The Sun.
London, England, 1845-07-14 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, JULY 14, 1845.

The advices which we have from La Guayra, by the
Rochester packet-ship, are distinguished by one im-
portant, and, we believe, unexpected feature. We
allude to the recognition of the independence of Vene-
zuela by the Spanish Government. Of all her revolted
colonies in South America, Venezuela, as an inde-
pendent state, was that which Old Spain most per-
tinaciously refused to acknowledge. This characteristic
obstinacy in the face of " perfected facts," in defiance
of an irresistible combination of events which had long
previously rendered re-annexation to the mother coun-
try impossible, in forgetfulness, as it were, of that
awakened and excited nationality to which the spirit and
the genius of BOLIVAR had imparted an indestructible
vitality, has been maintained by Spain for five-and-
thirty years. On the 11th of May lag a Spanish vessel
of war, however, run up the harbour of La Guayra,
saluted the Venezuela flag with 21 guns. and landed en
agent of the Spanish Government with the formal act of
recognition and the treaty concluded at Madrid between
the Ministers of the two Powers. lie proceeded to
Caraccas, where he was received with great enthusiasm,
and the document was immediately submitted to the
Congress.

Under any circumstances we should have greatly
rejoiced at a concession so wise and dignified on the
part of Spain—so salutary for the young Republic,
which has claims of the highest' interest on British
sympathies in connexion with her bravely sustained
contest against the powers of a corrupt despotism, and
more especially with the career of one of her citizens,
perhaps the ablest and most disinterested—as he
was also among the bravest—whom the States of the
New World have yet produced. But Venezuela has
another claim upon our respect, another title to our
good wishes, by her consistent patronage of free
labour, and the moral influence which her example
is calculated to exercise, in a degree difficult to be
calculated, on the other nations of South America in
extending this most effective of all discouragements to
the slave trade. The admission of her sugars under cer-
tificates of free labour production, into the English
market, had justly rewarded her for that encouragement
of her domestic agriculture, without slave labour, to
which her Government has so long and assidu-
ously directed its energies. It has established the per-
fect practicability of profitably superseding slave by free
tillage, on a scale sufficiently extensive and remunera-
tive to produce a considerable export trade in its
products.
In contrast with this case of Venezuela, to whose in-
dependence one of the oldest monarchies of Europe has
thus rendered a tardy but an impressive homage, we may
take the case of an empire on the eastern shores of the
same continent, which, animated by far more ignoble
motives, instead of gradually eradicating from
its soil the moral Upas tree of slavery,
nurtures its poisonous growth with the blood,
and waters the guilty soil with the tears of African
victims, annually sacrifitd by scores of thousands to that
terrible object. We may be deceived by our own satis-
faction at the important confirmation which the inde-
pendence of Venezuela has thus received from Spain,
and the to-some-extent improved position she thereby
acquires among the family of Established States all over
the world. But it really appears to us, that the fact in-
volves, with the pendant of that Brazilian dilemma we
are about to notice, a great moral lesson to nations, that
with them, as with individuals, honesty is, in the strictest
sense of the term, the best policy. For what is the false
position in which the shuffling, faithless, slave-trafficking
Ministry of Brazil have now placed that fine empire by
their disgraceful treason to the spirit of treaties executed
by them or their predecessors, for the suppression, in aid
of the generous efforts of Great Britain, of the
slave trade ? Brazil bound herself by a solemn compact
for a period of fifteen years to the sacred obligations of
prohibiting to her subjects, and to the utmost of her
power, suppressing all slave-trading under her flag. On
the 12th of March last formal notice was given to our
Government that this term would expire on the ensuing
day, and that it was not the intention of Brazil to renew
those articles in existing treaties with us which regarded
the putting down of slave-trading. After some treating,
however, it was agreed that the mixed Arglo-Brazilian
Commission should endure for six months more, to wind
up all pending cases of seizure and questions of condem-
nation for infractions of the expiring treaty that had oc-
curred down to such 13th of March, 1845. In the
meanwhile, for some years past, Brazil has been the dis-
grace of Christendom and of civilisation, by reason of
its systematic permission to the most wholesale and
barefaced violations of such treaties by its own
subjects. An annual average, on the lowest
scale, of about 50,000 negroes, represents the number of
wretched human beings kidnapped, captured, manacled,
and flung on board Brazilian slave ships ; and after en-
during all the horrors—the inevitable and revolting pol-
lutions which the cupidity of slave dealers only can ever
contemplate visiting—far less actually inflicting—on
sentient beings of our own species, perceptions, feelings,
organs, they have been landed at Rio,de Janeiro, oron the
neighbouring shores. How many more thousands—
scores of thousands—are annually des.royed in these
expeditions, in the man-hunts that secure the prey, in
the barbarous process of shipping them, in the more
merciful wounding, starving, drowning, or the more bar-
barous over-crowding, suffocation, contagious fevers, de-
lirium, and despair, which release them from their
hideous existence before reaching their American dssti-
nation—we will not now pause to consider. But here is
the dilemma in which the contumacy and perfidy of
Brazil are likely to place her. In 1827 she entered into a
formal, permanent, and binding contract with our Go-
vernment, authorising each Power to treat the subjects
of the other, who should be convicted before competent
tribunals of either State of the crime of slave dealing,
to be proceeded against and dealt with as pirates.
Brazil doggedly refuses to renew her anti slave-trading
engagements with us, so far as these form parts of other '
treaties, having definitive limits and terms of duration.
From this compact of 1827 she cannot escape. Lord
ABERDEEN is now carrying through the House of Lords
a declaratory Bill to give effect to its terms and its
penalties. The Brazilian slave capitalists, including, as
we have said, many of their " magnates." e id he, ceforth
find more peril than profit in their abotninabie 514,ing
speculations. For our own parts nothing would rejoice
us more than to bee some of these infamous offenders I