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Show 208 DESl'OTISl\[ the point has been directly raised. For it is to be noted, that, until quite recently, the court~ even of ~he slave-holding states have exhibited no httle ala~r~ty jn giving freedom to individuals, and .even to ~am!IJCs claimed to be held as slaves, speakmg out 111 such cases very warmly for liberty, and exhibiting evident gusto and sat.isfaction in knocking ofr the fetters .. It has only been in cases likely to prove too sweep1ng as precedents, cases involving principles comprehensive enough to give freedom to large numbers, that this judicial tendency in favor of liberty has been checked. 'rhc case above referred to was that of a girl born in slavery in the I sland of Antigua. She had been brought to Englapd, but whether from igno.rance or want of inclination had failed to claim her l1berty there, and had returned to Antigua, where she was still hclJ as a slave. 'l"'he circumstance, however, that she had been in England, was presently set up as having made her free; and since the local courts :vould not recognize the claim, to give her and others ll1 her condition the chance of an English adjudication, without the heavy expenses of an ordinary appeal, (if indeed it were possible, by the ordinary course of appeal, to carry such a case to England,) she was libelled in the Vice Admiralty Court of Antigua, as having been introduced into that island as a slave, contrary to the acts abolishing the slave trade; and the local admiralty judge having decided against her, the case ca.me before Lord Stowell by appeal. It was but a decent regard for appearances for an English judge in Lord Stowell's position, and especially one about to make such a decision as he did, to mdulge in some flourishes on the subject of liberty, wl~icl~ I_Jis lordship did very cheaply, and with a sort of JUdlcJal demngoguism sufficiently common both in En;sla~ld aud America, by breaking out into a burst of wdl~nation that a per~on claiming to be free should sutler herself to be libelled as an illegally introduced. sla~e ! -when, without resorting to any such hum11Iat~ ng method of vindicating her rights, she had nothing IN AMERJCA, 209 to do but to claim to be free, and to act as such! As if such a d~im made in Antigua, as it then was, would have availed poor Grace! As if my lord did not perfectly well know why a procedure in the Admiralty Court had been resorted to! Stowell had gained the reputaUon of a" consumma~ e. judge," b,r a scri~s of learned. and ingenious dectswns, by which, during the war between France and England, be had zealously, and, accordina to a common enough view of such matters, patriotic~liy labored to secure to the merchants of England a much coveted monopoly of ocean commerce- an object which he had accomplished by giving to a few questionable old precedents, and especially to an arbitrary rule introduced by England during the war of 1756, the character of the Law of Nations, and on that ground, justifying the wholesale capture and plunder of American and other neutral vessels, trading between France and her colonies. As was natural enough for such a judge, he did not at all share in the sentiment then fast spreading in England against negro slavery; indeed, he was eager to give to that crumblil)g institution all the support of his professional reputation. Yet he felt obliged to admit, however good a thing slavery might be, that the practice of dragging back into it those who had once enjoyed the blessings of freedom, had been attended by lamentable consequences. "Persons, though possessed of independence and affluence, acquired in the mother country, have, upon a return to t he colonies, been held and treated as slaves, and the unfortunate descendants of these persons, jf boru within the colony, have come slaves into the world, and, in some instances, have suflerecl all the consequences of real slavery." Yet in the eyes of such a man as Stowell, what ~~re the.se agonies of oppressed humanity in competition With the necessity of giving to the holders o: property a 8entiment of security, and especially to the holders of property in men, attacked at that moment by so many wicked or thoughtless abolitionists 1 18. . |