The Sun.
London, England, 1840-03-03 00:00:00

EVENTING EDITION.

TUE SLAVE TRAFFIC: OR, LORD
PALMERSTON'S BILL.

The following are extracts from Viscount Sade Bar-
deira's pamphlet under the above title. The pamphlet
was distributed to the Deputies on the 31st of January,
1840 :
Page 3—Contends that Portugal was the first Chris-
tian Power which abolished slavery in its own colonies,
t namely, by the King Dom Jose, in 1773, in respect to
the islands of Madeira and the Azores (vide Alvaras,
19th Sept. 1761, 26th Feb. 1771, and 16th Jan. 1773),
whilst the British Government withheld its sanction to
the numberless Acts of its then Colony of Virginia,
• tending to suppress the traffic in slaves ; that the State
of Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, which ex-
ample was shortly after followed by the other Northern
States of the Union ; that it was abolished throughout
the Danish Colonies in 1804, agreeably to the decree
of 1794. •
Page 4.—lt was in 1807 that it was abolished by
Great Britain, although, according to Mr. Buxton's
work, it was still carried on in the Mauritius in 1817.
Its gradual extinction was decreed in Colombia in 1821.
Page B.—The Viscount states what follows :—" The
only means of effectually suppressing the slave traffic is
the total abolition of slavery in America as well as in the
other countries where it still exists, and into which
slaves are imported. There are two ways of obtaining
that end, one of which is by granting pecuniary
indemnities to the owners of the slaves, who should
be made free at once, or shortly after, as
was practised in the British Colonies; or by de-
gislating in such a manner as that the slaves shall gra-
dually receive their liberty, in conformity to that which
was done by Portugal in 1773, and subsequently by
Pennsylvania and other States of the American Union.
The latter mode would be attended by the great incon-
venience of not leading to the immediate extinction of
the traffic in slaves, which would be continued by means
Of smuggling, which induces me to opine that the first
is the only one which it would be advisable to adopt."
Pages 15, 16, 17.—" It was with the utmost wonder
that I read in Lord Howard de Walden's note of sth
May last, addressed to the Baron da Ribeira de Sa-
brosa, in reply to another which I had written, on the
6th October, 1838, to Mr. Jerningham (then the
Charge d'Affaires of Great Britain in Lisbon), what
follows :—.‘ The undersigned took with him, nu doubt in
order to offer it to the consideration of his Government, the
incomplete project of the treaty ; but he never agreed,
nor could he agree, to it, because he was not authorised to
d° 50, nor could he so have done it in conformity to the
tenor of his instructions.' His Lordship further says—
He is instructed by his Government to protest once
i
for
4.1, against the attempt so repeatedly made in the
Viscount de, Se's note, in order to make it appear that
the proposals of Viscount de Sa, which the British Go-
vernment could not entertain for one moment, ought to
be considered as stipulations agreed upon by the two
Governments, or by their Plenipotentiaries.'
" In order to demonstrate that assertion, Lord
Howard availed himself of two private letters which I
had written to him, one on the 12th and another on the
80th of May, 1838,in the last of which I spoke to him
of a conversation which her Majesty and her august
husband condescended to hold with me relative to a
letter that her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain bad
written to the Kng. It is much to be wondered that
this private correspondence, and the still more private
conversation of their Majesties, should have been intro-
duced into a diplomatic discussion by Lord Howard de
Walden's note,
" As, when I quitted the Ministry, I did not leave in
the Foreign Office the private letters which the Noble
Lord had addressed to me, not considering them official,
the Baron da Ribeira de Sabrosa wrote to me, asking in-
formation respecting the correspondence referred to by
the British Minister, which I complied with, forwarding
to his Excellency the letters which that Minister had
written to me, considering myself authorised to proceed
thus, on view of the example laid down by Lord
Howard, who had placed at the disposal of his Govern-
ment the private letters that be had received from me.
(See Lord Howard's note, May 5, 1839, to the Baron
tin Ribeira de Sabrosa.)
" I forwarded all the correspondence which I pos-
sessed relative to the object in question ; and it was of
the said correspondence, as well as of other documents
in Lord Howard's own hand-writing, which exist in the
respective departments, that the Baron availed himself,
in order to demonstrate, in the clearest manner, that the
treaty and its annexes were agreed upon when his Lord-
ship departed for London on the 23d of May, the
additional article being wanting only, respecting which
there had not been a &nal discussion."

