The Sun.
London, England, 1818-10-12 00:00:00

THE 'CASE OF SPAIN.

ICly extracts from the Tract of 1807, have al-
yeady sliewn that the Spanish Government had in-
volved itself more deeply than ever in the sin
of the Slave 'frade, immediately before ihe Revo-
intion in France. Instead of the former limited
Trermisvions given for the importation of slave, by
'foreigners, under the Assiento contracts, a gene-
ral Edict was published by the unfortunate
Charles IV, in 1789, inviting and encouraging
that cruel commerce to the utt»ost extent, " in
order," as he expressed it, " to procure for all
his tibjects the greater advantages in the Slave
Trade, as will as to augment the number of cul-
tivators in the American Colonies."

The author of the Tract did not notice the par.
ticular share which Spain so soon after sustained
of the general calamities which he supposed to
have been a scourge for this offence. Perhaps it,
was because irer chastisement at that pet iod, though
severe enough, suffering as she %vas under one
hostilities, and at the same time under the secret
drimination and insatiate rapacity of Napoleon,
bad nothing in it sufficiently striking; and appro-
priate. to deserve specification like the cases of
Holland and of France. Spain had not, like
them, become a theatre of revolution and internal
desolating war. The Spanish throne had not,
like theirs, been subverted. Louis XVI. had,
not long atter his Edicts for encouraging the
Slave Trade, lost his crown and his life. The
Stadtholder had, almost as speedily after a like
measure, been deposed, and driven into exile ;
and Holland.bad lost her liberty and independence
before the expiration of the term for which she
gave her excitements to that guilty commerce.
But Charles IV. still wore his crown ; and his
kingdom, in close alliance with that of France,
seemed exempt from the dangers, though not
from the hurt hens of the war. Soon, however,
this comparative impunity ceased, and had the
New Reasons for abolishing the Slave Trade"
been published sixteen months later, the author
might have found new facts for his purpose
stronger than those be adduced. He might have
truly stated, that not a single Government which
had persisted in the Slave Trade remained unsttb-
verted ; and that every Sovereign who gave it ex-
press encouragement had lost his throne, his li-
berty, or his life. The Queen and Prince Regent
of Portugal had been tit iven by foreign arms to
the same Colony to which they were still traits-
ironing the injured Africans.—'The retaliation on
the Spanish Monarch had been still more specific
and complete. Kidnapped by the Corsican slave-
maker, be, with his family, had been, like the
poor Africans, imprisoned, expatriated, degraded,
and condemned, for the selfish advantage of their
oppressor, to captivity in a foreign land.
The Spanish people next partook largely of the
scourge. Their country became the theatre at
once of foreign and of civil'war. Their cities
and towns were alternately taken and retaken,
their villages ravaged, their corn fields and vine-
yards trodden down, their flocks and herds driven
away or destroyed, and a thousand other miseries
were inflicted on them both by native and by fo-
reign, by friendly and by hostile arms. For
more than five years Spain was a scene of Lor-

- ,
trira scarcely trirerhi'f tii;:it'Of the s ve Coast
tAtit, except that the % ic:l,n, (if Gut 4411.4 warfare
fowid tornitie or the sword a mild&-'fate than
eternal sLver—
y and a pile : and deaths Much_ less
dreadful thin fitose which the driving 'Whip often
progressively iuflicts on slowly sinking nature.
Here perhaps the glorioes fate of Saragossa,
and other monuments of ratriotic heroism, may
occur to the mind as competitatory honours. But
let its regard the ultimate 'fruits the painful
conflict.—Let us look at Spdininbertresent pros-
trate attitude.. Let us ask, where are the self-
devoted patriots who plucked those laurels ; and
where the liberties they fought for ? -We shall
Alen have no difficulty in viewing the miseries of
a five years' internal and revolutionary war as
penal dispensations in respect of -Spain- herself,
however happy in their issue to England and
other na:ions.

