himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe; in all countries, and at all times. No human laws have any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately from this original." And again, "Those rights which God and nature have established, and which are therefore called 'natural rights,' such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws, to be more effectually vested in every man, than they are. Neither do they receive any additional strength, when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act, that amounts to forfeiture." Introduction, Section 2.
"Law favoreth life, liberty and dower. Law regards the person above his possessions—life and liberty most," &c. Principia Legis and Equitatis, p. 56.
Such are the glorious foundations of British, eternal and universal law. Such are the principles which, without partiality and without hypocrisy, yield "glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will, to man." Such are the principles, which an American, cast away upon the shores of Morocco, would wish to find prevailing there. Such are the principles, without which, all boasts of liberty, are but a lie; a triumph of licentiousness over freedom; the boast of the strong, and the bane of the weak! Such are the principles, the universal prevalence of which, would make the world a moral Eden—the rejection of which, keeps it a little hell; especially where freemen hold slaves; for of all governments, an oligarchy is the worst. It consists of a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand tyrants, instead of one. It is "diffusing tyranny every where." It is "bringing despotism home to every man's door." It involves the greatest deliberateness and desperation of iniquity, both with law and without law, which it is possible for power to perpetrate against weakness. And this enormous concatenation of all possible wickedness, is at its climax, when the oligarchs, the petty despots, the plantation tyrants most boast of freedom!! Witness Sparta and Athens, and republican Rome, in ancient times—in modern, witness the colonies of France, Holland and England. At this moment, see especially the United States; and at their apex, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Missisippi and Louisiana.
NO. 2.
In the year 1824, a little band of refugee slaves, that is, of guiltless British subjects, who had fled in peace, from the the most iniquitous and galling oppression, was discovered in the woody mountains of Trelawny, in Jamaica; their number was nine men, eight women, and four children.
It appears that several years had elapsed, since the first of them had found shelter in those wild mountain glens, and that from time to time, one and another had been providentially added to their number. The evidence from which this account is taken, is that of their enemies, the slave gazettes of the island. They are accused of no crime, except the act of flying from oppression—fabricated, against all righteousness into a crime, by the mischief-making laws (Psalms xciv. 20—22.) of the nefarious slave-code. They seem to have lived soberly, industriously and affectionately together, hurting no one, unknown to the world, and all their wish, to remain unknown. They had cleared, of its heavy timber, and cultivated (part of it to great perfection,) about two hundred acres. They had "pigs and poultry," and were well supplied with clothing; for they sold or bartered their surplus productions, which were considerable, through their friends, amongst the slaves of the neighboring plantations; thus conducing to supply their vicinity with cheap and wholesome food. They had built a little village, containing a kind of council or meeting house of hewn cedar, and they called it "We no sen', you no come." The slave gazettes scoff at this title. To me, it is one of the most appropriate and affecting that my imagination could conceive. "We no sen', you no come"—as if they had said, "While we can remain concealed from you, white men, slave masters, you will not come like the hurricane, to sweep us to death—we know you, white men, slave masters; our only safety from you is concealment—if discovered, we are lost!" Such was the title which nature, writhing under recent outrage and with danger of death, growling all round, had taught them! How fearful and odious was the truth of the lesson!
In 1804, they were discovered. The white men came—their fields were destroyed—their village was burnt—and they were hunted to death or to bondage!!! Where is the man, with a man's heart, who would not have died with them, a thousand times rather than to have partaken of crowns of tyrant glory, or of mines of slaveholders' wealth, by aiding to verify the soul-moving title of their harmless hamlet, "We no sen', you no come."
NO. 3.
Sierra Leone has now (1835) been in operation nearly fifty years (from 1787.) It has been in a flourishing condition about thirty years. Prior to the formation of "The African Institution," in 1807, the Sierra Leone
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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