the present situation of the coast of Africa, and the habits and dispositions of the natives, they are well assured that the suppression of the African slave-trade, and the civilization of the natives, are measures of indispensable connexion. Such an opinion has been avowed many years ago, by those best acquainted with this subject, and experience has abundantly confirmed it. The documents and papers which your memorialists had heretofore the honour of presenting to Congress, and those contained in the late Reports of the society, prove this position. Since the establishment of the English settlement at Sierra Leone, the slave-trade has been rapidly ceasing upon that part of the coast, Not only the kingdoms in its immediate neighbourhood, but those up on the Sherbro and Bagroo rivers, and others with whom the people of that settlement have opened a communication, have been prevailed upon to abandon it, and are turning their attention to the ordinary and innocent pursuits of civilized nations. That the same consequences will result from similar settlements cannot be doubted. When the natives there see that the European commodities, for which they have been accustomed to exchange their fellow-beings, until vast and fertile regions have become almost depopulated, can be more easily and safely obtained by other pursuits, can it be believed that they will hesitate to profit by the experience? Nor will the advantages of civilization be alone exhibited. That religion, whose mandate is "peace on earth, and good-will towards men," will "do its errand ;" will deliver them from the bondage of their miserable superstitions, and display the same triumphs which it is achieving in every land. That such points of settlement would diffuse their light around the coast, and gradually dispel the darkness which has so long enshrouded that continent, would be a reasonable hope, and would justify the attempt, even if experience had not ascertained its success. Although, therefore, much may be effected by the vigilant operations of a well-disposed naval force, it is to be feared that much will always remain to be done, until some degree of civilization is attained by the inhabitants of the coast of Africa. The present measures, therefore, for the suppression of the slave trade, if unconnected with others for the improvement of the natives, must be long continued, and the effects produced by them will be partial, tedious, and uncertain; and the least relaxation of this vigilance will revive it. But those measures, and all others involving expense and labour, may be withdrawn, as soon as these establishments upon the coast become strong enough to participate in the contest against avarice and inhumanity, and shall obtain from their evident advantages over the natives a proper influence among them. And here your memorialists beg leave, respectfully, to suggest their fears, that many of the profligate adventurers in this trade will evade the search of our cruisers by their artful contrivances in disguising 'their national character. We have reason to believe that the slave-ships of other nations assume the flag and character of Americans to evade the search of British cruizers. Is it not, therefore, to be expected, that the act lately passed will often be defeated by American slave-ships assuming a foreign flag and character? A careful consideration of this subject has convinced us, that all our efforts will be insufficient to accomplish their purposes, unless some friendly arrangement can be made among the maritime powers of the world, which shall leave no shelter to those who deserve to be considered and treated as the common ene, mies of mankind. Whether a permission, under any modification, to certain specified ships, or in certain latitudes, to search and seize slave-ships under our flag, such as Great Britain and other European powers have mutually given to each other, can be properly granted by our government, we cheerfully leave to the wisdom and justice of Congress to determine. Your memorialists will only express their hope and belief, that your deliberations upon this interesting subject will enable you to discern a way, without any compromisement of our national honour, by which our country may be placed among the foremost and most efficient assertors of the rights of humanity. But your memorialists humbly consider, that the colonization of Africa offers the most powerful and indispensable auxiliary to the means already adopted, for the extermination of a trade, which is now exciting, in every country, that just indignation which has been long since felt and expressed in this. No nation has it so much in its power to furnish proper settlers for such establishments as this; no nation has so deep an interest in thus disposing of them. By the law passed at the last session, and before referred to, the cap tives who may be taken by our cruizers from the slave-ships are to be taken to Africa, and delivered to the custody of agents appointed by the President. There will then be a settlement of captured negroes upon the coast, in consequence of the measures already adopted. And it is evidently most important, if not necessary to such a settlement, that the civilized people of colour, of this country, whose industry, enterprize, and knowledge of agriculture and the arts, would render them most useful assistants, should be connected with such an establishment. When, therefore, the object of the Colonization Society is viewed in connexion with that entire suppression of the slave-trade which your memorialists trust it is resolved shall be effected, its importance becomes obvious and extreme. The beneficial consequences resulting from success in such a measure it is impossible to calculate. To the general cause of humanity it will afford the most rich and noble contribution; and for the nation that regards that cause, that employs its pow er in its behalf, it cannot fail to procure a proportionate reward. It is by such a course that a nation insures to itself the protection and favour of the Governor of the world. Nor are there wanting views and considerations, arising from our peculiar political institutions, which would justify the sure expectation of the most signal blessings to ourselves from the accomplishment of such an object. If one of these consequences shall be the gradual and almost imperceptible removal of a national evil, which all unite in lamenting, and for which, with the most intense, but hitherto hopeless anxiety, the patriots and statesmen of our country have laboured to discover a remedy, who can doubt that, of all the blessings we may be permitted to bequeath to our descendants, this will receive the richest tribute of their thanks and veneration? Your memorialists cannot believe that such an evil, universally acknowledged and deprecated, has been irremovably fixed upon us. Some way will always be opened by Providence, by which a people, desirous of acting justly and benevolently, may be led to the attainment of a meritorious object. And they believe, that of all the plans that the most sagacious and discerning of our patriots have suggested for effecting what they have so greatly desired, the colonization of Africa, in the manner proposed, presents the fairest prospects of success. But if it be admitted to be ever so doubtful whether this happy result shall be the reward of our exertions, yet, if great and certain benefits immediately attend them, why may not others, still greater, follow them? it may be thought to require and de serve. Your memorialists further request, that the subscribers to the American Colonization. Society may be incorporated, by an act of Congress, to enable them to act with more efficiency in carrying on the great and important objects of the Society, and to enable them, with more economy, to manage the benevolent