It originated, as has been stated, in an industrial necessity—and while he assented to it, with the humane belief, doubtless, that it would tend to benefit the native race in relieving it from the excessive and fatal burthens imposed by the Spaniards, his assent or dissent could have no influence whatever on the subject. And as he was not laboring for the freedom of the natives—for nothing whatever but their mere material preservation—of course he could have no doubts or anxieties in regard to negroes in that respect, and when he saw them resisting alike the deadly malaria of the climate and the brutality of their masters, and contented and happy, he doubtless felt that it was a wise and beneficent arrangement of Providence that had thus adapted them to their condition and to the fulfilment of the great purposes of civilization and human progress. The supply of negro labor in San Domingo, Cuba, and other islands, was followed, however, by extensive importations for the main land, and finally the trade, falling into the hands of the Dutch and English, became a world-wide commerce, and negroes were taken into every nook and corner of the New World where there were found buyers, or where the traders could dispose of their human cargoes. And here begins the wrong side of the matter—the cruelties, injustice, outrages, and inhumanities which, together with the false theories, morbid philanthropy, and a certain amount of falsehood, have made the term “slave trade” synonymous with everything that is diabolical and devilish that the imagination can conceive of. The Spanish government of the day limited the introduction of negroes, and provided for an equal number of females, and encouraged the importation of children; indeed, while there is no reason to suppose that they ever contemplated the negro as abstractly entitled to the rights claimed for them in our times, it is certain that both the governments of Charles V. and Philip II. did regard them as human, and made every provision that was proper for their kind and humane treatment, both in regard to their passage from Africa and their treatment on the plantations. But when the physical adaptation of the negro had become so clearly demonstrated in the Spanish islands, the British and Dutch merchants began to import them in such multitudes, and the prices fell so low, that it would not pay to import women and children, and then began that nameless and unspeakable outrage, not merely on human but on animal nature, which has distinguished this trade ever since, and, to the disgrace of all Christendom, which at this moment distinguishes it in the neighboring island of Cuba—the separation of the sexes and the violation of the rights of reproduction. Instead of a simple supply of negro labor essential to tropical production, and which violated no instinct, want, or necessity of the negro nature, ships were now fitted out on speculation; cargoes of men, as mere