The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-01-27 00:00:00

(No: 6.)

Jan. 20, 1835.

S a, —I pity you—from my heart I pity you ; but, although I
pity, yet, in justice to myself, I cannot spare; but feel compelled
to tell you plainly, that, in the line you have now adopted, you
have become altogether tricky, shuffling, and evasive. Having
`admitted the fact of the interview, you then attempt to conceal
it behind a mist of angry and unmeaning words, and an array
of affirmations which you bring forward as to the mode and
Manner, or, as, with persevering tenacity, you are pleased to
term it, ':,the introduction," by which that interview was
brought about. These affirmations, if I understand anything of
'the language, simply state, that the individuals making them
know not hoW, and after what fashion, I was admitted into your
presence iu the inner room of the Standard (Nice. I have no
doubt that millions might have been found in the world who,
with truth, could have made the same statement, and pleaded
the same ignorance, but all this time, I would again impress it
upon your mind, that you have yourself allowed the fact that
the interview did take place. Now that you are reduced to this,
I beg leave, to decline any further correspondence with you.
I am quite aware that your personal fears, awakened by cir-
camstances which have recently occurred, are the groundwork
of the intense anxiety.:which you have evinced to escape all
rtfiparance of connexion with the Standard, and that you are
4tiven by the wEithings of terror, like the slave under the lash,
to the desperate hardihood of assertion with which you continue
to maintain what you must know to be untrue. However sorry
~I may be for your pitiable situation, and I really am sorry to
see any one so fallen, yet I cannot bring myself to unsay facts
even to screen you &writhe kern! responsibilities to which your
' imprudence has rendered you liable. But I do trust, that the
position in which you are placed, although unpleasant at the
moment, may be of lasting service to you; and that the morti-
fication of humbling yourself before the individ'uals whom, in
the fancied security of concealment, you have ventured to
malign end defame in the columns of your paper, will be a
wilutary, lesson ,for year 411 MS 434 d:111 ILAN fivellt4- t4a
public will have this surety for your good behaviour, that, now
that you are unmasked; the dread of consequences mid hold the
place which better motives ought to fill, and the fountain of
bitterness within you, .if not dried up, still no longer, by its
overliowings, cause discord, and spread uneasiness around you.
I have done; our correspondence, I beg again to say, is at
an end. I have put my case in my former letters, as I would
have it put. I have nothing to alter, add, or withdraw.

I am, &c. &c.,

T. B. florsfall, Esq,

(No• 7.)

J. .SPINAL L.

January 20, 1835.
Rev. Stac—l haccva great regard for the profession to which
y.ou belong; and this, together with an unwillingness to imi-
tate the style of your letters, restrains me from answering your
last in the only way which it deserves. I must leave the public to
judge between us, who it is that has become " tricky, shuffling,
and evasive"—who it is that has met positive evidence by un-
blushing assertion. I cannot conceive to what circumstances
you allude, as having awakened my. " personal fears." I can
only say, that you are as widely tnistaken on this head as on the
others, respecting which I have proved that you have spoken
untruly. As to your idea of screening me front "fearful respon-
sibilities," I must again plead ignorance of what you moan.
the %%hole thing appears to me as fairly. ridiculous.
I have " maligned or defamed" no man, either in the co-
lumns of the Standard or of any other paper, and your charge
on this head is also utterly unfounded.
I thank you for the hope you express, that I may profit by
•my present position. In as far as it has brought me into com-
munication with you I think it well-fitted to be profitable, for
your correspondence certainly opens to ma a chapter on cha-
racter which I had not met with before.

Once more I refer to the prime matter in dispute. You as-
serted to Mr. Wright that you had been introduced, or, if you
Will, shown into a room, to me, as the Editor of the Standard.
I have proved that this could not be true. You know that I
am not the Editor, and yet you continue to assert ani untruth.
As I said before, let the public judge between us. I eta quite
willing that our correspondence should now cease.
I am, Reverend Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
(Signed) THOMAS B. Huast•et.t..
Rev. Jas. Aspinall.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIrERPOOL JOURNaL.
~Stit,-1 have the permission of .111 r. Wales to state that he
:pkrfectly recollects my coming across to him from the Standard
office, at the time referred to in the above correspondence, and
stating to him my having been admitted to Mr. T. 134liorsfall,
and his promise of redress on the subject of my complaint. My
business with Mr: W. was to ask bite, if still 'my date 15110111
not, appear, whether he would insert its in the Times. This he
promised to do, at the saute time, however, (observing,upon the
absurdity of individuals laying their supposed grievances before
the public. The note never did appear in the Standard, and 1
fiqlowed his advice. I think it would have been as well for Mr.
IJorsfall if, on this occasion, he had had as prudent an adviser
near him. I may also mention that Mr. Winstanley was sitting
,with Mr. Wales in his office at the time, and 1 have no doubt
will verify the above statement.—l am, &c.,
f. ASPINALL.
23d January, 1835,

,
. fiRPOIIMANCE AT Inc ANPIRiTHEATIM —This evening the
performances at the Amphitheatre will be under the immediate
iatrouage ,of Loud Francis Egerton and the Hon.,{.. 13ootle
„... ilbraham, the newly elected members for South Cuncashire.
pth these gentlemen, together with a large retinue of their
friends will, we believe, be present. Two new Pieces will be
proqueed, and the manager will muster the whole of his strength
on the ocvasiou.

