o him, can it not
annul the artificial title, and leave the original owner to hold himself
by his original title?

3. THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY HAS ALWAYS BEEN CONSIDERED WITHIN THE
APPROPRIATE SPHERE OF LEGISLATION. Almost every civilized nation has
abolished slavery by law. The history of legislation since the revival
of letters, is a record crowded with testimony to the universally
admitted competency of the law-making power to abolish slavery. It is so
manifestly an attribute not merely of absolute sovereignty, but even of
ordinary legislation, that the competency of a legislature to exercise
it, may well nigh be reckoned among the legal axioms of the civilized
world. Even the night of the dark ages was not dark enough to make this
invisible.

The Abolition decree of the great council of England was passed in 1102.
The memorable Irish decree, "that all the English slaves in the whole of
Ireland, be immediately emancipated and restored to their former
liberty," was issued in 1171. Slavery in England was abolished by a
general charter of emancipation in 1381. Passing over many instances of
the abolition of slavery by law, both during the middle ages and since
the reformation, we find them multiplying as we approach our own times.
In 1776 slavery was abolished in Prussia by special edict. In St.
Domingo, Cayenne, Guadaloupe, and Martinique, in 1794, where more than
600,000 slaves were emancipated by the French government. In Java, 1811;
in Ceylon, 1815; in Buenos Ayres, 1816; in St. Helena, 1819; in
Colombia, 1821; by the Congress of Chili in 1821; in Cape Colony, 1823;
in Malacca, 1825; in the southern provinces of Birmah, 1826; in Bolivia,
1826; in Peru, Guatemala, and Monte Video, 1828; in Jamaica, Barbados,
the Bermudas, the Bahamas, Anguilla, Mauritius, St. Christopers, Nevis,
the Virgin Islands, (British), Antigua, Montserrat, Dominica, St.
Vincents, Grenada, Berbice, Tobago, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Honduras,
Demerara, Essequibo and the Cape of Good Hope, on the 1st of August,
1834. But waving details, suffice it to say, that England, France,
Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Germany, have
all and often given their testimony to the competency of the legislative
power to abolish slavery. In our own country, the Legislature of
Pennsylvania passed an act of abolition in 1780, Connecticut in 1784;
Rhode Island, 1784; New-York, 1799; New-Jersey, in 1804; Vermont, by
Constitution, in 1777; Massachus