Virtue, say moralists, is so transcendently beautiful, that she need but be _seen_, to be universally admired: and is not VICE so hateful, that the more its features are _viewed_, the more it will be avoided? The traffic in the human species, particularly as carried on by the Europeans on the coast of Africa, has so horrible an aspect, that nothing, one should think, but the MASK, under which it has been concealed, could have prevented all the civilized nations in the world uniting to drive the detested Monster from the face of the earth. This MASK is, however, at length taken away, and the traffic stands exposed in all its real, unalterable deformity. The PEOPLE are now called upon to behold, to feel, and judge for themselves. The representations of former writers on this subject were roundly denied; the facts they stated were not only contradicted, but deemed impossible, and the authors themselves were accused of slander. Now we have a body of EVIDENCE to which to appeal; of evidence, possessing every essential of _credibility_. The witnesses have declared before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, what they themselves saw: they had the best opportunities of observation, and they are disinterested. And now it appears, that one half of the tale of human misery hath not been told: and that every principle, that can bind a man of honour and conscience,[1] loudly calls for the prohibition of the iniquitous traffic. Hard indeed must those hearts be, and inaccessible those understandings,[2] which such evidence cannot reach! The Evidence delivered before the Select Committee of the House of Commons is very voluminous, occupying two thousand pages in folio. But a judicious Abstract and Arrangement of the Evidence, on the Part of the Petitioners for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,[3] has been published, and in a short compass, contains the evidence of well informed persons on that subject. In the PREFACE to this important volume of evidence we read of rewards offered for taking run-away negroes _alive or dead_--of laws being required to be made to prevent the practice of _cutting off ears, noses, and tongues_--of _breaking limbs_ and _putting out eyes_--to prevent _distempered, maimed, and worn out negroes_ from infesting towns--to prevent _aged_ and _infirm_ negroes being driven from the plantations _to starve_. We meet also with such kind of PREAMBLES to acts as the following, viz.