The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-10-11 00:00:00

ANTI-SLAVERS, BUT SORDID SLAVERS.

At length the real state of the Slave Trade •is likely
to become known. In the columns of Old England it
has over and.over again been showA, tat the hideous
traffic is actually prosecuted by piofessed anti-slavery-
mongers of the very first magnitude, and that Sierra
Leone is, in practice and in reality, a slave-mart. We
again repeat the charge, and challenge the Colonial-
office to make public the evidence in its possession. The
Macauley's will doubtless exclaim against any such pro-
ceeding, but it will be in vain, for the riblic cannot
much longer be duped. The satistics upon the extent of
the slave-trade are now becoming common, and it is ut-
terly impossible for any one to glance at them and not
he convinced that there is as much treachery in the way
in which the slave-trade is carried on, as there is in hu-
manity. The truth is,. that the capital of English-West
India-Slavery-Abolitionists is embarked in producing
slave labour in the Brazils and in Cuba, and hence- the
connection between the slavers of those parts and of Sierra
Leone. The. following is a correct statement of the im-
portation of slaves into Rio Janeiro alone at the stated
periods :—ln the year 1820, 15,020; 1821, 24,134; 1822,
27,963 ; 1823, 20,349 ; 1824, 29,503 ; 1825, 26,254 ;
1826, 33,999; 1827, 29,789 •
,1823, 43,555 ; and from
the Ist of January, 1829, to :he 25th March of the same
year, a period of only three months, 13,459 slaves were
imported, making in nine years and a quarter 234;025,
and consequently in the last year and a quarter upwards
of 57,000. The result of this infernal system is to in-
crease the importation of foreign sugars by 370,543 cwt.,
the amount being only in 1828, 335,999 cwt., whilst in
1331 it Aniountelto 507,547 cwt.

--
FERDINAND VII. OF SPAIN.

(Prom the Guardian.)

The King of Spain, who has so long hovered on the brink o
eternity, and so often been, reckoned amongst the dead and the
dying, way at length be really counted with the things that
have been. The last scene of an eventful life has closed, and
after haVing been by turns the hero and the victim of various
revolutions, he seems by a timely death alone to have escaped
from one otheriinal and more fatal than the rest. Before we
offer any reflections upon the probable consequences of this im-
portant occurrence to Europe or to our own country, some few
notices upon the career of the departed monarch will not be out
of season.

The character of Ferdinand; beyond that of all his contem-
poraries, has been the subject of the grossest vituperations of
one party, without having found avengers equally exalted of his
own to present him in the converse light as all that was great
'and good ; he has had foes more malignant than flatterers out-
rageous throughout his reign, and whilst his personal qualities
appear to have secured him few real friends, his public conduct
has exposed him to a vast load of obloquy. much of it not un-
merited, on the part of his opponents. His admirers have not
been many. and assuredly we are not amongst them, but far
from subscribing to the indiscriminate severity of the calumnies
of which he has been the object, we dunk his adversaries have
on various momentous occasions furnished something that would
be accepted. if not as an apology, at least in mitigation of the
verdict against him.
Reared in the most corrupt and profligate court in Europe,
of which his own mother was the Messalina, and Godoy her fa-
vourite the Sej anus, he may be said to have inhaled contami-
nation with the very milk upon which he was fed. The fruits
of such an education and an atmosphere so hotly impregnated
blossomed early. Self-preservation indeed forced him into un-
natural intrigues, and he headed a successful popular tumult
which dethroned his own parents, and cost the favourite all but
life. That Godoy, mad with power and insolent from his tho-
rough conviction of the profligacy of the Queen, the harmless
idiutcy of the old King, and tie presumed incapacity of Ferdi-
nand, meditated a design no less than to transplant the crown
of Spain to his own front, there is evidence for much more than
suspicion. He had accomplished more that his great prede-
cessor in iniquity ; Sejanus perished in the attempt to incor-
porate himself by marriage with the imperial stock of Rome;
Godoy divorced himself from a wife of humbler blood, kind was
admitted to intermarry with a princess of the royal house of
Spain. In these pretensions he was abetted by Btionaparte so
far as it suited the views of that ambitious man, and even when
he forbade the Prince de la Paz to desist from his pursuit of the
higher game, Portugal was assigned and guaranteed to him in
recompense for his pliant obsequiousness to the resolves of the
Imperial despot upon Spain. In the unscrupulous furtherance
of these infatuated schemes Ferdinand had even been cast in-
to prison, tried and condemned, and owed his life only to the
prayers of Don Carlos and the interference of the Gallic Sove-
reign. Ferdinand became therefore of necessity a conspirator
against his Sovereign and father, and dethroned him; but while
he ruined the fortunes of the favourite he preserved his life,
and smened him from the infuriate vengeance of the mob
which would have torn him to pieces. The monstrosities of
Bayonne—where a mother subscribed her own shame, where
e'eidinand pusillanimously abdicated a kingdom which had
elected and subjects who adored him, and Buonaparte exhi-
bited himself on the crowning point of all his perjulies, and be-
came a cowardly kidnapper as well as a treacherous usurper—
these are events of awful notoriety, for history has already
stamped them with the eternal seal of ignominy and reproba-
tion. In their result Ferdinand became a prisoner of State,
licking the hand of his oppressor in ail huiniiity, and praying
as the object of his highest ambition to be allowed the honour
of an alliance with anything of womankind that could boast of
partaking a Corsicau kinship with the blood of his gaoler. The
battle of Toulouse and the entry of the Attics into Paris burst
the chains of the prisoner and conducted him from the inglo-
lions captivity of Valengay to the kingdom which for his sake
had been enduring years of exterminatory and unequal warfare,
and all the horrors of plague, pestilence and famine. 'the
Cortes which aided in fighting the battles and vindicating the
independence of the nation against the atrocious invasion of a
perfidious foe, presented him the book of a constitution they as-
sumed to have the power to make, alihough wofully lacking
both the mandate and the prudence to do it wisely. That he
refused to subscribe the charter by which his power was reduced
to nullity was natural, nay pardonable, perhaps praiseworthy;
but that he should have persecuted some of the men who best
defended his vacant throne, and protested against tho disorgan-
izing decrees of the assembly of which they were the most elo-
quent but often powerless members, will stand au everlasting
reproach against his name. Agustin Arguelles in chains and a
dungeon is a picture from which the soul of every freeman must
revolt with horror. _ _

