The Sun.
London, England, 1845-07-11 00:00:00

411/1.

LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 11, 1845.

Owing to press of matter we are compelled to omit the
Parliamentary Summary, but it is of less importance, as with
the exception of one Bill (the Irish Colleg.:s Bill) no question
of great interest was discussed. That Bill was read
a third time in the Commons, and passed by one
of the largest majorities of the session. Sir ROBERT
INGLIS intended to have moved that it be read a
third time that day three months, but was prevented,
from some informality. H• then contented himself
with giving a simple negative, when the House
divided, and there were for the third reading 177,
and for the amendment only 26, giving a majority of
151. This beneficial measure is therefore safe. The House
of Lords will pass it by a majority equally triumphant, and
we confidently trust that both parties in Ireland will give it
a fair trial, and lend their aid in the great cause of education.

The debate on Tuesday night last on the objects, the terms,
and the effect of the Convention recently concluded between
Great Britain and France for the better suppression of the
slave' trade was opened by a speech from Lord PAL3IERSTON,
certainly one of the most able that was ever delivered in con-
nexion with the general question of negro slavery, within
the walls of Parliament. It was ;by no means faultless
indeed; for in some essential particulars we must consider it
to have been deficient in candour towards his political op-
ponents ; and as to others, in that cardinal excellence of
legislative oratory—political discretion. With these allow-
ances or deductions, it was still a brilliant and masterly ad-
dress, admirable for its comprehensive views—its condensed
statements of facts and documentary evidence scat-
tered through many volumes of sessional papers, returns,
and reports. It gave a lucid but appalling account of the
unmitigated—perhaps, aggravated—atrocities of this hideous
traffic as it exists at this moment, not only on the western but
on the eastern coasts of Africa. It was a generous, elo-
quent, and earnest appeal to the moral courage, the con-
sistent humanity of a Christian nation, not to relax in the
energy with which it had embarked upon, and
hitherto persisted in, the virtuous enterprise of sup-
pressing the most atrocious crime on the most
extensive scale, which one family of the human race can
perpetrate against another. In denouncing the frightful sa-
crifices of life which, year after year, attend the carrying on
of this execrable trade—a trade that, in ten years, depopu-
lates Africa, on a very moderate computation, to the amount
of not less than one million of human beings—in revealing,
by a few casual glimpses, as it were, some portion
of the unimaginable horrors—the previous hunting, capture,
and manacling of these human animals of the chase, and
of booty ; their subsequent packing in bulk, their privations,
and the maddening thirst and delirious fury that succeed it—.
the unremoved corpses of the dead, from suffocation or inani-
tion, left to corrupt by the sides, or in the laps, even, of their sur-
viving companions of the middle passage—and, finally, the lan-
guid and weakly wretches, whose constitutions, on being disem-
barked, are found too debilitated for the sordid puposes of the
Muscat slave-dealer, and who are therefore left on the burning
beac'a, just where they have sunk from exhaustion and ill-
treatment, to be drowned by the returning tide ;—in all
these passages of his address the Noble Lord spoke out with
all the sympathy of the philanthropist, and all the just indig-
nation of an Englishman. There can be no second opinion,
we apprehend, on the spirit and effect with which these
terrible, though necessary, details are touched upon.
It was in enforcing the immediate purposes of
his motion "for the names of the witnesses examined
before the mixed British and French Commission for the
better suppression of the slave trade, and also of
the minutes of the evidence given by them," that the
Noble Viscount, in the heat of his argument, must
be thought to have been betrayed into those expres-
sions to which we have alluded as wanting in candour
and in discretion. There is no doubt that he was justi-
fied—unhappily justified—in declaring his solemn conviction
" that slave-trading was a crime which desolated Africa, de-
based Asia, contaminated America, from the north to the'
south of the settled states of that Continent, and stained
Europe with unpardonable guilt." But, surely, he was re-
proved not without reason by Sir R. PEEL for volunteering a
somewhat exaggerated apprehensiveness of French
insiecerity in its adhesion to the cause of slave-
trading suppression, and for manifesting a disposition to
speak disparagingly of the value of French aid in a common
cause on so righteous an object. We are likewise compelled,
to acknowledge that we feel the force of the Premier's re-
proof that it was ungracious in the Noble Lord to seek to
detract from the merit of Portugal (whatever the
past duplicity and contumacy of her conduct) in
respect of the good faith and even vigilance of
her present exertions to put down the slaving
expeditions of her own subjects. Perhaps, too, the Noble
t'ord may have somewhat damaged the cause he so very
ably advocated, by accusing the present Government of
apathy in looking to the execution of those conventions and
engagements for the suppression of the slave trade, which the
Government that had the good fortune to reckon among its
most accomplished colleagues the Noble Lord himself, nego
tiated under his Lordship's immediate supervision and ma-
nagement. There is as little of political discretion as of
moral candour, we must repeat, in needlessly reflecting upon
the counsels of a great people like the French, with regard
to transactions that have passed, and as such—as being
" faits accomplis "—are, perhaps, no longer within the pale
of useful or fair criticism, because they cannot be conformed
to any rule or proposition, however excellent, that can now
be suggested !
But having entered our protest against these partial de-
fects, we must do justice to the general tenor, and express
our full concurrence in, the general conclusions of this noble
address. Whilst we fully concur in the opinion avowed by
Sir ROBERT PEEL, that such a convention between the two
nations, as that which has been negotiated on behalf of
the respective Crowns, by the Duc DE BROGLIE and
Dr. LITSHINGTON, is, in itself, and its purposes, a
political good, and a hopeful augury of a happier future to
the outraged races of Africa, we cannot escape from the
force of the charge which Lord PALMERSTON has brought
against the British negotiator of having admitted allega-
tions into the preamble and certain articles of the Convention,
at once derogatory to the high reputation this country has
justly earned by its abolition of slave-trading eight-and-
thirty years ago, and by the Imperial ransom which its
munificence and its justice paid down, under the self-imposed
conditions of the Act of 1834, for the emancipation of all the
negro slaves within its colonial dominions. To this reputa-
tion, to the truth of history, to the moral character of the
British people, and to the dignity of the British Crown, the
terms of one part of the preamble and the recital