This decision of Lord Mansfield was one of those acts of judicial legislation for which he was so famous, and it was not the law. Quite as able judges as himself had previously decided the validity and legality of slavery even in England, and Lord Stowell, as able a judge and purer man than he was, subsequently ruled very differently from the decision in the Somerset case. England had no use for slaves at home, as her toiling millions supplied every demand for labor or service. Had it been to her interest to have had African slaves within her own limits, her pure air would have accommodated itself to their constitution. She never sacrificed her material interests to her philanthropy. Notwithstanding the decision of Lord Mansfield, it was twenty-five years before the prime minister of England (the younger Pitt) ventured to go even so far, as to bring in a bill to mitigate the horrors "of the Middle Passage," by limiting the number of slaves to be taken on board a ship--it was forty-five years before another prime minister ventured to advocate the abolition of the slave trade, and seventy-one years before slavery was abolished in the limited slave colonies left to England after the American Revolution, and that was not done until this small interest was so far overshadowed by other interests as to make it of no importance to her. CHAPTER III =Legislation on the Question of State Establishment= In order to understand the status of the slave trade and slavery in the United States after their independence was achieved, it is necessary to glance at the progress of the Revolution and the adoption of the new form of government after its close. In 1774, the contest between the mother country and the English Colonies of North America approached a crisis, and the first Continental Congress of delegates from the thirteen colonies assembled at Philadelphia on the 5th of September of that year. Fifteen articles, as the basis of an "American Association," were adopted and signed on the 20th of October, in which, among other things the slave trade was denounced, and entire abstinence from it and from any trade with those engaged in it, was enjoined. This had been preceded by the Virginia resolution on the same subject more than two months, but the war which ensued put an end to the trade during its continuance, much more effectually than any resolutions or laws could have done. The "Declaration of Colonial Rights" adopted by this Congress enumerated eleven acts of Parliament as having been passed in derogation of the rights of the colonies since the accession of George III to the throne, to-wit: 1. "The Sugar Act."--This act was a modification of the "Molasses Act," by which the duties on molasses and sugar were lowered and a few unimportant articles were added to the list of those taxed. 2. "The Stamp Act."--This act never had been executed and had been repealed.