Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 edition. Excerpt: ...which was already organizing, destined at last to embrace the whole Human Family. Even before Wilberforee triumphed in Parliament, Great Britain intervened with Napoleon, in 1806, to induce him to join in the abolition of the slavetrade; but he flatly refused. What Prance would not then yield, was extorted from Portugal in 1810; from Sweden shortly afterwards; and from Denmark in 1814. An ineffectual attempt was made to enlist Spain, even by the temptation of pecuniary subsidies; and also to enlist the restored monarch of France, Louis XVIII. even by the offer of a sum of money outright or the cession of a West India Island, in consideration of the desired abolition. Had gratitude to a benefactor prevailed, these Powers could not have resisted; but it was confessed by Lord Castlereagh, in the House of Commons, that there was a distrust of the British Government even among the better classes of people, who thought that its zeal in this behalf was prompted by a desire to injure the French Colonies and commerce, rather than by benevolence. But he was more successful with Portugal, which Power was induced, by pecuniary equivalents, to execute a Supplementary Treaty in January, 1815. This was followed by the declaration of the Congress of Vienna, on motion of Lord Castlereagh, 15th February, 1815, denouncing the African slave-trade as inconsistent with the principles of humanity and universal benevolence. Meanwhile Napoleon returned from Elba, and what the British Intervention failed to accomplish with the Bourbon Monarch, and what the Emperor had once flatly refused, was now spontaneously done by him, doubtless in the hope of conciliating British sentiment. His hundred days of power were signalized by an ordinance abolishing the slave-trade in...