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Show 2:26 RETURN TO AMERICA. the land, and to go free-that, after a long negociation compensation was made by our Government for tho:e which were on board the Cornet and Encomium, and refused for those in the Enterprise-and that this distinction was grounded on the circumstance that the two former cases had occurred before, and the last case, after the British act of Emancipation. J. C. Calhoun's argument on the subject is Loth interesting and ingenious. In the first place he plainly shows it to be a settled point, in the law of nations, that when vessels belonging to any nation, are driven by stress of weather into the ports, or on to the coasts, of a friendly power, the agents of that power are bound to protect the property which they contain, and to deliver it up or make compensation for it, to its rightful owners. He then argues that the law of nations cannot change with the municipal laws of individual states; and therefore, that if Great Britain was bound by the above mentioned principle of international jurisprudence, to make compensation for wrecked American slaves, before her own act of Emancipation, she was equally bound to do so, after that act. All this is very clear; hut there is the previous question to be settled, whether the law of nations does in any case regard living human beings as the property of other persons. If it does, why is not England bound to restore to America, the runaway slaves who find their way into Canada; and to France, the fugitives who come over on aloe-rafts from Gaudaloupe to Dominica; and to Denmark, the happy beings who paddle across the water at night, from St. Thomas or St. John's, to free Tortola? For my own part, I con- RETURN TO AMERICA. 227 ceive that the law of nations regards these persons as a third par~!), possessing di8tinct rights of their own. Professing, as it does, to derive its authority from the law of God, it is, in its own nature, incapable of giving countenance to the notion, that rational human beings may be treated as dumb insensible chattels. If this is a correct view of the case, I think we must conclude that when Great Britain made compensation for the slaves wrecked in the Comet and Encomium, she acted not in compliance with the law of nations, but merely out qf shame; because before her own act of Emancipation, she was herself acknowledging the property of man in man. But no sooner was this act passed, than she rose to the level of the law of nations, iu denying the rightful possibility of any such property. From that time forward, therefore, she had nothing more to do with making compensation, even to the dearest of her allies, for wrecked or runaway slaves. I trust that these remarks on subjects of high practical importance, suggested Ly the circnmstances of our voyage, will meet, on thy part, with the usual kind reception. But it was not our allotment to pass the whole of our titne at sea, in easy pleasures and tranquil reflections. On the 18th of the Fourth month, (April) whrn we were fifty miles south of Savannah, we were overtaken by a fearful storm. About eight o'clock in the evening, we observed some dark clouds over the horizon, and summer-like lightning' playing to the North and West ; and the moon soon after rose of a blood red color. For some time we imagined that the clouds were gradually dispersing, Q 2 |