Page 21.—1 n reference to the various pecuniary
claims, and the manner of presenting thcm, the Viscount
says, " Such claims, as many of them are for sums
either not due, or not liquidated, peremptorily demanded,
if obtained through threats, resemble a real spoliation,
more aggravated still by the knowledge, which his Lord-
ship no doubt possessed, of the straightened circum-
stances in which the finances of Portugal have been
placed. if these and other facts could ground a conjec-
ture that the Noble Lord's mind has been hostile to the
interests of Portugal, his language, as well in the
official correspondence as in Parliament, would not less
concur to convey such a belief ; language widely different
from that made use of by the Noble Lord Palmerston,
in the Parliamentary debates to which the case of the
British vessel Vixen, taken by the Russian cruisers in
the Black Sea, gave rise, or that of the territorial boun-
daries of the United States of America and the British
province of New Brunswick ; and in that with France
respecting the gum copal trade on the African coast,
near Portendic ; debates in which he did not insult or
injure the Governments with which England had pend-
ing differences, as be did towards that of Portugal."
Further on, in reply to Lord Howard de Walden's
often-repeated charge, " that Viscount Sada Ban-
deira's object was to delay the negotiation, in order to
avoid d;spleasing certain persons whom he (the Vis-
count) still considered of political importance," the
Viscount says (see pages 25 and 26), " that, being
Minister in 1836, I caesed the decree of the 10th of
December to be drawn up, to which her Majesty the
Queen was pleased to affix her Royal signature, and
Which was countersigned by all the Ministers. Great
penalties were therein imposed on the slave-dealers.
" That I likewise recommended to the Portuguese
Consuls, as well as to the Governors of the Colonies,
the literal execution of the decree of the 16th of Ja-
nuary, 1837, which defines the vessels that are to be
considered as Portuguese.
" That the Portuguese Consul at the Havannah was
dismissed, and the exequator of the Danish Consul at
the Cape Verd Islands
was
withdrawn,
through
the
Foreign Department under my charge, because they
were conniving at that infamous traffic.
" That it was I who gave the most positive instruc-
tions to the commanders of the Portuguese ships of war
for the ptinctual execution of the Decree of the 10th
of December, 1836, the result of which has been the
capture of seven or eight vessels suspected of being
engaged in the traffic, and the condemnation of some of
them in conformity to the same decree,
" That it was through the Navy Department, likewise
under my charge, that the Governor-General of Angola
was dismissed and ordered to be tried along with other
public servants suspected of connivance in favour of
the traffic."

Paige 50.—1 n reference to the facility with which slaves
are still exported in the very neighbourhood of the Bri-
tish colonies in Atrica, the Viscount states, " On sight of
all this, a sense of impartiality demanded that Lord Pal-
merston should not have attributed to Portugal the in-
crease of a traffic which Portugal cannot prevent, because
it :s carried on in contravention of Portuguese laws, be-
yond the limits where they extend, and with capitals
which are not Portuguese—at the very same time that
British capital, British merchandise, and British specu-
tators or adventurers are employed in forwarding the
said traffic, in carrying it on, in a great measure, in
the very neighbourhood of the British colonies ; in
spots near the residences of the mixed commissions ;
and, it could almost be said, within sight of the British
cruisers, in places where they have, ever since 1817, had
the right of capturing all Portuguese ships engaged in
the trade.
"Justice imperiously required that his Lordship
should have stated the real causes of the increased
traffic, and not attribute to Portugal the crimes of
which some Portuguese, in partnership with English-
men, Frenchmen, Americans, Brazilians, Spaniards, and
others, are guilty, by co-operating, each in his own
way, in that odious trade ; some furnishing the requi-
site funds, others the ships, others their outfit, others
obtaining false papers and the respective flags, others
by supplying the merchandise fit for the trade, and
others, lastly, by contributing by their personal exer-
tions, either as captains or as seamen.
Page 51.—Mr. Gordon, Charge d'Affaires of Great
Britain in Rio Janeiro, wrote, under date of April 21,
1838, to Lord Palmerston, as follows :—" I regret t'o
have to state that it appears probable that much British
capital is employed in the traffic, even direct. Many
British houses of this city have for some time greatly
assisted the speculations towards this nefarious end.
Formerly, when the risk of being captured by the British
cruisers was considered considerable, no merchant was
willing to sell the merchandise fit for the African market
unless it was paid for in cash at once ; but since it
was observed that such risk was really very small the
British houses altered their practice in this respect, and
now allow the slave-dealers to purchase, on credit, such
goods as they require, to pay for the same at the wind-
° up of the speculation in which they were employed."
Page 53.—" I am not aware that bonds (fiancas)
are demanded in Great Britain from the owners and
charterers of the nume-ous vessels which, from the
very Thames, the Severn, the Mersey, the Clyde, the
Humber, and other ports of Great Britain, sail loaded
with manufactures exclusively intended for the slare
trade, and which they convey to the ports of Brazil,
.Cuba, St. Thomas, and others of the Antilles, as well
as to the British colonies in Africa, and to the very
ports where the traffic is made, where there are fac-
tories on shore, .or where the business is transacted on
board the very vessels, in which ports some of the
I,l4ders actually wake up thr, assc•l truunt oonle:1.-
pi“te .nceessary for the purchase of thr: sit; cz..."