place: which is best? which is most humane? To admit a title, gain it for the United States, and then to make these miserable creatures free, under such circumstances and at such time as the condition into which they are forced permits, or, by denying the possibility of title, to leave them to be slaves? But my colleague has a sovereign specific for this. We do not make them slaves, he says, we only leave them to the laws of the states. But if the laws of all the states may, and if some of them do and will make them slaves, by leaving them to the operation of the laws of those states, do we not as absolutely make them slaves as though we voted them to be so in express terms? To my mind, if, when we have the power, we fail to secure to ourselves the means of giving freedom to them under proper modifications, we have an agency in making them slaves. To strike out the forfeiture, as it seems to me, will defeat the very end its advocates have in view."
Fiske, of Vermont, denied that, in order to give the United States the deshed control over Africans or others illegally imported, any forfeiture was necessary. It was never thought that shipwrecked people belonged to the finder. Just so with the alleged slaves brought here. It was our duty to take them into our custody, and, if they needed assistance, to provide for them; and this might be done without seeming to recognize any title in the importer. He was inclined to the apprenticeship plan.
Clay, of Philadelphia, and Macon, strongly urged the bill as it stood, on the ground that it was only as a commercial question that congress had any jurisdiction over the slave-trade. Smilie, of Pa., insisted that this was something more than a mere commercial question, and that the bill could not be passed with this clause of forfeiture in it without damage to the national character. He quoted the declaration of independence; to which Clay replied that the declaration of independence must be taken with great qualifications. It declared that men have an inalienable right to life — yet we hang criminals; to liberty — yet we imprison; to the pursuit of happiness — and yet men must not infringe on the rights of others. If that declaration were to be taken in its fullest extent, it would warrant robbery and murder, for some might think even these crimes necessary to their happiness. Hastings, of Massachusetts, hoped the general government would never be disgraced by undertaking to sell human beings like goods, wares and merchandise. Yet, in spite of all these objections, the house refused to strike out the forfeiture, sixty-three to thirty-six.
The debate then turned upon the punishment to be inflicted on the masters and owners of vessels engaged in the slave-trade. The substitution, which had been adopted in committee of the whole, of imprisonment for death, was warmly opposed by the greater part of the northern members, a few excepted, who professed scruples at inflicting capital punishment at all. "We have been repeatedly told," said Mosely, of Connecticut, "and told with an air of triumph, by gentlemen from the south, that their citizens have no concern in this infamous traffic; that people from the north are the importers of negroes, and thereby the seducers of southern citizens to buy them. We have a right
