The Sun.
London, England, 1842-08-03 00:00:00

SLAVE TRADE.

The Earl of ABERDEEN moved the second reading
of the Bill to enable her Majesty to suspend so much of
the Slave Trade Prohibition Act as related to Por-
tugal, lie stated that since his accession to office
he had lost no time in renewing the negotiations on this
subject, and the Portuguese Government having issued
a decree declaring the slave trade to be piracy, her
Majesty's Government had thought it advisable to
suspend such portions:of the Act as subjected Portuguese
cruizers to seizure and condemnation in the courts
of this country. The ratifications of the treaty
had been sent from Lisbon, but as they might
happen to be exchanged after the rising of Parliament,
he had thought it right to make provision for such an
event. The Bill gave power to her Majesty to declare
by an Order in Council the suspension of so much of the
Act he had referred to as related to Portugal. He need
say nothing of the Act itself, as he anticipated
no objection to it. The Act which it would partly
suspend was one but little consonant with the
friendship and intimacy subsisting between this coun-
try and the Court of Portugal ; it induced a state of par-
tial and indirect hostility, and must have led inevitably
to direct war with a more powerful country.
The Bill was then read a second time.

STAMP DUTIES ASSIMILATION (IRELAND

BILL.

The Stamp Duties Assimilation (Ireland) Bill wen
through Committee, and the Report was agreed to

third -reading on Thursday. _
Lord LONDONDERRY presented a petition from
the Rev. R. Sulez, late English chaplain at Lisbon, com-
plaining of having been improperly removed from his
situation, to which he had been appointed in 1819.
BOLTON POLICE BILL.

The Bolton Police Bill went through Committee.
SLAVE-TRADE.

Lord BROUGHAM then rose to submit the proposi-
tion on the subject of slavery, of which he had given
notice. He said half a century had now elapsed since
Parliament, acting, not for this country alone, but for the
world, had held up to the indignation of mankind that
execrable traffic which for three hundred years had
been the scourge of Africa and the disgrace of Christian
Europe. To that righteous act Parliament was coun-
selled by all the genius of the age, unstained by the
virtue, and animated by the pious zeal of the time. To
that period succeeded a length of time, for which Par-
liament alone was to blame. Though denounced, the
enormity was protected ; and after being universally
condemned, it continued to flourish and to increase.
But at length its sentence was recorded by Parliament,
and the enormity was prohibited and declared illegal.
It was determined that crime should not be called trade,
but that those who were engaged in it should be punished,
as criminals of a far more venial character had been
punished. How was it, then, that at this moment, thirty
years after that great consummation, he was again there
to complain of the slave trade, and ask for new laws to
put it down ? Laws, not against foreign nations, over
whom they had little or no control, but subjects known to
the Crown and the law ; and who failed in their
duty both to the law and to the Crown. lie
would proceed to demonstrate that he was not bring-
ing vague unsubstantial accusations. He should show
their Lordships that, by the aid of British speculation,
by the accession of British agents, and by the employ-
ment of British capital, it was in a great part owing that
the slave trade was still perpetrated in those foreign
settlements. He would go at once to show what the
proofs were as to whence the capital came to carry on
this traffic. Their Lordships knew that in Cuba—he
said they knew it, because it appeared, by the papers
which bad been returned to their House—it appeared in
the correspondence of the Ministers of the Crown, and

