Arkansas true Democrat., 1859-06-08

thereon, show that the slave trade is in fnll vigor and that France Is determined to have cheap labor:
 The French Slave Trade. | The London News regrets to learn that notwithstanding the abolition by the French government of the scheme of negro emi grafton from the east coast of Africa. this shocking project is still persevered in on the west coast of that continent.
 It appears, by the statements which have been brought by the last mail, that the French contractors agents and the delegates of the French government had entered into relations with Kosoko, the Slave Kino ot Lagos, whose unscrupulous pursuit of the trafflc, and whose determined hostility to the British policy, led, it may be recoIect- | ed, to his dethronement and expulsion by British arms
 But mark the melancholy and disastrous consequence of these pertinacious efforts of the French government to purchase negroes at Palma and Whydah The inferior chiefs, anxious for the revival of the slave trade, have formed a powerful combination to put down the commerce in palm oil at those ports; and they have succeeded in preventing any oil reaching the Jaboo mar kets, for some months past Now it is from the markets of ,Jaboo, held every elght days, that the whole of the palm oil shipped from Palma, and five-sixths of that exported from Lagos comes.
 1hls stoppage of a trade not less impor- tant to our manufactures than to humanity and civilization, of course attracted the at tentlon of Mr. Campbell, our active and intelligent Consul at Lagos, and he insttut- ed inquiries of the King of Jaboo as to his reason for prohibiting the sale of palm oil at his markets. The King replied civillv but hrmly that he was acting in concert with the chiefs of Abeokuta and the other interior towns, who had come to the deter mnation to break up the palm oil trade of Lagos, as It produced no revenue to them to compensate for the loss they had suffered by the cessation of the slave trade-that thelr people, too much engaged in the col lection ot palm oil, neglect their farms and that, by the occupation which palm oil collection gave to woman, population had begun to fall off, for that few children were now born
 The News adds that this position of things IS, we venture to say, highly dscre- ditabe to the French governments: and one of which, even in the presence of an i'm pending European war, no British govern ment can much longer submit.
 Nobody is asking the British government to submit to anything whatever (except lttle contempt or so)-and if the said go- vernment is wise 1t will not use harsh an- guage on the subjectto his Imperial Majesty Louis Napoleon
 As to that excellent sovereign and honest slave merchant kosoko, and the chiefs of Abbeokuta, Git will be remembered that !. Abbeokuta' is the great city of innocent Mr. Bowen's Arcadian Yoruba country, they are of course right It seems this palm-oil trade Is not only demoraizing their people but stopping propagation- flew children are now bornn' This is truly disgusting; and inasmuch as the pre- cious and only lucrative product of tropical Africa is, and always has been stout boys and wenches, why true and enlightened po- hey require the paternal rulers to stop this foolish palm-oil business, and commence breeding again-and selling We are not nnmindlul of the fact (and our sympathies are moved by it) that on the re-opening of the slave-trade, negro '' kings" will proba- bly have less magnificent funerals than at present: few monarchs will be able to afford like King Gezo) holocaust of eight hun dred slaves sacrificed at his tomb. Festi- vities will also be unduly dimmed in their splendor, and curtaiIed of their substantial luXuries:-it will not pay to club to death a few score of ones slaves in order to cook them in the style described by our friend Captain Canot-the women sucking out the hot brains through the eyelet-holes, and the men drinking rum and palm wine from the empty sculls:-this will not do, while the barracoons at the coast will always offer for each good hand, forty dollars worth of sunpowder, brecchclouts (of the latest pat ternS) rum and tobacco The King of kosolo and the headmen of Bowen's To- rubaN, are perfectly right and reasonable.