The Sun.
London, England, 1838-03-03 00:00:00

wrong side, and that I had a claim upon them in consequence
of the defence which they had chosen so injudiciously to under-
take. For they have begotten suspicions in my mind that all is
not right when I see men so over-zealous for one another—
when I see men lose their temper in defending themselves or
their friends—when I see them so touchy that they cannot
stop to inquire—so hasty that they must needs look over the
facts—so vehement in urging their defence that they will not
even tarry to ascertain whether they were ever attacked or not
—when I see them in this mingled state of feeling, with this
want of judgment, this incapacity of reasoning, this loss of me-
mory, this almost total dimness of sight, bodily as well as
mental—when I see them thus coming forward, not waiting
till a charge is made, but at once entering the arena of con
troversy, putting forward mighty charges, and supporting
them by a fury of arms and storm of blows that no man may
dare to encounter—when I see them carried off their legs by
a too generous rivalry of over zeal and want of judgment—over
zeal in an abundant degree, and want of judgment in en unna-
tural excess—when I see all this I cannot help surmising, I
cannot shut my mind to the suspicion, that there is some sore
place. When men wince so much—when they exhibit so
many contortions and twistings at the bare idea of a charge,
which charge has never been made against them—when they
see phantoms of injuries, no injury having been committed
upon them—when they have ghosts haunting them in their
waking hours, and even in their senatorial position, where they
are placed to discharge duties which some constituencies in
some parts of the kingdom have been found to delegate to
them from extraordinary confidence in their judgment, ca-
pacity, and skill.—when I see all this I cannot help suspect-
ing that perhaps, after all, there may be some ground of
charge against them. To elucidate that point I shall con-
clude with a motion which, as I am informed, taking the best
advice I could obtain upon the subject, will have the effect of
proving whether the system of head-money has in fact produced
the consequences which are to be apprehended from- it. I
am not the man to shrink or quail because hard words are
applied to me—l am not the man to be put down when I have
a duty to perform because some persons, in the discharge of
what, I suppose, they conceive to be their duty, foully and
falsely charge me with saying that which I never uttered—l
am not the man to be put down by any such management as
that. Even if I find that the vehemence and rancour of the
assault upon me have not been confined to the mists and ex-
' halations which obfuscate the mind and clog the vision of or-
dinary men, but have reached that higher atmosphere where
all should be serene—where all should be calm as Justice her-
self—where the equal scales of justice should beheld with an
untremulous, fair, and determined hand (as in the other House
there is a man appointed to hold those scales)—even if I find
that higher and purer atmosphere defiled and tainted by the
breath of a lower sphere, I will not be deterred. When I see
the judgment so obscured—when I find the judgment so
hopelessly bewildered, that what passed eight and-forty hours
before has been as totally erased from the troubled tablets of
the brain as if it had never happened at all—when I find the
scales not only tremble in the hand of him appointed to hold
them, but one of them absolutely kicking the beam, and that
one not the government scale, but the scale in which the im-
pugners of the Government happen to sit—when I find that
it is no want of authority which has occasioned this silence,
this non.interruption, this unobstructive mood in that high
quarter—when, on the contrary, I find that if ever a func-
tionary of that House existed who had interfered more with
the usages of the House, who had put down many debating
practices, who had reversed and altered the whole of the
right of the people to debate upon petitions, by exercising
which right I gained all the greatest battles that the people
have won during the last twenty years against corruption
and impolicy—when I find this, then indeed, I am led to
ask how it happened that that which took place in the de-
bate on the Tuesday or the Monday, in which not one word
m in
was used nor one allusion
made as to what had passed
rinoCier House, in which the allusions that were made were
of a nature the most absolutely indifferent, amounting to
nothing more than a mere technical flaw in the forms of de-
bate—l say, when I find this, lam led to ask how it hap-
pened that that vague allusion, that that technical infor-
mality, called down an instant stoppage—produced an in-
stant interruption from the high quarter to which I have
referred; whereas, upon a subsequent occasion, no hint, no
sign, not even one faint and solitary cry of " Order" escaped
from the same quarter, when words the most uncalled for,
the most unjust, the most disorderly, the most indecorous that
in the whole course of my experience I ever heard of, were
uttered in the presence and in the hearing of him whose duty
it is to preserve the decorum of debate? When I find all this
occurring, then truly I cannot help feeling that there is some-
thing, if not altogether wrong, at least extremely awkward, in
this case, and that the sooner it is set right by inquiry the
better. For which purpose lam about to conclude by moving
for papers, for the purpose of showing whether I was not pre-
cipitate in precluding all idea of charging the officers of th e
navy with being influenced by head-money—whether I did not
go out of my way, not in the right direction, but in the wrong,
when I spoke only of the tendency, not of the effect of head-
money—when I limited myself to a discussion of the impolicy
of the system, and carefully abstained from attributing any
selfish motive to those who acted under it—whether, in short,
the fast may not be (being the very reverse of that which I
stated), that the effect as well as the tendency of this head.
money has been to induce the officers of cruisers to allow the
lading of slave-vessels to be completed before they com-
menced the work of capture. I have been in communication
with a very experienced naval officer, who understands this
question well, and who tells me that the object I have
in view will be obtained, if I can procure front the
Government-Ist, the dates of all captures of slave-ships for
the list ten years ; 2d, extracts from the logs of the capturing
ships on the day before and the day after each capture ; 3d, a
return of all the other ships on the coast of Africa on the same
day with the British ships stationed in cruising there ; and,
4th, the number of ships stationed on the east coast of Africa
during the last ten years, specifying the years and the names
of the ships.
