Note 7 — CONSIDERATIONS ON THE NEGROE CAUSE, &c.

Mr. Hargrave further says, in his argument, p. 67 and 68, “The slavery of Negroes being admitted to be lawful now in America, however questionable its first introduction there might be, it may be urged that the lex loci ought to prevail, and that the master’s property in the Negroe as a slave having had a lawful commencement in America, cannot be justly varied by bringing him into England.” This is one among other objections raised by Mr. Hargrave in order to receive his answer. Now as to the doubt expressed here, namely, “however questionable its first introduction there might be,” the right of granting letters patent, and of erecting corporations for the purposes of trade, being the undoubted prerogative of the king as arbiter of the commerce of his dominions; the lawfulness of this trade to Africa is no more to be questioned whilst it was carried on under this direction, than it is to be questioned now it is under the controul of parliament. It was before constitutionally legal, it is now parliamentary so: but the answer to the objection itself is as little satisfactory as the doubt is. Here a most unnatural distinction is aimed at between the colony laws in America, and the laws of their mother country: putting the lex loci of these colonies upon the same footing with the lex loci of Russia or Prussia, or any other foreign country: whereas the lex loci of the colonies is founded on the lex loci of England, and is, in totidem verbis, the same, as has been made to appear.