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Show 206 DEtiPO'l'ISM the law. The Somerset case did not make nor alter the law of England; it. only free~ it .from 1he false glosses with which ig norance, a vance, vwlence, and the practice of two or three hundred years had obscmed it. It did but repeat., and now, from the altered state of the public sentiment, in a more authorib:~tivc and cflCctual tone, the very declaration which Lord Holt, three quarters of a century before, had then ineflectually made,-that the law of England did not aU ow the reducing men to slavery, and did not regard negroes as any way different, in this respect., from other men. Such being the fact, there surely existed no power in any colonial assembly, restricted as all those assemblies were to the enactment of laws " not repugnant to those of England," to legalize a condition many of the consequences of which were, in the words of Lord Mansfield," absolutely contrary" to English law. But it is not by the mere declaration of what the law is- especially where there is no spirit or dispo· sit ion on the part of those in authO-rity to enforce or even to recog nize it-that wrong is ever to be rectified; nor has it been in America alone that courts and law· yers have trampled law as well as justice under foot, in their zeal to gain the favor and to conform to the wishes of those possessed of wealth and of social and political influence. The American Declaration of Independence, which took place within a lit.tle more than four years after the decision in Somerset's case, removed the colonies, now become the United States, from all further control by English tribunals or English authority; but t here were several other colonml dependencies of the British empire, in which, for more than sixty years after that decision, negro slavery continued in full energy, too strong, too ramp~nt.,_ for any English judge to dare to apply to it the prmc1ple of the Somerset case; since here it was not a ques· tion of .£700,000 and fourteen thousand ncgroe•, but of a sum and a number near a hundred times as great; the difficulty of redressing wrongs unfortunate- IN Ai\lEIHCA, 207 ly increasing in something like geometrical proportion to. the number. of thos~ whom they crush. Even such a JU~Igc as Chtef Just1ce Best, while giving such au· thonty to the case of Somerset as to hold, (in Forbes v. Cocll.~ane, above referred to.,) that 8laves flying from a Spar11~h colony, and ta.kmo- rcfuac on board a British ::;hip o~ the high sc?~'b thereby became free, was. ve~y careful to add, " l here may possibly be a d1stmctwn between .the s1tuation of the::;c persons, and that of slaves comtng from our own islands, for we have unfortunately recognized the existence of slavery there, though we have never rccorrnized it in our own coun~ry." In~eed, he specially desired that nothing he m1ght say 111 that case [and he said several very fine thi.ngs] " might be considered as trenching on the local nghts of the West India proprietors to the services of their slaves in that country." Nor ~hen, at last, the question of the legality of slavery 111 the colonies was distinctly raised before an English court, (unfortunately not a court of common law,) did the slave-holders fail to find, in the person of Lord Stowell, another "consummate judge," not less ready than Lord: 1-Iardwicke had been, in his day, to gLve to a cruel and oppressive custom all the character and attributes of a solemn legislative au~ thority. The case of 'lYte Slave Grace, (<! Haggard's Adm~ralty Reports, 106,) decided in 1827, is indeed most instructive, as showing to what extent your ~'consummate lawyer" will go, on behalf of the 1nterests, or what he esteems such, of property and commerce, no matter at what expense of human agony, and disregard of the plainest principles of JUStiCe. Set aside the state of Missis•ippi, under the clnefJuStlccship of the notorious Sharkey, and the e1rcmts of Judges Grier and Curtis of the Uni ted States Supreme Court, and it would 1be impossible to match ~hat :ase jn all the American Reports. IndcNI, the mam pomt decided in it has been ruled the other way il~ sorne half dozen American slave-hold ing states, m aU, in fact, l\lississippi excepted, in which |