DINNLitA7I7 THIS Town-lIALL.7-The Mayor of Liverpool
• gave a grand dinner yesterday to the following gentlemen, who
are stopping at the king's Arms Hotel, Castle-street.—Lord
,Francis Egerton, M.P.; the Honourable Bootle Wilbraham,
gf.P.; Sir Philip de M. Grey Egerton, Burt.. M.P.; Sir 'Thos..
Ilesketb, Bart.; Tattoo Egerton, Esq., M.P.; William Hut-
ton, Esq.; and William Holton, jun. Esq.
Ms ASHTON Milt ogauas.—The Lord Chief Justice of the
Court of King's Bench informed the Attorney General, on
Thursday, that the court had fixed on 'I nesilay the 13th Feb-
ruary, and such of the following days as might be required fur
the trial at bar ot'the King v. Antrobus. The action is b; might
against Mr. Antrobus for refusing,as sheriff of the county of
Chester, to execute Gartside and osely, the assassins of the
late Mr. Thomas Ashton.
GoVERNoIt-GENERAL 01, INDIA.—toe are able now to con-
firm the appointment of Lord Heytesbuty to the governor-
generalship of India, which we gave yesterday us a city rumour.
—Standard.

Since the passing of the Septennial Act the average duration
of Parliaments has been four Sears and a half.
Slit R. PuEL.—t-The Right lion. Sir Robert Peel appeared
at the polling booth, at Culeshiil, on Saturday last, and voted for
Sir Eardley Wilmot and Aft. Dngdale, as members for the nor-
thern division of this counts. An impudent attempt was made
hy'an attorney's cirri: of this town to dispute Sir Robert's right
of voting; but the under-Sheriff. without hesitation, overt uled the
objection. The right bun. baronet was lounly checred on his
retiring from the polling booth. lie was accompanied by his
brother, Mr. Edmund Peel, the newly-elected men:l,er fur
N ewcastle-undet-Lyue.—Bh minds= Aikerliser,

THE SLAVE TRADE.

(FROM A COItHESPONDENT.)

' By letters front Jamaica of 3ith November we are informed,
that the slave trade from the coast of Guinea to the island of
Cuba has received a fresh imPetus by the emancipation of the
negroes in our own colonies; that in tne months of June and July
alone upwa ds of fifty vessels left the port of Havana for the
coast of Africa; and that two of our schooners of war, (the
Minx and the Speedwell,) which, from their powers of sailing,
had been most serviceable in making captures, had been pur-
chased with the avowed object of being converted into slaverS.
They sailed from Port Royal .on the '2oth November for St.
Jago de Cuba to receive their equipment.

Without going further, there is in the foregoing quite suf-
ficient to prove that the work of abolishing 4 not slavery, but the
horrid, the cruel, the odious slave trade, is but in its infancy, and
that, while the people of this country have made and exacted
such immense sacrifices in the case of our own colonies, it re-
mains to be seen whether the dictates of an enhirged philan_
thropy, and the almost equally important considerations of
national prosperity, are to be allowed their deserved weight in
the extermination of so oefariOus a traffic.

Let us proceed, however, to give our facts; and, when our
readers are fully in possession ur•the evil,, we do not despair of
their co-operation in applying the remedy,

By our treaty with Spaiu fur the suppression of the slave

trade, our cruizers are permitted to capture all vessels sailing
under the Spanish flag in which negroes may be actually found
and the prizes thus taken are carried to Havana for condetunh.
tion before the mixed commission there established. This corn.

mission consists, ou the part of the British government, of two
residentcommissioners, the chief of whom receivcs a salary .of
£2.000 per annum, and the other something less, gay £l,OOO to
£3,500. To this must be added the expenses of their courts;
and we are sure we speak quite within compass in setting the
_total e.-ipeuditure at £3,000 per'annum. In addition to this, the
British government allows a bounty to the officers and crews of

the vessels of war of Eli) sterling for avert/ negro so captured
and condemned. These data are given, nut in a carping spirit
as to the expenditure, for the objects are farlpeyond a compari-
son with considerations of cost, butlierety ib-put-the-pubile ib
possession of the fact.

