him or them who shall inform or sue for the
same."

Now, although there is perhaps no good reason to doubt that the _secret_
intention of parliament in the passage of this act, was to stimulate the
slave trade, and that there was a tacit understanding between the
government and the slave dealers, that the slave trade should go on
unharmed (in practice) by the government, and although it was
undoubtedly understood that this penalty of one hundred pounds would
either not be sued for at all, or would be sued for so seldom as
_practically_ to interpose no obstacle to the general success of the
trade, still, as no part of the whole statute gives any authority to
this "Company of Merchants trading to Africa" to transport men from
Africa against their will, and as this 29th section contains a special
prohibition to individuals, under penalty, to do so, no one can pretend
that the trade was legalized. If the penalty had been but one pound,
instead of one hundred pounds, it would have been sufficient, _in law_,
to have rebutted the pretence that the trade was legalized. The act, on
its face, and in its legal meaning, is much more an act to prohibit,
than to authorize the slave trade.

The only possible _legal_ inference from the statute, _so far as it
concerns the "supplying the plantations and colonies with negroes at
reasonable rates_," is, that these negroes were free laborers, voluntary
emigrants, that were to be induced to go to the plantations and
colonies; and that "the trade to and from Africa" was thrown open in
order that the facilities for the transportation of these emigrants
might be increased.

But although there is, in this statute, no authority given for--but, on
the contrary, a special prohibition upon--the transportation of the
natives from Africa against their will, yet I freely admit that the
statute contains one or two strong, perhaps decisive implications in
favor of the fact that slavery was allowed in the English settlements
_on the coast of Africa_, apparently in conformity with the customs of
the country, and with the approbation of parliament. But that is the
most that can be said of it. Slavery, wherever it exists, is a local
institution; and its toleration, or even its legality, _on the coast of
Africa_, would do nothing towards making it legal in any other part of
the English dominions. Nothing but positive and explicit legislation
could transplant it into any other part of the empire.

The im