The Earl of MINTO said—ln justice to the two Hon.
Gentlemen whose conduct had been so warmly and violently
animadverted upon by the Noble and Learned Lord he (Lord
Minto) must say that, upon the occasion referred to, when
the Noble and Learned Lord made that very extraordinary
and very able speech upon the subject of the Slave-trade, he
(Lord Minto), for one, certainly understood the Noble and
Learned Lord, not directly (because the Noble and Learned
Lord guarded himself very carefully upon that bead), but in-
directly, to imply that the influence of head-money bad had
some effect. The Noble and Learned Lord might remember
that he (Lord Minto) distinctly stated upon that occasion
that unless such an inference were drawn from the argument
advanced by the Noble and Learned Lord, that argument, in
point of fact, must be taken as amounting to nothing at all.
His recollection of the bearing of the passages in question in
the Noble and Learned Lord's speech undoubtedly was that
the slave-ships were watched by the cruisers until they had
completed their cargo of slaves, and it was not until they
had done so that any attempt was made to capture them.
Now, was it surprising that the captors felt hurt and indignant
at such an imputation ? The Noble and Learned Lord could
mean nothing else but that which he (Lord Minto) had de-
scribed. The strong and unambiguous impression which the
Noble and Learned Lord's argument made on him ( Lord
Minto) on the occasion in question was, that as long as head-
money was offered there was no expedient that could be
adopted which would have the effect of putting down the
slave-trade. What were the expressions in the copy of the
speech which had been revised by the Noble and Learned
Lord himself, and published under his authority ? In the first
place the Noble and Learned Lord spoke of the analogy which
existed between head-money and blood-money ; stating that in
some points they both appealed to the same feelings and mo-
tives, and put in motion the same springs of human action.
" Under the old bounty system (proceeded the Noble and
Learned Lord) no policeman had an interest in detecting and
checking guilt until it reached a certain pitch of depravity ; until
the offences became capital, and their prosecutor could earn
forty pounds, they were not worth attending to. The cant
expression, but the insignificant one, is well known. He (the
criminal) is not weight enough—he does not weigh his forty
pounds'—was the saying of those who cruised for head-money
at the Old Bailey. And thus lesser crimes were connived at
by some—encouraged, nurtured, fostered in their growth by
others—that they might attain the maturity which the law
had, in its justice and wisdom, said they must reach, before
it should be worth any one's while to stop the course of guilt.
Left to itself, wickedness could scarcely fail to shoot up and
ripen. As soon as he saw that time come, the policeman
pounced upon his appointed prey, made his victim pay the pe-
nalty of the crime he had suffered, if not encouraged him to
commit, and himself obtained the reward provided by the
State for the patrons of capital felony. Such within the
tropics is the tendency, and such are the effects of our heads
money system. The slave-ship gains the African shores ; she
there remains unmolested by the land authorities, and unvi-
sited by the sea. The human cargo is prepared for her ; the
ties that knit relatives together aro forcibly severed ; all the
resources of force and of fraud, of sordid avarice and of sa-
vage intemperance, are exhausted to fill the human market.
To prevent all this, nothing, or next to nothing, is at-
tempted ; the penalty has not as yet attached ; the slaves are
not on board, and head-money is not due. The vessel, to
use the technical phrase, does not yet weigh enough ' • let
her ride at anchor till she reach her due standard of five
pounds a slave, and then she will be pursued l" Why
was this the way in which a Gallant and Honourable pro-
fession ought to be treated 2—( Hear, hear, hear.) But no
doubt, by some ingenious combination of words, which he
( Lord Minto) should be told presently he was too stupid to
comprehend, the Noble and Learned Lord would make out
that all this meant directly the reverse of that which it ap-
peared to mean. The Noble and Learned Lord would at-
tempt to give some other colour to a passage which must ne-
cessarily affect the feelings of a gallant and honourable pro-
fession, and was it surprising that any member of that pro-
fession should be anxious, though perhaps in language a
little too strong, to rescue himself and his brave friends from
imputations so grave and unfounded? It was in his opinion
impossible:, after reading the passage which lie had quoted,
to take it in any other sense than that of a direct insinuation
that there had been at least a neglect of duty on the part of
the officers employed on the service in question. Now, he
would be far from saying that there might have been one, or
even that there might have been two instances of negligence
on the part of naval officers off the coast of Africa; but he could
unequivocally, say, that lie had no knowledge of any such case.
He knew of no occurrence whatever that could justify the
imputations which had been thrown out by the Noble and
Learned Lord. Ile had had many opportunities of admiring
the character of naval men, and had no reason to complain of
their conduct in a single instance.
Lord BROUGHAM observed that there seemed to be a
combination between those who had made the charge against
him and the Noble Lord who had defended them. They had
all fallen into the same mistake. The Noble Lord maintain-
ing that all his (Lord Brougham's) disclaimers meant nothing
The Noble Lord was determined not to mind disclaimers at