Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

It is also clear, that, to make this a common cause, and not the cause of each State entering into the agreement, the regulations, provisions, and penalties, attached to it should be the same in all; and that it should not only be agreed upon between the States, but that every individual State should make a positive internal law upon the subject, embracing all the regulations, &c. And this is the more necessary, to prevent any future collisions or jealousies in enforcing the penalties; for if the parties are honest in the cause, and the penalties to be inflicted by all the parties are equal, no difficulties can arise; but if they are unequal, a very great ground is laid for complaints, reproaches, and disputes, which would at once destroy every thing which had previously been done.

As this may be a matter of much dispute, the following plan is proposed, as less liable to objection:

That all property found engaged in the trade, either in the inception, the prosecution, or the conclusion, be confiscated to the seizor's use, either by the courts of his own country, or by a tribunal to be specially appointed for that purpose.

That the sentence of inferior courts be final and conclusive, whenever slaves are found on board.

That an appeal be allowed if no slaves are on board. That some further punishment should be inflicted on the parties engaged, which, in case of resistance, should be much severer than when none was made; and that this punishment should be inflicted as agreed on between the contracting parties. That death should be inflicted by the courts of the party's own country, on the officers of any ship where free natives had been kidnapped, or any persons killed by their piratical resistance.

Neither agreements, regulations, or penalties, will be of any use, unless the contracting parties are determined, one and all, to enforce them upon every person found engaged in the trade, and also to use every means of detecting them. This is an object which cannot be obtained with a small force. A large one must at first be employed; but there is every reason to believe that this force, if actively and properly employed, would soon render it safe to reduce it.

The whole coast of Africa will be frequented by the smugglers; and smugglers there will be, unless some very energetic measures are adopted to prevent the importation of slaves into the transatlantic world; and it is not to be supposed for a moment that the coast of Africa can be guarded by one ship.

Query 15. What progress had there been made during the war to exclude the trade in slaves from the coast of Africa North of the line?

Answer 15. Whatever exclusion has taken place during the last war, must be attributed chiefly to the war itself, and the activity of the officers employed. Generally one, sometimes two, and now and then three ships of war, were on the coast. After the settlement was formed in the Gambia, the slave trade was completely excluded to the Northward of Bissao. The trade between that place and Popo was reduced, from a most extensive and open trade, to a comparatively small and smuggling one. It was entirely suppressed for a considerable distance round the British settlements.

Query 16. What effect can be traced, to have arisen from such exclusion, upon the interior civilization and industry, or upon the external commerce of this part of of the coast, compared with what existed twenty years before?

Inswer 16. The civilization, to a certain degree, of the natives for some distance around the British settlements, and in those places where the trade was entirely excluded, is the effect of the partial abolition: the natives have also become more peaceable and quiet, and have turned their attention to the arts of a civilized life, and have left off those practices whose only object was to procure slaves. In places where the exclusion of the trade has only been partial, these advantages have not arisen. Wars, kidnappings, and false trials, have not been so frequent, because the demand for slaves was small; still they existed, and the natives, with minds unchanged, continued to have recourse to them when slaves were wanted. No doubt can exist but that these circumstances have affected the very interior of the continent, and that, though not more civilized, yet they have been more peaceable and quiet since the abolition than before; for the slaves procured are not more in number than answer the present comparatively small demand. The effects upon the external commerce of the coast has been astonishing: compare the imports into England at present with what they were twenty years ago. Let it also be considered that not one-third, perhaps not one quarter, of the trade goes to England; and then some ideas may be formed of the capabilities of the coast of Africa to carry on an immense traffic in innocent articles. A complete exclusion would do more to promote this object in five years, than a partial one in fifty.

Query 17. State what measures are now in progress for the improvement of Africa, and how they are likely to be affected by the continuance of the trade, partially or generally.

Answer 17. Little can be here said upon the measures in progress for the civilization of Africa, which is not known already. Since Senegal and Gorce have been transferred, those measures are nearly confined to Sierra Leone. Here the greatest improvements have been and are still making, and hence must the civilization of Africa proceed. With common attention, a large number of persons may be educated, anxious and capable of spreading the blessings they have received throughout their native continent. But where the slave trade is allowed, no improvements can come; its pestiferous breath blasts at once the hopes of the philanthropist and the missionary, and a train of desolation, barbarity, and misery, follows close on the steps of the slave trader.

