THE UNITED STATES AND THEIR SLAVES.
A CORRESPONDENT in Washington, who shows that Lord BROUGH• AM'S view of the convention of 1824 between Great Britain and the United States, as opposed to the assertions of Messieurs DUPIN and DE TOCQUEVILLE, is "in the main correct," points out a not unimportant error of detail into which Lord Bacneauear has fallen. The Senate of the United States did not pass prospective resolu- tions on the principles of the convention, or send over the draught Of it. The draught of the treaty was sent over by the Presi- dent; and the subject did not come before the Senate till the treaty signed in London was submitted to them for their advice and consent. The majority of the Senate differed in opinion from the President, and exercised their constitutional right of refusing their consent to the ratification of the treaty : an important, clause was modified. The Senate insisted upon the exercise of the right of search being limited to the coast of Africa and the West Indies, excluding the coast of America. The Court of St. James's refused to accept of this curtailed concession, and the convention fell to the ground. The partial correction of Lord BROUGHAM'S state- ment is important and gratifying; for it shows that the proceed- ings of the American Government on the occasion were regular and consistent ; and it corroborates his Lordship's statement, that in 1824 the Senate of the United States agreed to concede a mutual right of searching American and British merchant-vessels, suspected of being engaged in the slave-trade, by the cruisers of both countries. It is gratifying to learn that this is the view of the case generally taken in the United States, as it will neutralize the efforts of the War faction there to make this delicate question a cause of quarrel between the two countries.
The efforts of General CASs and others to cast popular odium upon the Administration which concluded the treaty of Wash- ington, on account of alleged concessions with a view to the suppression of the slave-trade, are not the only symptoms that the United States as well as this country would be bene- fitted by the only settlement of the Negro question that can be final—emancipation. Ominous resolutions have been adopted in the recent session of the Legislature of Illinois, recom- mending a convention of delegates from all the States in the great drainage-basin of the Mississippi at Jonesborough in Illinois. One of the most prominent questions proposed to be submitted to this convention relates to the best means of preventing the desertion of slaves front such of the States as con- tinue slavery into such of them as hold no slaves, and if detected to restore them to their masters. The apprehensions of the Western Slave States ;are made the engine for procuring their assent to a measure which would divide the Union into two groups of States separated by the Allegheny ridge. Such a separation could4
not save Louisiana and other Western Slave States from the eman- cipation that is impending over them : the corn-growing interest in the free Western States, under the approaching new relations of the Canadian flour-trade, will be found as accessible to Anti- Slavery influence as the seabord States. But this prospective danger may be forgotten by the slaveowners while the declamation of the TAPPANS and GARRISONS is ringing in their ears. America has more interest than any nation on the face of the earth in candidly examining the possibility of obtaining a supply of free Negro labour from Africa. Other nations have an economical interest in the practical solution of that problem ; so have the United States, and in addition the permanence of their Union may depend upon it.
Under no circumstances can the slaveowners of the United States hope ultimately to escape the experiment of emancipation. Even in Cuba, opinions in favour of free Negro labour are gaining ground. The English Negroes are emancipated, and the French Negroes are about to be emancipated. The report of the Com- mission, drawn up by the Duke DE BROGLIE, recommends—that slavery cease in the French colonies on the 1st of January 1853; that during the intervening ten years slaves have civil rights, which may be pleaded for them in a civil court by a curator ad hoc ; that during five years after the termination of slavery, the Negroes be compelled to work for salaries, of which the maximum and mini- mum are to be fixed annually by the Governor in Council ; that the indemnity to the slaveowners be fixed at 150 millions of francs in the Four per Cents, to be distributed among them in 1857 with the accumulated interest. Many of the subsidiary recommendations of the report evince a humane and provident regard to the interests both of planter and slave. But it is doubtful whether it will be wise to spread the process of emancipation over so lengthened a period. Fifteen long years will afford a rich harvest for agitators ' • and during the whole of that time the French planters will find it impossible to procure supplies of free labourers from Africa. This, however, is a consideration for the French Legislature : what con- cerns the slaveowner of the United States is the fact that the grow- ing public opinion in France, which has given birth to the Duke DE BROGLIE'S report in 1843, can no more be arrested than the public opinion in England which put an end to the English slave-trade in 1807; and that the slaves of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne, having had the prospect of liberty once held up before their eyes, can no more be diverted from obtaining it than the slaves of St. Domingo. Negro-emancipation they will find as contagious—as irrepressible by quarantine-regulations—as the cholera. No other country has the right or the inclination to dictate on this or any other subject to the jealous Republicans of the United States what they ought to do under such circumstances ; but it is for them to con- sider whether a precarious ownership in 'their Negroes for a few years longer is worth the vexatious diplomacy and alarms of in- ternal separation which will be kept up so long as slavery remains one of their domestic institutions.
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