The Express.
London, England, 1858-01-11 00:00:00

They ea
1 riga

prineipalnlave port in the Bight of l' coin.

;t that place because the corartret whi il/4
Government had formed wilt, M. Reims, Marseilles,
didnot allow him pectniiery margin 100 to teapots
Reims,
with the rivalry of the Spanish dealers in human flesh.
In forming that contract the French Government
had overlooked two considerations. One was that,
encouraged sad stimulated by the ill example of
France, Cuba was quite certain to compete with them
in the purchase of Atrieans; the other, that slavery
and compulsory labour existing iu Cuba, the planters
of that island could afford to give a price for the
negroes landed there which the cultivators of Gua-
deloupe and Martinique, where slavery had been
abolished, could not pay for labour over which they
would not have the same complete command.
The consequence of this omission was that at
Whydah the Spanish slave-dealers, who had an
unrestricted market to supply in Cuba, bought
up all the Africans brought down thither by the
unexpected news of a French demand, at prices
to which the French could not follow them, and that
while three or fear" Spanish slave ships escaped with
full cargoes, the flue French screw steamer the
Stella was at last obliged to leave Whydah with
only a single slave on board, her proposed cargo
having been 1,200.
After this failure of the Stella to purchase African.
at Whydah, on the terms admissible by the Rants
Contract, she left that port and proceeded farther
south. At first it was supposed she had gone
to the River Gaboon, now a French possession. But as
the country of the Gaboon is very thinly inhabited,
and the number of Africans to be purchased there at
any time small, the Stella, it now turns out, peened
that river, and made the best of her way to the
Congo.

The Congo, a much more considerable stream, is
the highway of a very populous district, and was a
Sew years ago the seat of a very extensive slave
trade. It was, therefore, to all appearance, just the
place for the tailia to succeed in. But a curse pur-
sued the iniquitous adventure. There also the
French Government, and the French contractors
and the French agents, made a miscalculation.
There, too, they overlooked two material points.
First, that the Congo is a Portuguese possession.
Secondly, that Portugal haa, under the influence of
England, adopted a new and a better policy in Africa
than trafficking, and encouraging • traffic, in African
flesh.

So, when the Stella entered the Congo to
purchase Africans for exportation to Martinique
and Guadeloupe, she at once met with the opposi-
tion of the Portuguese government of St. Paul de
Loanda. That government immediately despatched
a ship of war to warn the Stella against carrying on
' her abominable trade in the African possessions of His
11 Faithful Majesty i and, although the French Com-
modore arrived in a frigate to support the Stella, so
resolved were the Portuguese authorities that they
sent their whole naval force into the Congo to en..
force this prohibition. The Stella has consequently
been compelled to remove out of the Portuguese
limits in order to buy emigrants.
Humiliating as this act of Portuguese vigour was
in itself to the French, there was one thing that
rendered it still mare humiliating. It was the pre-
sence of the British Admiral and two British ships of
war in the Congo to witness Portuguese firmness and
French disgrace. This British force had put into the
river to hold courts-martial on some petty offenders,
and were eye-witnesses to the scene we have de-
scribed, and than which we can imagine nothing
more discreditable to the Imperial Government of
France. The Slave Trading Expedition of the
Imperial Government of France driven out of Portu-
guese waters by a Portuguese squadron in the pre-
sence of British men-of-war! Whither the Stella
will now go for her human cargo no one can tell. It
is, no doubt, possible that the Imperial Government—
. _

in spite of all this evidence of the inherent unsound-
ness, from want of foresight and proper calculation, of
the Rl.OlB Contract looked on as a merely commercial

speculation—may still persevere. But if failure the
most signal, and odium the most general, can in-
duce them to abandon an enterprise which the
honour •nd glory of France and the moral obliga-
tion, of treaty engagements ought to have effectu-
ally prevented the French from ever entering on,
—they now have motive enough to abandon the
project.