The negroes thus liberated from threatened slavery aie in-
dentured as apprentices by the commissioners to the Cuba
planters, and by them cm-lied into the interior of that immense
island. There being no tegistry of slaves—the estates being
supplied by constant importations of such as have eluded the
vigilance of our cru izers—t he negroes being liable to many fatal
disorders in the process of seasoning, and the consequent mor-
t•ality very great—these importations, whether as slaves or ap-
prentices, being ignorant of the laws and' the .language of the
country to which they have been removed—all these causes com-
bined—what are the consequences ? Plainly these :—that in
the planters' periodical report to the commissioners respecting
the apprentices, the latter are returned as having died in sea-
soning, -while they are, in seven cases out of tea, merely trans-
ferred to supply the_plaues of purchased negroes. Dues any one
doubt this? We refer bins to the experience' of any man who
has liked six months in Cuba. Do the commissioners suspect
it? Of course they do; but they know that their powers are
not only inadequate to remedy the evil, but, moreover, that in
a stave country there would be neither work nor legal provision
for a free African, and that, in poiut of fact, his transmutation
to a slave is a substantial kindness. Are not, then, the mixed
commission and the £lO bounty at best but an expensive mode
of warfare against individual traders, while the slavery of
the negroes and the supply of the planters are brought about by
a merely more official process? But why, it will be asked, has
it been permitted by the treaty that so great a contingent ad-
vantage should be reaped by the Cuba planter, while our own
colonies would gladly have received the captured negroes as
apprentices? The answer is at hand. Our government, sincere
iu their desire to exterminate slavery,.and honest, to their disad-
vantage, foresaw the possibility ofabuses in the working of the sys-
tem (guarded though it would have been by our public registries),
and, therefore, resolved on withholding even the temptation.
The same spirit is manifested (but we shall show how errone-
ously) in the case of the convention now in course of ratification
at Copenhagen, •by Denmark acceding to the existing treaty
between England and France; for We find that, by the 4th arti-
cle, it is provided, "That all Danish vessels detained by French
or English cruisers on the American station are to be taken in
and delivered to the Danish authorities at St. Croix; those
taken on the African station to the Danish authorities at the
Fort of Christiauburg, on the gold coast of Guinea; and those
taken ou the Madagascar station to tho Danish authorities at
Tranquehar, in the East Indies." Iu every treaty with other
nations the opposite lines of policy have been manifested; .on
their part to secure the supply of labourers—on ours to shut
them put, and with them the possibility of prolonging slavery.
We now come to the remedy.

The most effectual mode would be the agreement of all par-
ties to declare the slave trade piracy, but this, though devoutly
tuba wished, is impossible.; Spain-dares not be -a. party:tu-such
a treaty, for she derives too large a revenue from Cuba to- risk
the loss of it, and she knows full well that the inhabitants of that
island would sooner and more easily give up their allegiance than
a traffic so necessary to the production of their staples. The best
(because the most practicable) remedy would be to remove the
rnized commission polo Ha cane to Jamaica. The revisits are self-
evident. All fear of fatale slavery to the captured Africans is
at an end. The negroes will amalgamate with a community
already far advanced in civilization as compared with the mixed
and semi-barbarous negro population of Cuba. They will fall
under the protection of British law:, and partake of the sympa-
thies of the British people. To the colonies the accession of
labourers is alone wanting to elicit their resources, and this ac-
cession being at the expense of a rival colony, would be the
most effectual means of equalizing the comparative cost of pro-
ductions. We confess that we do apprehend some obstacle to
the immediate success of the plan from the unwillingness of our
own colonists to receive the Africans. This, however, forms an
entirely distinct question, which we shall not at present moot,
but devote au early day to its ample.consideration. In the
mean time we put the matter to the conscience and calculation
of every man, whatever be his party politics, whether the case
as we have put it, is not one of primary importance.

[Oor corresprindent, in estimating► the expense of the mixed
commission, has overlooked the fact that every negro captured
by our cruisers entails a charge upon the country, in no instance
less than one hundred pounds, and generally a much larger
sum. This charge is silently, nay, cheerfully borne by the
public, under the erroneous impression that every negro so cap-
tured beComes a FRLE MAN. The recklesS and horrible de-
struction of human life which occurs when a slaver is either
chased or attacked, exceeds in atrocity anything that can be
imagined. We will state an instance which we had from
a gentleman who, was an eye-witness of the fact. A slave trader
which sailed froth-Africa with-four hundred slaves on board was
chased fur three days, and eventually captured. When taken
possession or; only One hundred and seventy-nine were found on
board, and of these a great number had been severely wounded.
As the capture took place near the coast, tbecrew escaped in4he
boats beleuging to the vessel; previously, however, to their
abandonment of the vessel, they forced all the slaves overboard
who had the slightest chance of reaching the shore, and, to se-
cure the destruction of the remainder, a lighted Match was found
fixed iu a barrel of gunpowder, which, in live minutes after the
vessel was boarded, would have exploded!)