can be no launching of boats by blind men, but the story of the
stranger is soon told. She, too, is a slaver, a Spaniard, the "Leon," and
on her, too, every soul is blind from opthalmia originating among the
slaves. Not even a steersman has the "Leon." All light has gone out from
her, and the "Rodeur" sheers away, leaving her to an unknown fate, for
never again is she heard from. How wonderful the fate--or the
Providence--that directed that upon all the broad ocean teeming with
ships, engaged in honest or in criminal trade, the two that should meet
must be the two on which the hand of God was laid most heavily in
retribution for the suffering and the woe which white men and professed
Christians were bringing to the peaceful and innocent blacks of Africa.

It will be readily understood that the special and always menacing dangers
attending the slave trade made marine insurance upon that sort of cargoes
exceedingly high. Twenty pounds in the hundred was the usual figure in the
early days. This heavy insurance led to a new form of wholesale murder
committed by the captains. The policies covered losses resulting from
jettisoning, or throwing overboard the cargo; they did not insure against
loss from disease. Accordingly, when a slaver found his cargo infected, he
would promptly throw into the sea all the ailing negroes, while still
alive, in order to save the insurance. Some of the South American states,
where slaves were bought, levied an import duty upon blacks, and cases are
on record of captains going over their cargo outside the harbor and
throwing into the sea all who by disease or for other causes, were
rendered unsalable--thus saving both duty and insurance.

In the clearer light which illumines the subject to-day, the prolonged
difficulty which attended the destruction of the slave trade seems
incredible. It appears that two such powerful maritime nations as Great
Britain and the United States had only to decree the trade criminal and it
would be abandoned. But we must remember that slaves were universally
regarded as property, and an attempt to interfere with the right of their
owners to carry them where they would on the high seas was denounced as an
interference with property rights. We see that even to-day men are very
tenacious of "property rights," and the law describes them as
sacred--however immoral or repugnant to common sense and common humanity
they may be. So the effort to abolish the "right" of a slave