone declared, in 1817, that the slave-trade was raging dreadfully. All commerce was stopped, as no vessel with negro sailors dared venture to sea.

In this state of affairs Great Britain, in 1817, under the treaty of Paris, invited the Ministers of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France to a conference, and concluded conventions with Portugal and Spain. Each agreed to the abolition of the slave-trade north of the equator at once, and south of the line at a time in the near future. Just when, Portugal would not say; but Spain fixed the time as May thirtieth, 1820.

In December, 1817, the ministers met at London. Castlereagh reminded them that since the treaty of 1815 the slave-trade had greatly revived; that it had been attended with new horrors caused by the dreadful crowding of slaves into ships not intended for the transportation of human beings, but for escape from armed cruisers; and that Great Britain had made earnest effort to crush the growing evil, but had found the difficulties almost irrepressible. In the first place, the right of search, which was a belligerent

1815.

SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE.

15

right, had ceased with the war, and it had been found that unless the right was renewed and exercised in visiting ships engaged in this illicit trade, the trade would go on more prosperously than ever. In the second place, fraudulent papers were obtained so easily and real ownership hidden so adroitly that it was possible for the subject of any State to carry on the slave-trade while it remained legal for the subjects of any State. He proposed, therefore, that the five powers represented should frame a convention and agree to prohibit the importation of slaves into their dominion; to make the trafficking in slaves by their subjects a criminal offence; and to allow to their war ships the right to visit vessels suspected to be slavers; and that Portugal and Brazil should be urged to abolish the trade after May twentieth, 1820.

These propositions were at once sent off by the plenipotentiaries to their courts; but no answer was made till the second annual conference of the powers at Aix-la-Chapelle in October, 1818.

Meantime Castlereagh turned to the United States, and in June, 1818, transmitted to Richard Rush, our Minister in London, copies of treaties for the suppression of the slavetrade which Great Britain had concluded with Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and formally invited the United States to join in like arrangements. But the thing was not to be thought of. The convention into which she would have us enter provided for mixed courts to be established in the colonial possessions of one of the parties. The United States had no colonies, nor was it clear that under the Constitution Congress could set up a court to execute its penal laws beyond its territorial limits a court too whose judges were partly foreigners, who could not be removed by impeachment for corruption, and from whose decisions, even under the laws of the United States, there was no appeal. The convention would have provided again for a reciprocal right of search by such armed vessels of the two powers as might have especial authority and instructions. The admission of the right of search in time of peace for any purpose whatever would have raised a storm of indignation which no President and no party could then have withstood. For these reasons, there