would still have been a local institution.

This reasoning may appear to some like quibbling; and it would perhaps
be so, were not the rule well settled that nothing but explicit and
irresistible language can be legally held to authorize anything
inconsistent with natural right, and with the fundamental principles of
a government.

That this statute did not legalize the right of property in man, (unless
as a local principle on the coast of Africa,) we have the decision of
Lord Mansfield, who held that it did not legalize it in England; and if
it did not legalize it in England, it did not legalize it in any of the
colonies where the principles of the common law prevailed. Of course it
did not legalize it in the North American colonies.

But even if it were admitted that this statute legalized the right of
property, on the part of the slave trader, in his slaves taken in Africa
after the passage of the act, and legalized the sale of such slaves in
America, still the statute would be ineffectual to sustain the legality
of slavery, _in general_, in the colonies. It would only legalize the
slavery of those particular individuals, who should be transported from
Africa to America, subsequently to the passage of this act, and in
strict conformity with the law of this act--(a thing, by the way, that
could now be proved in no case whatever.) This act was passed in
1749-50, and could therefore do nothing towards legalizing the slavery
of all those who had, for an hundred and thirty years previous, been
held in bondage in Virginia and elsewhere. And as no distinction can now
be traced between the descendants of those who were imported under this
act, and those who had illegally been held in bondage prior to its
passage, it would be of no practical avail to slavery now, to prove, (if
it could be proved,) that those introduced into the country subsequent
to 1750, were legally the property of those who introduced them.]

CHAPTER IV.

COLONIAL STATUTES.

But the colonial legislation on the subject of slavery, was not only
void as being forbidden by the colonial charters, but in many of the
colonies it was void for another reason, viz: _that it did not
sufficiently define the persons who might be made slaves_.

Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by
positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it
no legal sanction. This was the doctrine of the King's Bench in
Somerset's