f their statutes on
the subject, indicates plainly that they themselves either doubted their
power to legalize it, or feared to exercise it. They have therefore
chosen to connive at slavery, to insinuate, intimate, and imply their
approbation of it, rather than risk an affirmative enactment declaring
that one man may be the property of another. But Lord Mansfield said, in
Somerset's case, that slavery was "_so odious that nothing can be
suffered to support it, but positive law_."--No such positive law (I
presume) was ever passed by parliament--certainly not with reference to
any of these thirteen colonies.

The statute of 1788, (which I have not seen,) in regard to the slave
_trade_, may perhaps have relieved those engaged in it, in certain
cases, from their liability to be punished criminally for the act. But
there is a great difference between a statute, that should merely screen
a person from punishment for a crime, and one that should legalize his
right to property acquired by the crime. Besides, this act was passed
after the separation between America and England, and therefore could
have done nothing towards legalizing slavery in the United States, even
if it had legalized it in the English dominions.

The statutes of 1750, (23, George 2d, Ch. 31,) may have possibly
authorized, by implication, (so far as parliament could thus authorize,)
the colonial governments, (if governments they could be called,) _on
that coast of Africa_, to allow slavery under certain circumstances,
_and within the "settlements" on that coast_. But, if it did, it was at
most a grant of a merely local authority. It gave no authority to carry
slaves from the African coast. But even if it had purported distinctly
to authorize the slave trade from Africa to America, and to legalize the
right of property in the particular slaves thereafter brought from
Africa to America, it would nevertheless have done nothing towards
legalizing the right of property in the slaves that had been brought to,
and born in, the colonies for an hundred and thirty years previous to
the statute. Neither the statute, nor any right of property acquired
under it, (in the individual slaves thereafterwards brought from
Africa,) would therefore avail anything for the legality of slavery in
this country now; because the descendants of those brought from Africa
under the act, cannot now be distinguished from the descendants of those
who had, for the hundred and thirty years pr