Before entering on the personal history of a man whose adventures carried him through all the strata of social life, from the feathered savage of the Prairies to the industrious burgess in small-clothes, let us give a few incidental notices of that crime--kidnapping, or man-stealing,--his subjection to which was the opening scene of his eventful career. We can, perhaps, scarcely point to a more distinct type of feebleness in the law of any country than the frequency of this crime. In that community where the people, marked off by any distinction in race or appearance--where persons born in serfdom, or of a particular line, or speaking a peculiar language--are doomed to slavery, the laws may be unjust and barbarous in the extreme, but it does not follow that they are feeble. The slavery exists _by_ them, not _in spite of_ them. It is in the country where the person, free by the law, is seized, and, in defiance of the law, held in forced bondage, in obedience to the interest or the malevolence of individuals, that this characteristic of feebleness is so prominently developed. The purloiner of coin or plate can only be tracked by external incidents; there is nothing in his connexion with the property that in itself proclaims his crime. The horse and cattle-stealer have to deal with less silent commodities; but even the objects of _their_ depredations are not placed in an unnatural position by ownership, and have no voice wherewith to proclaim their custodier's dishonesty. But the man who holds another in possession in a free country, is a criminal in the eye of every one who sees him exercise his ownership; and he carries about with him a perpetual witness and accuser, who is under the strongest inducements to be ever vigilant and ever active. The law under which common thefts are practised, is only that which does not see far into a millstone; but the law under which kidnapping may be pursued with impunity, is deaf, and blind, and, paralytic. Owing to the strong central administration of justice in England, it does not appear that this crime was ever very prevalent in the south. We find, indeed, in _Whitelock's Memorials_, under the date of 9th May 1645--"An ordinance against such who are called _spirits_, and use to steal away and take up children, and, bereave their parents of them, and convey them away." The measure then adopted, which will be found among the ordinances of the Long Parliament, shows us that it had become customary to seize children and carry them out of the country, to be employed as slaves in the plantations, or probably to be sold to the Mediterranean pirates. The ordinance says, "Whereas, the houses of Parliament are informed that divers lewd persons do go up and down the city of London and elsewhere, and in a most barbarous and wicked manner steal away many little children, it is ordered by the Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, that all officers and ministers of justice be hereby