he, therefore, said they knew that in Cuba and Brazil—
which were the great wrong-doers—the increase of the
trade—he spoke of Cuba now—there was proof that
between the years 1827 and 1831 the increase of trade
had been fourfold, and that there had been a correspond-
ing increase in the importation of slaves. In those four
years there were imported 32,000 slaves from Africa,
besides 91,000, the annual average to fill up the blanks
caused by the deaths exceeding the births, making in
the four years 123,000 at the least, according to the
official returns of the authorities in Cuba themselves,
making a yearly average of 30,000. In Havannah in
the last two years 142 vessels delivered their cargoes of
human beings, and the returns gave for these two years
50,000 a year, and the price had increased from 601.
to 801. a head. Thus it was seen that not less than four
millions a year were expended in this traffic in Cuba
alone, whereas the whole exports of Cuba amounted
only to three millions annually. This showed that the
capital for carrying on the slave trade with that island
was not furnished by the island itself. If they went to
the Brazils they would find the accounts the same. At
Rio in the three years, ending 1839, 144 ships de-
livered 217,000 slaves, being no less than an
average of 70,000 slaves yearly, at a cost of
80/. per head, which is the price there. Five mil-
lions and a half sterling was, therefore, the yearly
expense of slave importation into Brazil. It was need-
less to ask whether Cuba or Brazil could furnish these
millions ; it was certain that they must have foreign as-
sistance, and looking round to the quarter from whence
it must come, it was painful to be obliged to confess
that from this country alone could it come. He should
show their Lordships, by
_specific evidence, that there
was no escape from that conviction. He would not rely
upon the fact that it was impossible that those who en-
tered into speculations in those foreign settlements must
know whence their supply of negroes was derived.
In the Senate at Rio it was declared that
the law for preventing the importation had fallen
into disuse, and a petition was presented from
the Provincial Assembly of Bahia, and another
Province, urging the Senate to repeal—not the law pre-
venting the slave trade, for the law had fallen into dis-
use—but to repeal that part of the law which gave free-
dom to the newly-imported slave. The ground on which
they asked for the repeal was that the law occasioned
unavoidable immorality, because it was impossible to ob-
serve it, and the citizens were compelled to violate it
under the eyes of its administrators. Those Assemblies
called upon the Senate to legalise piracy, and to give
them full license to carry on the slave trade. It might
be supposed that he was wrong in accusing English mer-
chants and capitalists of employing their wealth in this
traffic ; but there was not only the general probability,
from the enterprises in which they were engaged in those
foreign settlements, but he had direct evidence of the
fact. On the 14th July, 1838, the Commissioners wrote to
Lord Palmerston—that is, the English Commissioner
settled at Rio—that various undertakings which re-
quired the employment of slavers were concerted in this
country, and were every day multiplying. But it was
not upon any such vague statement as that that his case
depended. He would refer to the case of a vessel under
Russian colours, which was seized and brought into
Sierra Leone, where it was released by the authorities, on
the ground that there was no jurisdiction ; but he could
show that there was jurisdiction. However, she was re-
leased, and being released she was sold; she was pur-
chased by a merchant in this city, who has been a natu-
ralized subject of this country for twenty years.
Who was she purchased for ? A Spaniard, a notorious
slave trader ; by whose capital he cared not.—(Hear.)
She was then sent forth or her voyage of depredation ;
she touched at Cadiz, and afterwards she was seized on
the coast of Africa, with papers on board which made it
certain that she was there, and there only, for the pur-
poses of the slave trade.—(llear.) There she was seized
and condemned, for aiding and abetting that trade. At
the time that she was seized her master was on board ;
he stated that she had nothing to do with the slave
trade, but that statement was not believed. Another
brig, from Liverpool to Bahia, went out with a crew of
English sailors. She professed she went out for the
Brazils, but afterwards she was fitted out for any port.
The crew considered their articles broken, as they had
to come back to an European port. But new persons
were taken on board, and those persons took the ship
over to the slave coast ; the charterer being a notorious
slave dealer, the consignee a notorious slave dealer, and
the port the most notorious slave port en the coast.
There she arrived with abundant evidence on board of
what her cargo was, and she was convicted, as the
other ship had been, for slave dealing. Much about
the same time a gallant officer stopped a vessel on her
wyage to Brazil. Whether she came from Africa or
another port to Brazil did not appear clearly from the
account; she might have been a coasting vessel. But
it did appear that she was going with a cargo of
between feventy and eighty slaves, and was bound to a
plantation belonging to an Englishman settled in Brazil.
He would only mention one more case which came be-
fore the Privy Council, in which it appeared that the
vessel which had been condemned had been past all
doubt engaged in slave trading. And one very remark-
able circumstance came out on that trial. It appeared
that the person who fitted out the vessel. and who was as
noted a slave trader as any of those to whom he had
already referred, obtained a certificate from about 26 or
30 merchant houses in Brazil, to the great probity and
high honour of that individual—a man as well known to
be a slave trader as it wan known what his name was iu