Some of the incidents related in the following pages will be found to
bear upon, and tend forcibly to corroborate, the miseries so patiently
endured by the African race, in a vaunted land of freedom and
enlightenment, whose inhabitants assert, with ridiculous tenacity, that
their government and laws are based upon the principle, "That all men in
the sight of God are equal," and the wrongs of whose victims have of
late been so touchingly and truthfully illustrated by that eminent
philanthropist, Mrs. Stowe, to the eternal shame of the upholders of the
system, and the fearful incubus of guilt and culpability that will
render for ever infamous, if the policy is persisted in, the nationality
of America.

Well may the benevolent Doctor Percival in his day have said, when
writing on the iniquitous system of slave holding and traffic, that
"Life and liberty with the powers of enjoyment dependent on them are the
common and inalienable gifts of bounteous heaven. To seize them by force
is rapine; to exchange for them the wares of Manchester or Birminghan is
improbity, for it is to barter without reciprocal gain, to give the
stones of the brook for the gold of Ophir."



THE ENGLISHMAN IN AMERICA.




CHAPTER I.