The revolution of the Isla de Leon avenged the black ingra-
titude of Burgos, and incarcerated Ferdinandas clime prisoner
in his own palace of the Escurial as the order of Buonaparte
had before done in the castle of Valens-lay. The storm of demo-
cracy raged triumphantly around him ; the bands of Riego
threatened his life with violence; the ferocious song of Trayala
perro! seemed the daily knell of his closing career. The arms of
Bourbon France rescued him from this captivity without soften-
ing his heart. Promises and oaths were all forgotten in the
moment of deliverance. Yet the vengeance of 'a Sovereign
often wantonly insulted and violently outraged ought not to
have blinded him to all sense of discrimination; and surely the
Arguelles, the Valdez, the Martinez de la Rosa, did not deserve
to be confounded with the Riegos and the Mejias, the scum of
a revolutionary canaille. Much of broken promise might stand
excused by the deposition, duresse, and degradation of Seville,
but the personal violence and the indignities which Cisneros
inflicted should not have been visited upon a host of compara-
tively innocent offenders. Revenge prevailed, however, over all
considerations,. the pledges and the intercession of the Duc
d'Angouleme his deliverer were, like his own previous proffers
of amnesty, alike slighted and betrayed.
These are the blackest points of Ferdinand's conduct and
character, pourtrayed fairly and without favour. Let us not
however be unjust as well as severe. It is impossible to deny that
since those unhappy troubles, and losing. sight of the undistiu-
guishing persecution of persons and opinions, the latter years of
his reign have been really beneficial to Spain. Plans of internal
improvement have been steadily although slowly carried into
effect; roads have been made, agriculture has been encouraged,
manufactures have prospefed, and commerce has flourished.—
Financial and fiscal reforms have been operated to a considera-
ble extent; order has arisen out of chaos, awl, for the first time,
in centuries, the Spanish monarchy has possessed au exchequer
where all was not plunder and disorder. The national faith, as
pledged by the Cortes, was not redeemed, but the credit of
royalty has been preserved abroad, and at home for the first time
respected. The progress of the realm has been sure and regular,
if not dazzling; property has been respected, industry encou-
raged, and the spirit of enterprise fostered ; he leaves Spain
prosperous if not flee, and happy though without a Cortes and a
consiltution. The first are unquestionable benefits; the latter
have been in modern times but equivocal blessings. We who
cherish constitutional forms and weil regulated liberty should
consider the positive good but ill exchanged for the Cortes of the
Isla de Leon, or the .I'ms/eta ebullitions of revolutionary incen-
diaries. We. who have shown on no occasion the disposition
to penegyrize the character of Ferdinand, must still own that
his part has been a difficult one, between apostolical furies on
one side and anarchical disorganizators on the other. His loss
will be deplored by no party perhaps in his kingdom more than
the industrious manufacturers of Catalonia, and the mercantile
interests of Andalusia and ,Biscay. He possessed no.qualities
to command our admiration, few to deserve our approbation,
fewer still to merit our esteem—in despite of the good he has
done, and which we have faithfully recorded.
But his life was of importance fur the peace of Spain, and the
tranquillity of Europa was to a great extent bound up in it; his
dsate will be the signal of civil discords and probably of exter-
nal wars. The question of the Salique law and the conflicting
rights of his daughter, tow Queen, and of Don Carlos, will be
brought to the issue of last resort—the sword ; and the ambitious
neighbour is already preparing to intervene by force of arms to
decide questions which ought alone to beef national interest and
decided by the nation. 'I he troops of France have, in confi-
dence of the near approach of the death of Ferdinand, long been
concentrating on the frontiers of Spain ; Louis Philippe has
announced his journey to Bourdeaux ; armies hive been pre-
pared and reviews are appointed. The man who once protested
against the abolition of the fealique law as affecting his own col-
lateral claims to the throne of Spain and the Indies, is preparing
ostensibly to support the infant Queen Erpointed to reign in de-
fiance of those claims ; the wily Sovereign who by his intrigues
moved the Kings of Naples and Sardinia to uphold the cause of
Don Carlos as involving their own contingent pretensions, has
the sword ready to start from the scabbard in order, apparently,
to undo his own work, betray his own relatives, and uphold tliat
restoration of the ancient law of Spain which excludes him and
his for ever. Woful is the prospect, for that unhappy lane_
contending factions, civil war, rival princes, perfidious friends,
on. every side; whilst at the same moment cholera and death are
stalking over the land, and extending their ravages far and
wide. The' trumpet has sounded and the vial of wrath is about
to he poured forth on the ur happy and desolate kingdom.
These too will be some of the consummations of the Palmer-
ston policy. Had Portugal been pacified, as she would have
been long ago if left to herself, the other portion of the peninsula
might have passes through this crisis unharmed. But then the
mac ch of propags ndism, liberalization, and confusion would have
been delayed, and the Fore gn Office have become a sinecure
for the busy body who pree.des there. France claims Spain
upon the plea that she has aided him to revolutionize Portugal,
and in the spirit of fair play it would only seem just that be
should hand her over to her natural keeper—as the Gaul styles
himself.

