But is such the real character of the constitution? By it, did we thus really avow to the world that we were a nation of pirates? that our territory should be a harbor for pirates? that our people were constitutionally licensed to enslave the people of all other nations, without discrimination, (for the instrument makes no discrimination,) whom they could either kidnap in their own countries, or capture on the high seas? and that we had even prohibited our only government that could make treaties with foreign nations, from making any treaty, until 1808, with any particular nation, to exempt the people of that nation from their liability to be enslaved by the people of our own? The slave argument says that we did avow all this. If we really did, perhaps all that can be said of it now is, that it is very fortunate for us that other nations did not take us at our word. For if they had taken us at our word, we should, before 1808, have been among the nations that were. Suppose that, on the organization of our government, we had been charged by foreign nations, with having established a piratical government--how could we have rebutted the charge otherwise than by denying that the words "importation of persons" legally implied that the persons imported were slaves? Suppose that European ambassadors had represented to president Washington that their governments considered our constitution as licensing our people to kidnap the people of other nations, without discrimination, and bring them to the United States as slaves. Would he not have denied that the legal meaning of the clause did any thing more than secure the free introduction of foreigners as passengers and freemen? Or would he--_he_, the world-renowned champion of human rights--have indeed stooped to the acknowledgment that in truth he was the head of a nation of pirates, whose constitution did guarantee the freedom of kidnapping men abroad, and importing them as slaves? And would he, in the event of this acknowledgment, have sought to avert the destruction, which such an avowal would be likely to bring upon the nation, by pleading that, although such was the legal meaning of the words of our constitution, we yet had an understanding, (an honorable understanding!) among ourselves, that we would not take advantage of the license to kidnap or make slaves of any of the citizens of those civilized and powerful nations of Europe, that kept ships of war, and knew the use of gunpowder and cannon; but only the people of poor, weak, barbarous and ignorant nations, who were incapable of resistance and retaliation?