_Sir John Hawkins_ has the honor of being the first English captain who engaged in the business of stealing negroes. In 1556 he made an unsuccessful effort at negro catching near Cape Verd. He made another effort at a different point; and after burning the towns, was so bravely resisted by the inhabitants, that he lost seven men, and only captured ten. He continued his depredations until his ship was loaded with human beings, which he sold in America.[1] The trade was now vigorously prosecuted by the christian nations of Europe. It is said that Charles the V., Louis XIII. and Queen Elizabeth had some trouble with their consciences about this horrible trade, but they were quieted by the argument that it brought the African into a good situation to be converted! Pope Leo X. declared that "not only the christian religion but nature itself cried out against a State of slavery." These feeble expressions of disapprobation were scarcely heard and the trade went on vigorously--cupidity triumphing over conscience and silencing almost, for many years, the voice of humanity and religion. An extract from a sermon preached on the slave trade by _President Edwards_, in the year 1791 will now be quoted. At the time this good man lifted his voice against this traffic, it will be remembered that it was authorized by the Constitution of the United States, and was a source of great profit to those engaged in it. "The slave trade is wicked and abominable on account of the cruel manner in which it is carried on. Beside the stealing or kidnapping of men, women and children, in the first instance, and the instigation of others to this abominable practice, the inhuman manner in which they are transported to America, and in which they are treated on the passage and in their subsequent slavery, is such as ought forever to deter every man from acting any part in this business, who has any regard to justice or humanity. They are crowded so closely into the holds and between the decks of vessels, that they have room scarcely to lie down, and some times not room to sit up in an erect posture, the men at the same time fastened together with irons, by two and two: and all this in the most sultry climate. The consequence of the whole is, that the most dangerous and fatal diseases are soon bred among them, whereby vast numbers of those exported from Africa perish in the voyage; others in dread of that slavery which is before them, and in distress and despair from the loss of their parents, their children, their husbands, their wives, all their dear connections, and their dear native country itself, starve themselves to death, or plunge themselves into the ocean. Those who attempt in the former of those ways to escape from their persecutors, are tortured by live coals placed to their mouths. Those who attempt an escape in the latter and fail, are equally tortured by the most cruel beating. If any of them make an