The event to the Spaavish people might have
been widely different. NVltti-dirt not hope for
them a rich harvest of national blessings, such as
might have abundantly compensated for all the
evils they endured ! And why ha, this hope of
philanthropy been disappointed ? For what cause
have Spanish liberty, and greatness, and hap-
piness been strangled in their births _and the ad-
miration of surrounding nations converted into
pity and contempt ? The politician finds it hard
to answer these questions. He admits, that both
Government and- people have acted contrary to
all rational caleulations, as well as repugnantly to
their own interest -and honour. But how they
came to he so infatuated he- cannot tell. He is
driven to ascribe to them, to the people especially,
unnatural and distorted feelings, a love of shtse-ry
and persecution for their own onions sakes, an
antipathy to noble-mindedness, a predilection even
for injustice and ingratitude. He reluctantly
confesses the Spanish character to be the very
reverse of that which he previously supposed.—
The generous and high-spirited people, who so
gallantly burst their fetters, have crouehed under
the rod of an ungrateful master, abandoned their
patriotic leaders, and proved that they have no
Baste fur liberality or freedom. All this is very
strange, and I know not how far it.mayhe
But two things are certain ; that the Spanish 'lo-
tion, while struggling,for treedor»,. deeply.aggra-
vated its provocations of Divioe Justice ia.reg,rd
to the Slave 'Trade ; and that immediately alto
the consummation, of
,this offence all its happy
'prospects were suddenly and strangely reversed.
Here facts and dates become very material.
It is not generally known, perhaps, that the
(location of abolition agitated the Spanish Cores
almost as much as the British Parliament, though
!tot so long, and unhappily with a very different
event. The Government of this country, soon
after we entered ort the Peninsular war, employed
itself earnestly in attempting to p:_rstrade the Ad-
ministrations hcitk of Portugal and Spain to con-
cur widi it in abolisting• the Slave 'Trade. But
though some small approach to such is measure
was. obtained from the former by the Treaty of
February, 1810, those who administered the af-
fairs of Spain in the name of Ferdinand VII. were
-not to he moved. The infinence of the Colonies
in their Cabinet was too powerful for that of Great
Britain ; and down to the year 1811, our solicis:
tatiuns had been whol!y in vain,. . .
At this time the General Cortes was assembled.
at Cadiz, and some of its most distinguished Mem-
bers having been induced to examine the grounds
of the English Abolition, became zealous con-
verts to its principle, and pressed earnestly for
its adoption in that Assembly. Dun Augustin
D•Argto Iles, a name dear to the friends of hum.(-
pity, on the Ist of April, 1811, brought forward,
at the same time, two propositions of a congenial I
spirit, the one for the suppression of the law of
judicial torture, and the other for the immediate
abolition of the Slave Trade. The former was
unanimously adopted ; but the latter, though sup-
ported by a respectable minority, was, after warm
debates, eluded by a resolution referring it to a
special Committeet
The controversy being thus.commenced., it pro-
ceeded exactly like our own rand between the
same description of parties, with this exception,
that here there were two distinct classes, arrayed
by self-interest against the measure ; namely,first
British merchants and ship-owners engaged in the
trade itself; and secondly, that more formidable
class, the planters of the sugar colonies, with
their mercantile connections in Europe ; whereas
Spain having no ships of her own then employed
in the Slave Trade, the self-interested enemies of
reformation were of the latter descriptions alone.
But the colonies of Cuba were no less strenuous,
and unhappily .more successful in their opposfioo
than their brethren of Jamaica had been. They
employed the Same intrigues, the same clamours,
Mid the same delusions. By means of their corn-
mercial connections in Cadiz, and other ports,
and the large intermixture of their own body
with the noblesse and gentry of Spain, they
set a thousand private engines to work to gain
over the Ministers and Members of the Cortes,
Or at least to paralise their zeal in the cause of
justice and mercy, by private and specious misre-
presentations of the true nature of the case. Hav-
ing succeeded so far as to get the laws of God
referred to a COmmittee of Inquiry, they played
with great dexterity and energy the rest of the
West Indian game. The Committee went into
long and difficult investigations of distant facts;
and the Cortes was assailed with petitions, me-
morials, remonstrances, and voluminous statistical
details, from the Havannah and Cuba, at large.
A plausible case was made out there as well as
here, if we allow its tacit assumption, that the
lawfulness of rapine, and man-stealing,and cruelty,
and Murder, is a question of profit and loss for
the balance sheets of a political economist.—
Alarms also were thrown in, and even consti-
tutional- questions. Not that 'the Gentlemen' ot-
Cuba had the presumption to tell the beloved Fer-
dinand (whom they, by the loyal fiction of the
day, personified as present in the Cortes) that
he had no lawful authority to shut their ports
against the Slave Trade. They lett the claim of
a standing imperium in imperio to the subsequent
invention of their Jamaica brethren. lint they
ingeniously distiognished in respect of legislative
competency, or at least the propriety of its use,
between the Cortes when composed of delegates
front all parts of the 'Mother Country that had a
right to be represented in it mud such a tuna-.