These is but one minister in Spain capable of making the
cause of the infant Queen kabella a national one—and that is
Zea Bermudez. Precisely for that reason he wid be obnox.ous
to Louis Phi.ippe, and his removal insisted on. 'the English
Secretary, with his usual subservience to French policy, has al-
ready given into the scare, for the first and princkal instiuction
whirl the new Envoy tolliaciiid.carries out with hiir,
is to intiigue for, and even demand. the dismissal of that states-
man. 'Hie Queen Regent betrayed, seduced, and isolated, will
in all likelihood yield to conjoint menaces. to fraud and folly,
and probably the next mail may bring us the intelligence of his
fall. This will be the opening of the box of Pandora, from
whence shall alight on unfortunate Spain all manner of ill and
...oufusion—on England loss and disgrace.

Emporto.

EAST INDIES, CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, arc.

Hindostan, Pattison, fin Bombay, with 875 bales cotton, 259 bales
5 bags safflower, 1565 bags pepper, 6 hxs preserved ginger, 8 es cin-
namon, Order-604 bales cotton, J Skinner and co-1 bx cents
4 b"s rice, D Glhb—P Ilk
Aliquis, M`Fee, fm Bombay, with 590 bales cotton, J Miller, jun.
—174 bags pepper, W Thompson and co-2705 bales 210 half bales,,
cotton, 645 bags_galangal roots, 420 bags rice, D Gibb—Directed, 16
pkgs presents—B D k
(aipsey, Ilighat, fin Bombay, with 1895 bales 28 hf bales cotton, 200
hgs Lice, 622 bgs pepper, 20 hds cocoa nut oil, 21 'ps elephants' teeth,
Ibx sundries, Sir J Tobin-3 kgs 9 bottles mango' pickles. 1 bdle
bamboos, 1 paper parcel, 6 bxs, 2 bskts sundries, 'Order—P Uk
WEST INDIES AND MADEIRA.

Adventure, Donaldson, fin Jamaica, with 3 hds 1 tee 14 brls sugar,
4 srns F indigo, 121 tes 9 cks 61 brls 1 hf hrl 34 bgs coffee, 3 bxs glass
ware, abt 16 t logwood, abt 10 t 5 e ebony, abt 9 t lu c lignuna v►tie,
abt 6 t 5 c fustic, J Mulholland and en--1:3 tes 2 brls catit e, J Adams
—8 brls do, Fairfield and Shallcross-4 hds 17 tes 1 hrl 1 hi brl sugar,
T Holt-38 tes 21 brls 2 hi brls coffee, A iloyes-34 bales cotton wool,
12 tcs 13 brls coffee, J Hall and co-8 brls Ibg do, Robinson & Gir-
vin-4 tes 25 brls do, 40 Igs mahogany, :3 Igs ced tr, 'l' llatton, jun-4
hds sugar, A Stewart and co-6 tes cot Tee, J Dick-22 tes do, Murray,
Syme and co-11 tcs do, Order-1 kg tamarinds, J Wray-2 kgs do,
•W P Bushby—G Dk