Congress was awake, however, even during the administration of Washington, to its duty in the matter, and an act was passed declaring the slave-trade to be piracy. Twenty years afterward the principal European sovereigns united in the same declaration, and so the execrable commerce was hurled beyond the pale of international law. There is now no probability that it will ever regain its rank 'on change.' But its illegitimation does not seem to have greatly circumscribed its activity. In the face of apparent danger, it has continued to flourish, and there has been hardly more risk to a _pirate_ with a living cargo from Gaboon, than would be encountered by an ordinary merchantman from pirates in the Gulf. Indeed, there were many who believed and feared, prior to the breaking out of the present rebellion, that the next compromise between the North and South would be the repeal of all laws prohibiting the African slave-trade. So rapidly yet so insidiously was the South obtaining an entire control in the councils of the nation. It was notorious that a large proportion of the vessels which were engaged in the infamous traffic were owned and fitted out by Northern capitalists. The General Government did not exert itself in good faith to carry out either its treaty stipulations nor the legislation of Congress in regard to the matter. If a vessel was captured, her owners were permitted to bond her, and thus continue her in the trade; and if any man was convicted of this form of piracy, the executive always interposed between him and the penalty of his crime. The laws providing for the seizure of vessels engaged in the traffic were so constructed as to render the duty unremunerative; and marshals now find their fees for such services to be actually less than their necessary expenses. No one who bears this fact in mind will be surprised at the great indifference of these officers to the continuing of the slave-trade; in fact, he will be ready to learn that the laws of Congress upon the subject had become a dead letter, and that the suspicion was well grounded that certain officers of the Federal Government had actually connived at their violation.