dance of material comforts hitherto unknown; no land was ever so full of corn and cattle, clothing, comfortable houses, and all things needed for the flesh. The desire of those things -even the excessive desire thereof— performs an important part in the divine economy of the Human Race; nowhere is its good effect more conspicuous than in America, where in two generations the wild Irishman becomes a decent citizen, orderly, temperate, and intelligent. This done or even a-doing, as it is now, we shall go forth to realize our great national Idea, and accomplish the great work of organizing into Institutions the Unalienable Rights of man. The great obstacle in the way of that is African Slavery-the great exception in the nation's history; the national Sin. When that is removed -as soon it must be lesser but kindred evils will easily be done away; the truth which the Land-Reformers, which the Associ ationists, the Free-traders, and others, have seen, dimly or clearly, can readily be carried out. But while this monster vice continues there is little hope of any great and permanent national reform. The positive things which we chiefly need for this work, are first, Education, next, Education, and then Education, a vigorous development of the mind, conscience, affections, religious power of the whole nation. The method and the means for that we shall not now discuss.

The organization of Human Rights, the performance of Human Duties, is an unlimited work. If there shall ever be a time when it is all done, then the Race will have finished its course. Shall the American nation go on in this work, or pause, turn off, fall, and perish? To us it seems almost treason to doubt that a glorious future awaits us. Young as we are, and wicked, we have yet done something which the world will not let perish. One day we shall attend more emphatically to the Rights of the Hand, and organize Labor and Skill; then to the Rights of the Head, looking after Education, Science, Literature, and Art; and again to the Rights of the Heart, building up the State with its Laws, Society with its families, the Church with its goodness and piety. One day we shall see that it is a shame, and a loss, and a wrong, to have a criminal, or an ignorant man, or a pauper, or an idler, in the land; that the jail, and the gallows, and the almshouse are a reproach which need not be. Out of new sentiments and ideas, not seen as yet, new forms of society will come, free from the antagonism of races, classes, men-representing the American Idea in its length, breadth, depth, and height, its

beauty and its truth, and then the old civilization of our time shall seem barbarous and even savage. There will be an American Art commensurate with our Idea and akin to this great continent; not an imitation, but a fresh, new growth. An American Literature also must come with democratic freedom, democratic thought, democratic power-for we are not always to be pensioners of other lands, doing nothing but import and quote; a literature with all of German philosophic depth, with English solid sense, with French vivacity and wit, Italian fire of sentiment and soul, with all of Grecian elegance of form, and more than Hebrew piety and faith in God. We must not look for the maiden's ringlets on the baby's brow; we are yet but a girl; the nameless grace of maturity, and womanhood's majestic charm, are still to come. At length we must have a system of Education, which shall uplift the humblest, rudest, worst born child in all the land; which shall bring forth and bring up noble men.

An American State is a thing that must also be; a State of freemen who give over brawling, resting on Industry, Justice, Love, not on War, Cunning, and Violence, a State where Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity are deeds as well as words. In its time the American Church must also appear, with Liberty, Holiness, and Love for its watchwords, cultivating Reason, Conscience, Affection, Faith, and leading the world's way in Justice, Peace, and Love. The Roman Church has been all men know what and how; the American Church, with freedom for the Mind, freedom for the Heart, freedom for the Soul, is yet to be, sundering no chord of the human harp, but tuning all to harmony. This also must come; but hitherto no one has risen with genius fit to plan its holy walls, conceive its columns, project its towers, or lay its corner stone. Is it too much to hope all this? Look at the Arena before us - look at our past history. Hark! there is the sound of many million men, the trampling of their freeborn feet, the murmuring of their voice; a nation born of this land that God reserved so long a virgin earth, in a high day married to the Human Race,rising, and swelling, and rolling on, strong and certain as the Atlantic tide; they come numerous as ocean waves when east winds blow, their destination commensurate with the continent, with Ideas vast as the Mississippi, strong as the Alleghanies, and awful as Niagara; they come murmuring little of the past, but, moving in the brightness of their great Idea, and casting its light far on to other lands and distant days-come to the world's great work, to organize the Rights of Man.

ART. II. THE LEGALITY OF AMERICAN SLAVERY.

THE fourth number of this Review contains a very elaborate article, in which three positions are sought to be maintained; first, that negro slavery, prior to the Revolution, had a legal existence in the British Colonies, now the United States of America; second, that this legal existence was recognized and continued by the state constitutions; and third, that it was recognized and ratified by the Constitution of the United States.

The second and third of these propositions obviously depend upon the first, and if that fails they have nothing to stand upon. Having in a former number of this Review maintained the doctrine that slavery in the British colonies had no legal basis, we feel at liberty to reply very briefly to the article referred to; and the more so as our own former article is therein freely quoted and criticized.

