om and after the
nine-and-twentieth day of September, one thousand six hundred and
ninety-eight, shall be a factor or factor's agent or agents for the said
Company,(The Royal African Company) or any other person or persons for
the sale or disposal of any negroes, and that every person offending
herein shall forfeit five hundred pounds to the uses aforesaid, to be
recovered in any of his majesty's courts of record at Westminster, by
action of debt, bill, plaint or information, wherein no essoign,
protection, privilege or wager of law shall be allowed, nor any more
than one imparlance."

Sec. 21. "Provided that this act shall continue and be in force
_thirteen years_, and from thence to the end of the next sessions of
parliament, and no longer."

Even if this act had legalized, (as in reality it did not legalize,) the
slave trade during those thirteen years, it would be impossible now to
distinguish the descendants of those who were imported under it, from
the descendants of those who had been previously, and were subsequently
imported and sold into slavery without law. The act would therefore
avail nothing towards making the existing slavery in this country legal.

The next statute, of which I find any trace, passed by parliament, with
any apparent view to countenance the slave trade, was the statute of 23d
George II., ch. 31. (1749-50.)

Mr. Bancroft has committed another still more serious error in his
statement of the _words_, (for he professes to quote precise words,) of
this statute. He says, (vol. 3, p. 414,)

"At last, in 1749, to give the highest activity to the trade, (meaning
the slave trade,) every obstruction to private enterprize was removed,
and the ports of Africa were laid open to English competition, for 'the
_slave_ trade,'--such" (says Mr. Bancroft,) "are the words of the
statute--'the _slave_ trade is very advantageous to Great Britain.'"

As words are, in this case, things--and things of the highest _legal_
consequence--and as this history is so extensively read and received as
authority--it becomes important, in a legal, if not historical, point of
view, to correct so important an error as that of the word _slave_ in
this statement. "The _words_ of the statute" are _not_ that "the _slave_
trade," but that "_the trade to and from Africa_ is very advantageous to
Great Britain." "The trade to and from Africa" no more means, _in law_,
"the _slave_ trade," than does the trade to and from China. Fro