Sec. 9.* * * * "that all goods or merchandizes (negroes excepted) which shall be brought from any part of Africa, between Cape Blanco and Cape Mount aforesaid, which shall be unladed or landed before entry made and signed and oath of the true and real value thereof made and the duty paid as aforesaid shall be forfeited, or the value thereof." Sec. 20. "And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that no governor, or deputy-governor of any of his majesty's colonies or plantations in America, or his majesty's judges in any courts there for the time being, nor any other person or persons for the use or on behalf of such governor or deputy-governor or judges, from and after the nine-and-twentieth day of September, one thousand six hundred and ninety-eight, shall be a factor or factor's agent or agents for the said Company,(The Royal African Company) or any other person or persons for the sale or disposal of any negroes, and that every person offending herein shall forfeit five hundred pounds to the uses aforesaid, to be recovered in any of his majesty's courts of record at Westminster, by action of debt, bill, plaint or information, wherein no essoign, protection, privilege or wager of law shall be allowed, nor any more than one imparlance." Sec. 21. "Provided that this act shall continue and be in force _thirteen years_, and from thence to the end of the next sessions of parliament, and no longer." Even if this act had legalized, (as in reality it did not legalize,) the slave trade during those thirteen years, it would be impossible now to distinguish the descendants of those who were imported under it, from the descendants of those who had been previously, and were subsequently imported and sold into slavery without law. The act would therefore avail nothing towards making the existing slavery in this country legal. The next statute, of which I find any trace, passed by parliament, with any apparent view to countenance the slave trade, was the statute of 23d George II., ch. 31. (1749-50.) Mr. Bancroft has committed another still more serious error in his statement of the _words_, (for he professes to quote precise words,) of this statute. He says, (vol. 3, p. 414,) "At last, in 1749, to give the highest activity to the trade, (meaning the slave trade,) every obstruction to private enterprize was removed, and the ports of Africa were laid open to English competition, for 'the _slave_ trade,'--such" (says Mr. Bancroft,) "are the words of the statute--'the _slave_ trade is very advantageous to Great Britain.'"