Query 18. Is there any reason to apprehend that the contraband trade may be become extensive in time of peace, even on the coast North of the line, where so considerable progress had been made to suppress the slave trade generally, if some decisive measures are not adopted by the Powers conjointly to repress the same?

Answer 18. Of this, not a doubt can exist. It will be carried on more extensively and more ferociously than ever. It is since the conclusion of the war that the large armed vessels have increased so very considerably. Whilst the war existed, and condemnation followed resistance, those persons who thought their property secure if taken before courts of justice, sent unarmed and heavy sailing vessels: now that there is no penalty attached to it, every person engaging in the trade will send to the coast vessels well armed and manned, with orders to fight their way through every obstacle: the wages they give are enormous, from seven to ten pound per month; and, in consequence, their vessels will be soon manned with entire crews of Ameriean and English sailors; the greatest enormities will be perpetrated; and unless not only the right of search, with condemnation for resistance, be al

lowed, but also very vigorous measures be adopted to enforce it, these crimes must all pass unpunished.

Sierra Leone, April, 1817.

FOURTH ENCLOSURE IN No. 2.

Annex D to the protocol of the Conference of the 4th of February, 1818. Letter of Z. Macauley, Esq. to Viscount Castlereagh, dated

LONDON, 20th of December, 1810.

MY LORD: I have been honored with your lordship's note of the 13th instant, acknowledging the receipt of the answers made on the 26th December, 1816, to the queries which your lordship had proposed relative to the then state of the African slave trade, and requesting the communication of such farther intelligence as I might have since obtained. The answers to the same queries which I delivered last week to Mr. Planta, were written on the coast of Africa, in the month of April last, and therefore apply to a period six months later than that to which my answers refer. Since that time I have not received from Africa any detailed communications on this subject. Such as I have received, I will now lay before your lordship. •

Colonel McCarthy, the Governor of Sierra Leone, in a letter dated 20th April, 1817, observes, "I am grieved to say that there is nothing favorable to state with respect to the slave trade, which has not only been renewed in those places from which it had been driven, but actually extended three times as far as at any period during the late war." This representation has been fully confirmed to me, and it is added, "that the slave trade is now openly and undisguisedly carried on both at Senegal and Goree."

Governor McCarthy, in a subsequent letter, dated 10th June, 1817, says, "The slave trade is carried on most vigorously by the Spaniards, Portuguese, Americans, and French. I have had it affirmed from several quarters, and do believe it to be a fact, that there is a greater number of vessels employed in that traffic than at any former period." To the same effect, are the letters I have received from Sierra Leone, which, under date of 28th June, 1817, state as follows: "The coast is crowded with slave ships, and no trade can be done where they are. We could get rice to Leeward, but dare not go there, as we are certain of being plundered by them. I saw it mentioned in a London newspaper, that a Carthagenian pirate had been plundering our vessels. It was an Havana slave ship, and all the Spaniards who come on the coast swear to do the same whenever they have it in their powIf this should be suffered, we must give up all the trade, and leave the African coast to the slave dealers."

er.

On the 20th of July, 1817, it is further stated as follows: "The slave trade is raging dreadfully on the coast. Goree has become quite an emporium of this traffic. Our merchants are losing the whole trade of the coast. The whole benefit of it accrues to the slave dealers. No other trade can be carri ed on where the slave trade prevails.

This view of the subject is confirmed in a report recently published by the Church Missionary Society in Africa and the East. The committee of that society, in communicating to its subscribers the substance of the information recently received from their missionaries on the Windward coast of

Africa, observe as follows: "The natives saw the missionaries sit down ig the midst of them, while the slave trade was yet a traffic, sanctioned by the laws of this country, and of the civilized world. They utterly disbelieved, at first, the professions of the missionaries; and, when at length brought, by their patient and consistent conduct, to believe them, yet so debased were their minds by that traffic, which our nation in particular had so long maintained among them, that they had no other value for the education offered to their children, than as they conceived it would make them more cunning than their neighbors. But the missionaries gladly became the teachers of their children, in the hope that they should outlive the difficulties which then opposed their mission. The act of abolition seemed to open a bright prospect to the friends of Africa. The numerous slave factories which crowded the Rio Pongas vanished, and Christian churches began to spring up in their The country was gradually opening itself to the instruction of the missionaries, when the revival of the slave trade, by some of the European powers, proved a temptation too great to be resisted. At the moment when the natives began to assemble to hear the missionaries preach, and even to erect houses for the worship of God, at this moment their ancient enemy comes in like a flood, and, it is to be feared, will drive away our missionaries for a time. So great is the demoralizing effect of the slave trade, and so inveterate the evil habits which it generates, that it is not improbable it may be necessary to withdraw wholly, for the present, the society's settlements formed beyond the precincts of the colony of Sierra Leone." Subsequent accounts render it probable that this anticipation has been actually realized.

