"Article I. All acts and decrees of the Federal Constituent Assembly, as well as of the Federal Congress are declared null and void. "Article II. Nothing herein contained shall affect rights heretofore vested under the acts and decrees hereby repealed." The principal decree which this was intended to repeal was an Act of the Federal Constituent Assembly of the 17th of April, 1824, abolishing slavery and indemnifying the slave-owners in the then confederated states of Central America. Thus the institution of slavery, without any restriction, was reimposed on Nicaragua. Walker, so far from denying that this was the object of the decree, expressly avows it, saying, "By this Act must the Walker administration be judged. If the slavery decree, as it has been called, was unwise, Cabañas and Jerez were right when they sought to use the Americans for the mere purpose of raising one native faction and depressing another. Without such labour as the new decree gave, the Americans could have played no other part in Central America than that of the Pretorian guard at Rome or of the Janizaries in the East, and for such degrading service as this they were ill suited by the habits and traditions of their race." He admits that annexation to the United States was no part of the programme of the American adventurers in Nicaragua, knowing that it could not be constitutionally effected after the passage of a slavery law. To-day it seems strange to read such arguments as Walker used to defend the institution of slavery. But by the lurid light of his sentences we can see something of the bitter conflict which then raged between the friends and the enemies of slavery. His contempt for the Abolitionist party speaks in every line, whilst his defence of the now obsolete system of unspeakable wrong seems as puerile as the solemnly sincere essays of a Mather on the evils of witchcraft. He admires the "wisdom and excellence of the Divine economy in the creation of the black race," and the providence of letting Africa lie idle until the discovery of America gave a chance of utilizing the raw material of slavery. No self-appointed theological dragoman to the court of Heaven ever showed more readiness in interpreting the sentiments of Providence than he does when he piously asks, "And is it not thus that one race secures for itself liberty with order, while it bestows on the other comfort and Christianity?"