In order to slacken gradually the bonds of slavery the laws against the slave-trade must be most strictly enforced, and punishments inflicted for their infringement; mixed tribunals must be formed, and the right of search exercised with equitable reciprocity. It is melancholy to learn that, owing to the culpable indifference of some of the governments of Europe, the slave-trade (more cruel from having become more secret) has dragged from Africa, within ten years, almost the same number of negroes as before 1807; but we must not from this fact infer the inutility, or, as the secret partisans of slavery assert, the practical impossibility of the beneficent measures adopted first by Denmark, the United States and Great Britain, and successively by all the rest of Europe. What passed from 1807 till the time when France recovered possession of her ancient colonies, and what passes in our days in nations whose governments sincerely desire the abolition of the slave-trade and its abominable practices, proves the fallacy of this conclusion. Besides, is it reasonable to compare numerically the importation of slaves in 1825 and in 1806? With the activity prevailing in every enterprise of industry, what an increase would the importation of negroes have taken in the English West Indies and the southern provinces of the United States if the slave-trade, entirely free, had continued to supply new slaves, and had rendered the care of their preservation and the increase of the old population, superfluous? Can we believe that the English trade would have been limited, as in 1806, to the sale of 53,000 slaves; and that of the United States, to the sale of 15,000? It is pretty well ascertained that the English islands received in the 106 years preceding 1786 more than 2,130,000 negroes, forcibly carried from the coast of Africa. At the period of the French revolution, the slave-trade furnished (according to Mr. Norris) 74,000 slaves annually, of which the English colonies absorbed 38,000, and the French 20,000. It would be easy to prove that the whole of the West Indian archipelago, which now comprises scarcely 2,400,000 negroes and mulattoes (free and slaves), received, from 1670 to 1825, nearly 5,000,000 of Africans. These revolting calculations respecting the consumption of the human species do not include the number of unfortunate slaves who have perished in the passage or have been thrown into the sea as damaged merchandize.* (* Volume 7 page 151. See also the eloquent speech of the Duke de Broglie, March 28th, 1822 pages 40, 43 and 96.) By how many thousands must we have augmented the loss, if the two nations most distinguished for ardour and intelligence in the development of commerce and industry, the English and the inhabitants of the United States, had continued, from 1807, to carry on the trade as freely as some other nations of Europe? Sad experience has proved how much the treaties of