. ,
lAten represel:tatiln i3.tilen or -tirce,iTtv
many towns and plovinees being still ituder the
yoke of the French ; and they contended, that it
would therefore, if not strictly unconstitutiOnal,
he at least a wrong use. Of poWer, to prohihit
the importation of slaves into the colonies, till the
entire expulsion of the enemy, and the close .0F
the war.*

That such an objection'abould be made by the
colonies, when actually represented in the Cortes,
may seem whimsical enough ; and yet it was
e.ravely insisted upon by the people of irinha, one
of whose representatives, 3aureeni, kad led the
opposition to the measure, avid succeeded in'pre-
venting its adoption.
It is obvious that the defeieney in the -repre-
sentation of the mother Country increased the
weight of the Colonial Deputies. It was besides
perfectly extravagant, while allowing the'Cottes,
as then constituted, to represent for all other
purposes the absent Sovereign, and admitting its
competency and fitness for the most important
legislative purposes of foreign and domestic po-
licy, to deny its right to cut off a branch of colo-
nial trade, whir:ll.oood on the authority of Royal
edicts alone. The King of Spain, in his Council
of the Indies, had always at his pleasure restrain-
ed, opened, and regulated all the trade of
,the
coloniei : and it has been shewn that the importa-
tion of slaves, as a general system, into. Cuba,
and other sugar islands of that Power, owed . its
birth to edicts of the unfortunate Charles, just
before the French Revolution. This pretenee,'
therefore, world in every view be too idle to de-
serve notice, if it were not material to shelf that
there was in truth no just impediment, to excuse
that tishappy country for her refusal to abandon
the' grade. The too effectual arguments to the
Spinish natino were drawn front its supposed
self-interest in extending the culture and com-
merce of its rolonies t and these pWolv prevailed
in the Cortes over its own sense of moral amid re-
obrgation It was the old plea of exile-
di,ney, opposed to the law of God : and that int-
;times plea Was, by a large majority of the Spa-
oish Representatives, unopposed by the voice of
their c‘in,tiluents, fi:ually allowed.
Irmight he interestiog to trace, if we had the
.me-ans to do it with accuracy, the various stages
controveisy in the Cortes, and the itera-
tion of refusals by that body to abandon the trade.
We might, perhaps, by comparing these, in point
of time-, with the succesive calamities of the
War, he able to find in the progress of events, as
well asilleir ultimate issue, indications of a scoi:rge
from [leaven.

But the final proceeding is known ; and is, in
point of time and character, rematkable enough to
deserve par icular notice.
Ina sittirg of the Cortes on the 23d of No-
vember, 1813, there was a last debate on this
great subject, the report of which -was, by order
of that 'body, or of the Committee which supers
intended the printing of its debates, withheld
from the Public. All that was suffered to trans- -
pire was as follows :—The Committee of Finances
had, by a report of the preceding August, pro-
posed to permit ihe sale of slaves in the colonies
dsrtY tree. The- avoiali were, " The Committee
taking into consideration the actual state of the:
provinces beyongl sea, thinks that it is just and
.politic to declare sales and exchanges of slaves in
every part of the monarchy exempt from the Al-
cavala
This was manifestlyequivslent to large bounty
on the Slave Trade; for the Alcavaht is a heavy
duty imposed on the sale or transfer of all titer—
chandize, and from which slaves were never ex-
empted before. Even the nefortnnate Charles,-in
his edict of 1789,' had not gone so far as this ;
thinking it enough to open his colonial ports to
foreign .slave ships, on the same terms that %vete
imposed on the Spanish importer. - •
Nothing, therefore, can mark more strongly
the complete triumph of the colonial party over
the friends of Africa io Spain than that sod, a pr•
position should be matte and adopted, as it was on
the same memorable day by the Cortes.
It would seen) that the abolition party, whirl)
Arguelles had, led in that assembly, being by this
time despondent from repeated defeats, scarcely
more than a for Mal -opposition to this shamelol
measure was attempted ; for the minutes only
mention an amendment, moved 'by Atuillon,: to
the resolution adopting the Report, in the fol-
lowing words : " Since unhappily we cannot or-
dain here the Abolition of Slavery:* A debate
arose hereon, involving no doubt the old topics of
controversy on the Slave Trade ; but Arango, one
of the Deputies for the Havanna)), interrupted it,
by moving that the discussion should be in secret;
to which the Cortes agreed.

