Treating it as national or individual sin, where does the guilt lie? The mercantile marines of Great Britain and New England are monuments to the African slave trade, upon the profits of which they were mainly built up. It has been often said that the assertion contained in the Declaration of Independence "That all men are created equal, etc.," was entirely inconsistent with the continuation of slavery in any of the United States; and that the states which continued it were guilty of a great inconsistency. Who had then a right to make this criticism? Was it the Englishman, with Lord Mansfield's decision staring him in the face, and his boast of liberty under the common law on his tongue, while his heel was upon the neck of Ireland, his ships ploughing the main, freighted with human merchandise packed to suffocation, and his writs of execution levied upon the bodies of human beings to satisfy his demands? Was it the Frenchman, who, equally guilty in the traffic in human flesh, in the name of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" glutted the guillotine with the blood of his brethren, until he himself was forced to take refuge from his own "Liberty" under the protection of a despotism that kept watch upon his very thoughts? Was it the Dutchman, whose ships had carried the traffic in slaves to every clime and who landed the first cargo within the limits of the United States? Was it the Russian, who had bleeding Poland under his feet and caused order to reign in Warsaw, while he peopled Siberia with every age and sex, and his ears were gladdened by the sound of the well-plied knout? Was it the Prussian, the Austrian, the Dane, the Swede, or the Italian? The Portuguese, the Spaniard and the Turk have not troubled themselves about the matter. The fact is that the assertion of independence was made by the Continental Congress, by a resolution adopted on the 2d of July, 1776, in the following words: "_Resolved_, That these United Colonies are, and, of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." That was the authoritative assertion of the independence of the colonies, and the Declaration of Independence adopted afterwards was merely a manifesto put forth to the world to show the reasons which impelled them to the step and to justify it. The assertion that "all men are created equal," was no more enacted by that declaration as a settled principle than that other which defined George III to be "a tyrant and unfit to be the ruler of a free people." The Declaration of Independence contained a number of undoubtedly correct principles and some abstract generalities uttered under the enthusiasm and excitement of a struggle for the right of self-government.