New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1856-04-09
COMFORT FOR sLAyE-TRADRRs.

1t is one of the special boasts Of the Slavery
party OF this country that the United States took
the initiative in putting the African save-trade
under the ban Of Cbristendom. Our Griers and
Curtises and the other plant tools Of Slavery on
the bench rejoice in their periodical opportunity
to heap epithets Of shame and infamy upon this
prescribed branch Of commerce in the ears of
gaping Grand Juries. Sometimes to be sure, they
find Grand Jury that is too many for them, as
the late Judge Woodbury. did at Newport, II. l
when the Grand Inquest, in reply TO one of these
yrtuous diatribes, presented The domestic slave
trade as a public nuisance His Honor was con-
siderably fabJergOsied by this unexpected return
for his expenditure of Judicial morality, aud
begged to know what they proposed doing abou. il.
We apprehend that he had sense enough to under
stand that in making the hit they had done all thai
the occasion called for.
These periodical ventilatiOns Of Judicial human
ty however, seem to be about all the practical adj
vantage that the prohibition of the Guinea trade
has brought about. 1t is an advantage 10 be sure,
TO have the brand of law set upon the forehead of
q great crime that has long walked abroad brazeu
ard defiant; but ii is good that begins and ends,
as charity is apt to do, at home. 1t does not make
much difference to the poor negroes on the Coast
whether they are regularly inyoiced for lawful
custom houses or smugged as articles cOntraband
of law Or, rather, it is wore for them as ii is,
since the increased risk involves the necessity of
yet smaller modicum of humanity than used to be
allowed as part of the stores of slave-shp in the
golden DAYS of the traffic. The fact is that in
spite of laws of Congress and treaties with all
nations, in spite of the yirtuous Indignation of
Presidents Messages and the boiling over of
Judges before Grand Jures the slave. trade is car
ried on by American citizens to much greater ex-
tent than ever it was before.
We remember hearing an eminent merchant say
many years ago that be had just asked knowing
broker, at the time of a great money pressure
what had become of all the Spanish silver dollars,
which were wanted in those days for the China
trade, and he was told that they were all bought
up to send TO Africa to bay negroes with. 1t is
admitted, we believe, that where one hundred
thousand negroes were kidnapped in year in
Africa when Clarkson and Wilberforce thought
their work was over, four hundred thousand are
now, or were very recently. Possibly the recent
change in the policy of Brazil may have some
what altered the figures of this estimate; but we
shall be far within the mark in setting the number
down at double what it was at the abolition. OF
this most lucrative trade American merchants have
the credit of enjoying their share, and the names Of
men and firms are mentioned on the sly in New
York, in Boston, in Philadelphia, as among those
who turn al honest penny in this WAY.
Now, considering tie kind Of morality which is
issued from The Mother Bank at Washington,
indOrsed by emincat dvines of every considerable
denomination, for circulation among the people, it
Is not very strange that these things should be so
If it be piety and patriotism TO catch one poor
negro barber or waiter in NewYork or Boston and
send him into Slavery from which he had freed
himself it surely cannot be an objectionable sin 10
brig a cargo of the raw material from Africa to
Cuba or Brazil. The essence of e her act consists
III turning man into piece of merchandise and
what is virtue in the case can hardly be crime
in the other. If Slavery be not NAHUM in Sc,
ten the s!ave-trade can be but ma!En ProiibitEm