It is asserted by a French writer of the colonial
party, who relates this transaction, that a 'notion
was afterwards made for the abolition of Slavery.
Ile, like his co-partizans, generally takes care to
represent in that way every proposal for stopping
the Slave Trade ; and it is more probable that
the abolitionists, to mark morf. strongly their
protests against the Resolution that bad just
passed, moved in the secret sitting, for the lust
time, the abolition of that odious commerce. It
is stated on the same authority, that some vio-
lent speeches ensued, and that more -would have
followed, it the Pre4ident and the majority of the
Cortes had not exerted- themselves to the -utmost
to stop them; and put a compulsory end to such
discussions.

This obdurate assembly, therefore, not con-
tent with shutting up the voice of honest re-
monstrance within its own walk, refused to listen
to it, even Chere. It resolved to have its peace
no more disturbed by exposures of att iniquity to
which it had determined to adhere, and by de-
mands of reformation which it had so often re-
pelled.
Who that is conversant with the sacred volume
can here help advertin.i, to the last eontomacions
answer of Pharaoh, " Get thee from me; see my
face no more." And Moses said, " Than- bast
spoken well, I will sec thy face no more. • •
• The Comes was obeyed. It was not again
distorbed by the motions or speeches of Abo-
litionists. But the avenger 'was at hand ! Ferdi-
nand ,the beloved was -appronthing. Just before
this final and aggravated provocation, God had

fteniunstrance of the Ilutticip4lily uf the Havanna!), uf
Augmt t;) 1311,

retteci-,,ed t 1 i 9 pt n tilde 'by the had -of
toil from foreign ybke. Ile tisil chiscl,l2l*lol
enemies beyond the Pyrenees ; and the —lO4
Pampeluna on the 3d of October had gicelft
last triumph to the Spanish arms. er
the day in tvhich they fitted trp the lile8s111;-elb
their offences 'against theft. poor African breir.fit,,
there reMairhea to Spain 'nothing but (101'11 to
ment, and aegradatlitin, boinlmis, shame ;
the Cuirres• only a well-merited and 'iliseee
fall. 'chose who had silenced the aavoe'de,s, 0,
injured Africa were themselves soon Puti..:l-er.;
perpetual silence ; and taught to feel the '1"t:, of
nest; of smothered indignation under, the ,sclis-
intrilerable timing. They gave bomitieg 1.(!r 'ete
very, and they Itnist 'th'eir freedom; TheY,:
ungrateful to God, and the ingratitude c" *-3
scourged them for 'it. It Ala
1 know not whether he taking the I
froin the slave matte( %VAS th'e last eb"1,31
act of the Cortes. It tv,tg probably the' /4?..t)
any importance; for Ferdinand very sontsl',o.ltl:,
mediately after, was set at liberty by 13101"rbtf'
and soon returned tit Spain ; after ivhiej (1,4
Cortes was engaged only .in impotent efforts
maintain its oivri antho'ciiy and the public freetlPre
This ptovocation ro ileaven was given ft/r
sake of 'gratifyi'ng the Spanish Colollie5;? $111(0''
what are now the colonial interests ofISP3iP
was afraid of a quarrel with a few nool
dealers at the HaV all nab, and a /lariat-IA Of
colonists in Cuba. But behold 6er nut; efig*(e4,4
itt a destructive, ferocious, and interminable' el" 4
war with Mexico and Venezuela, and 1.43 114-'ff"
and Chili, and ['run ; short, e:•ith nea'l9';l?
whole of the Sp;,nisti South American ColeinTinifit
Such since 1807 have been' the offeutv"aa-od+
such the chastisements, of this slave tradi4,,4
(ion. Its extreme sufferings by into coal warr:q.ll'
been subservient, not to own liberty ant(
ploess, but to the gloiy En.dand, and theb p,
initiation of France. All these poWers werehs:o4
Ittrinly called on to desist from violating 'l,' a
of God in th,''persons of their African bre'fAeilo-
Ent nd dully
!la respecullv listened and lepented; i'2).-
and France cont, tn:,t nouslv disobt yeti. " 1,;71)1°)ol•
honoureili me," says the Ahnighty, ''w;;„diilf
floor, and whoso despiseth nie; shall be "•
esteemed."

(Tn be continued.}

From the LONDON 'GAZETTE, kfc • ' 10.

BANKRUPTCY ENIATIGEP. t
H. D. Cooper, flack-street, Ilorleyduwit, hop-wercllo
Ott. 20 to Oct. 31.

6
1.,1
Oc.