Besides, the mere toleration of the slave _trade_ could not make slavery itself--_the right of property in man_--lawful any where; not even on board the slave ship. Toleration of a wrong is not law. And especially the toleration of a wrong, (i.e. the bare omission to punish it criminally,) does not legalize one's claim to property obtained by such wrong. Even if a wrong can be legalized at all, so as to enable one to acquire rights of property by such wrong, it can be done only by an explicit and positive provision. The English statutes, on the subject of the slave trade, (so far as I have seen,) never attempted to legalize the right of property in man, _in any of the thirteen North American colonies_. It is doubtful whether they ever attempted to do it any where else. It is also doubtful whether Parliament had the power--or perhaps rather it is certain that they had not the power--to legalize it any where, if they had attempted to do so.[7] And the cautious and curious phraseology of their statutes on the subject, indicates plainly that they themselves either doubted their power to legalize it, or feared to exercise it. They have therefore chosen to connive at slavery, to insinuate, intimate, and imply their approbation of it, rather than risk an affirmative enactment declaring that one man may be the property of another. But Lord Mansfield said, in Somerset's case, that slavery was "_so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law_."--No such positive law (I presume) was ever passed by parliament--certainly not with reference to any of these thirteen colonies. The statute of 1788, (which I have not seen,) in regard to the slave _trade_, may perhaps have relieved those engaged in it, in certain cases, from their liability to be punished criminally for the act. But there is a great difference between a statute, that should merely screen a person from punishment for a crime, and one that should legalize his right to property acquired by the crime. Besides, this act was passed after the separation between America and England, and therefore could have done nothing towards legalizing slavery in the United States, even if it had legalized it in the English dominions.