In addition to the facts already adduced to show the prevalence of the French slave trade, a letter from Dominica, dated 7th January, 1817, states, "that, in the month of November, 1816, a Portuguese brig, the Eleanora, of Lisbon, with 265 Africans from Gaboon, arrived off St. Pierre's, in Martinique; and, on the 25th of the same month, landed them at Carlet, between St. Pierre's and Fort Royal, the brig afterwards returning to the former port." It was also known that two vessels had been fitted out and despatched from St. Pierre's to the coast of Africa, for slaves; and that, at the same time, a fast sailing schooner was about to depart for a similar purpose. "The impunity," it is added, "which these infractions of treaties meet with in the French colonies, will no doubt increase the repetition of them to an unbounded degree." In a subsequent letter, dated Dominica, 4th September, 1817, it is observed, "a few weeks ago, a large ship arrived from the coast of Africa, and landed at Martinique more than five hundred slaves; they were disembarked some little distance from St. Pierre's, and marched in by twenties."

In addition to these instances of slave trading, I have to state, that a gen tleman who returned about a fortnight since from a voyage to the coast of Africa, informed me, that, while he was lying (about three or four months ago) in the river Gambia, two French vessels, navigating under the white flag, carried off, openly from that river, about 350 slaves.

The following extract of a letter from Cape Coast Castle, 5th of March, 1817, shows that the Dutch functionaries in that quarter, notwithstanding the decrees of their government, are actively engaged in the slave trade: "We deem it our duty to inform you of the conduct of the Governor of Elmina; we are well aware that a particular feature in the Dutch government at this time, is the desire of preventing the slave trade, which their repre

sentative in this country takes every opportunity of aiding and abetting. Portuguese vessels are furnished with canoes, and Spaniards supplied with water. The beginning of last month, a Spanish ship was four days at anchor in Elmina, receiving water, and bartering dollars for such goods as were suited for the purchase of slaves. This vessel proceeded a short distance to leeward, and came to anchor off Opam, a place about eight miles to the Eastward of Tantum, where the master purchased to the number of 400 slaves, and carried them off to the coast; a Spanish schooner also took slaves off from the same neighborhood about three months ago."

I have the honor to be, &c.

To Viscount Castlereagh, K. G. &c. &c. &c.

Z. MACAULEY.

No 3.

Protocol of the Conference between the Plenipotentiaries of the five Powers, of the 7th of February, 1818.

[blocks in formation]

The protocol of the last conference being read, the plenipotentiaries approved and signed it.

Count Palmella having accepted the verbal invitation, which, in conformity to what had been agreed upon at the conference of the 4th of February last, was made to him by the plenipotentiaries, Lord Castlereagh communicates to him the convention concluded between his government and that of Spain, on the 23d September, 1817, relative to the abolition of the slave trade, and invites him, in concert with the plenipotentiaries, his colleagues, to add his efforts to theirs, for the attainment of an object so interesting to humanity, and which can only be completed when his most faithful majesty shall have adopted similar measures.

Count Palmella replied, that, in accepting, by his note of the 17th February, 1817, the invitation which had been addressed to his predecessor, to take part in the conferences held in pursuance of the additional article of the treaty of Paris, of the 20th of November, 1815, he had, by order of his court, declared the conditions upon which he was authorized to assist at these conferences, and that he did not doubt, from the renewed invitation he had just received from the plenipotentiaries, but that those "bases” had been accepted; the more so, as they were entirely grounded upon the most just principles.

Count Palmella added, that he would lose no time in transmitting to his court the communication of the treaty just concluded between the British and Spanish governments for the abolition of the slave trade on the part of the subjects of his Catholic majesty; and that his most faithful majesty, according to the known principles professed by him individually, would doubtless behold, with the most perfect satisfaction, the advantages which would

« AnteriorContinua »