Court
had declared that "a Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to
respect,"--a country where the Federal Congress had armed every
United-States marshal in all the Northern States with the inhuman and
arbitrary power to apprehend, load with chains, and hurl back into the
hell of slavery, every poor fugitive who sought to find a home in a
professedly free section of "the _land of the free and the home of the
brave_." These brave black pilgrims, who had to leave "the freest land
in the world" in order to get their freedom, did not intend that the
solemn and formal declaration of principles contained in their
constitution should be reduced to a _reductio ad absurdum_, as those
in the American Constitution were by the infamous _Fugitive-slave
Law_. And in section 4 of their constitution they prohibit "the sum of
all villanies"--_slavery_! The article reads:--

"There shall be no slavery within this republic. Nor shall
any citizen of this republic, or any person resident
therein, deal in slaves, either within or without this
republic."

They had no measure of _compromise_ by which slavery could be carried
on beyond certain limits "for highly commercial and business interests
of a portion of their fellow-citizens." Liberians might have grown
rich by merely suffering the slave-trade to be carried on among the
natives. The constitution fixed a scale of revenue, and levied a
tariff on all imported articles. A customs-service was introduced, and
many reforms enforced which greatly angered a few avaricious white men
whose profession as _men-stealers_ was abolished by the constitution.
Moreover, there were others who for years had been trading and doing
business along the coast, without paying any duties on the articles
they exported. The new government incurred their hostility.

In April, 1850, the republic of Liberia entered into a treaty with
England, and in article nine of said treaty bound herself to the
suppression of the slave-trade in the following explicit language:--

"Slavery and the slave-trade being perpetually abolished in
the republic of Liberia, the republic engages that a law
shall be passed declaring it to be piracy for any _Liberian
citizen_ or vessel to be engaged or concerned in the
slave-trade."

Notwithstanding the above treaty, the enemies of the republic
circulated the report in England and America that the Liberian
government was secretly engage