Following in the footsteps of Sir William Scott, (afterwards Lord Stowell,) who, by the way, was no common lawyer, but an admiralty judge, distinguished for that hostility to popular rights which always made the civil law and its professors so obnoxious to the common law courts and the English people, our reviewer attempts to limit, to retrench, and to belittle as much as possible the famous Somerset case. But after all he is obliged to admit,—what indeed it would be bold to deny, and what is all that any body contends for,- that it is decided by Somerset's case, that negro slavery never was sanctioned or permitted by the law of England. Our reviewer holds, however, that though not legal in England, negro slavery was made so in the colonies, first by custom, and secondly by statute. In maintaining this proposition, he confines himself to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Maryland he omits; he does not tell us why, but it is not very difficult to conjecture the reason. The charter of Maryland remained in full force down to the period of the Revolution, and that charter contained an express provision that all laws made under it should be "consonant to reason" and "not repugnant or contrary, but so far as conveniently may be, agreeable to the laws, statutes, customs, and rights of this our kingdom of England." It would have been rather too bold to have argued, in the face of this express prohibition, that the assembly of Maryland had power to introduce into that colony the condition of negro sla

very, pronounced by Lord Mansfield, in the Somerset case, not only unknown to the law of England, but "odious," and "of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political." It is imagined, however, by our reviewer, that Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia stand on different ground. They, too, once had charters containing restrictions in substance the same with that in the charter of Maryland. But these charters were ultimately taken away, and the legislative authority vested in a royal governor and assembly under a commission and instructions from the crown. We had asserted, in our former article, that these crown colonies or provincial governments were legally just as much restricted in their power of legislation as the charter colonies, and practically more so; and consequently that they had no more power than the charter colonies to legalize negro slavery. Upon this point issue is taken with us. It is maintained, that though negro slavery was contrary to the law of England, the assemblies of the crown colonies, with the consent of the king, had the power to make it legal there; and that they exercised this power with the consent of the king, and did actually make it legal there. The whole of the article rests upon this assertion as a pivot; and when it is shown to be groundless, the whole argument, with all its mass of quotations and authorities, falls to the ground. It is, indeed, a little singular, that amid such a profusion of references, no authority should have been quoted to sustain a position upon which the whole argu

ment rests.

Several different theories were brought forward at different times as to the basis of legislation in the English colonies. It was maintained by many English lawyers, prior to the revolu tion of 1639, and by some afterwards, that the king was absolute sovereign in the colonies, and had a right to establish there such laws as he pleased, and that the inhabitants were only entitled to such laws as he did actually establish. Chalmers observes, (History of the Revolt of the American Colonies, Vol. I., p. 308, note) that "the state papers demonstrate that the most renowned jurists of the reign of William had formed no complete conception of the nature of the connective principle between the parent country and her colonies." "The most respectable cabinet which that monarch ever enjoyed, composed of Somers, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, Bridgewater, Romney, Godolphin, and Sir William Trumbull, denied to the New English the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, because

it had never been conferred on the colonists by any king of England," plainly supposing that the most important of all rights, the best security of personal liberty, must result from a grant of the crown to a subject beyond the ocean. In the same reign, the illustrious Lord Holt himself, in relation to this very subject of slavery, in the case of Smith vs. Brown, (1 Salk., 666, Holt, 495) in which he declared that no such thing as slavery was known in England, and that "as soon as a negro came into England he is free," while he held on this ground that indebitatus assumpsit could not lie for the price of a slave sold in England, yet seemed to admit that if the slave had been alleged to have been sold in Virginia, and the laws sanctioning slavery there had been set out, the action might lie; because "the laws of England do not extend to Virginia. Being a conquered country their law is what the king pleases, of which we cannot take notice if it be not set forth."

But this arbitrary doctrine was never admitted in the colonies; and was ultimately abandoned by all English constitutional lawyers. The colonists maintained that they carried with them from England, or, being born in the colonies under the king's allegiance, inherited thereby, all the rights, privileges, and immunities of British subjects; that the great charter and the law of England formed a part of this inheritance, the birthright of every subject, and that as the king at home possessed no power of arbitrarily interfering with his subjects, or altering the law of levying taxes except by consent of those subjects by their representatives in parliament-so he could lay no taxes in the colonies, nor make any local regulations there, except by consent of the inhabitants as represented in an assembly.

This doctrine as to the inheritance of the English law, was fully established by the English courts, (1 Salk., 411, 2 Peere Williams, 75) and is distinctly stated by Blackstone (1 Comm., 157,) as to uninhabited countries discovered and planted by English subjects. As to conquered or ruled countries, "that have already laws of their own, the king may indeed alter or change those laws; but till he does actually change them, the ancient laws of the country remain, unless such as are against the law of God." (Ib.)

According to both these theories, the consent and coöperation of the king was absolutely essential to colonial legislation. By the first theory, the colonial assemblies, whether authorized