contributions intrusted to their care. JOHN MASON, REPORT Committee. In a work evidently progressive, who shall assign limits to the good that zeal and perseverance shall be permitted to accomplish? Your memorialists beg leave to state, that having expended considerable funds in prosecuting their inquiries and making preparations, Washington, Feb. 1, 1820. they are now about to send out a colony, and complete the purchase alrea dy stipulated for with the native kings and chiefs of Sherbro, of a suitable territory for their establishment. The number they are now enabled to transport and provide for is but a small proportion of the people of colour who have expressed their desire to go; and, without a larger and more sudden increase of their funds than can be expected from the voluntary contributions of individuals, their progress must be slow and uncertain. They have always flattered themselves with the hope, that when it was seen they had surmounted the difficulties of preparation, and shewn that means applied to the execution of their design would lead directly and evidently to its accomplishment, they would be enabled to obtain for it the national countenance and assistance. To this point they have arrived; and they therefore respectfully request, that this interesting subject may receive the consideration of your honourable body, and that the executive department may be authorized, in such way as may meet your approbation, to extend to this object such pecuniary and other aid as On the Constitution of the Royal Burghs of Scotland. THE Select Committee, to whom the several petitions which have been presented to this House from the Royal Burghs of Scotland, during the years 1818, 1819, and 1820, were referred, to examine the matters thereof, and to report their observations and opinions thereupon to the House; and to whom the reports which, upon the 17th day of June, 1793, and the 12th day of July, 1819, were made from the Committees appointed to examine the matters of the several petitions from the Royal Burghs of Scotland, were also referred, have considered the said petitions, and have agreed upon the following Report : Your Committee, in offering the result of its labours, feels it necessary to bespeak the indulgence of the House, for the limited progress it has made in the inquiry intrusted to its charge; and such indulgence will, perhaps, ap pear but reasonable, when the House shall advert to the peculiar circumstances under which your Committee was appointed, and has continued to sit, during the present Session. Your Committee was appointed on the 4th of May; since which time the press of public business has been almost unprecedented in amount, in importance, and peculiarity of interest. Numerous other committees, of local as well as of general importance, have occasionally called its members to other inquiries, who have, besides, been subject to their full share of the imperious claims upon their time, and attendance on the committees relative to matters of election. Your Committee being early impressed with the impossibility of extending its inquiries, by oral testimony, into the minute detail of all the sixtysix Royal Burghs of Scotland, in reference to the various matters complained of by the petitioners, with any prospect of concluding such inquiry within a moderate period of time, have adopted the classification of the allegations of the petitioners, detailed under eight separate heads of complaint, in the Report of last year, as their guide in conducting their present course of investigation; subject, however, to such occasional deviation as circumstances, disclosed in the progress of their inquiry, or arising from some inherent peculiarity of case, might point out. Your Committee have been confirm ed in this arrangement, and in their adoption of documentary, in preference to oral testimony, by observing the extreme inconvenience to which the witnesses summoned to give evidence from a distance of from 400 to 600 miles, are necessarily subjected, besides the loss of their time, and interruption to their professional employments; for which, the mere payment of the ex pences of their journey, and of their residence in London, (which is all your Committee have thought them. selves warranted to allow,) affords but a very inadequate compensation. Under this impression, your Committee have proceeded chiefly by the help of documentary evidence; but feel it due to the petitioners, whose allegations they have been appointed to examine, as well as to the House, which has devolved to them an important trust, to state here the two following material considerations : 1st, That the documentary evidence obtained is necessarily made up by the very official persons whose conduct the petitioners arraign; and, 2dly, That such evidence is made up from records under the exclusive inspection and control of the same official persons. From these documents, however, it will appear, that the allegations of fact, made by the petitioners, are very generally and substantially true; whilst the allegations of inference may excite considerable diversity of opinion. Thus, with reference to the allega. tion of the mode of forming and continuing the councils of the burghs, the mere fact, that these councils do generally possess and exercise the powers vested in them by existing laws, of self-election and self-continuance, (applying these terms to the bodies cor porate, and not to the individual members) admits of no doubt; but the allegation of inference, that to this cause is to be attributed mismanagement and abuse, when they exist, is indeed matter of opinion, and can be best ascertained by patient and minute investiga tion. The same persons are indeed generally found to compose the council of a burgh for a series of years, with merely such partial change of official station as the set of the burgh or convenience of the ruling party may re quire; until the adverse party gains the ascendancy, when a similar system of self-formation and self-election in the body of the council continues, until again displaced by a similar cause; however the persons or parties may change, the system continues the same. And it is here most essential to remark, that in many burghs it constantly happens, (and in all of them it may happen) that persons not qualified to be chosen into the council of a burgh are so chosen; and yet there seems much reason to doubt, whether such unqualified persons, after being there sixty days, can be displaced by any proceedings of law, but such as are so tedious and expensive, that they are never likely to be resorted to. Indeed, a recent case of this abuse has been stated, in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Committee, which is given in the Appendix relative to Kirkcudbright. In that burgh, a person avowedly not qualified by the set (or constitution of the Burgh) to sit there, was lately elected into Council; an action was brought to displace him in the Court of Session. But the judgment pronounced in that Court was in substance to this effect, that a person who could not legally be elected into council, having obtained admission there, and the illegality of his election remaining unchallenged for the space of sixty days, such person is not removable by the ordinary course of law. Another case of a different description has lately occurred, as appears from the evidence of Mr Kennedy, a member of the Committee, in which it was held, that an idiot knowingly appointed to the office of town-clerk by the magistrates of a royal burgh, was not removable at their suit. Again, the fact of large alienations of property from most of the burghs is manifest, from the documents before your Committee; as also the frequent expenditure beyond income, and in several instances the accumulation of debt. But the inference drawn by the petitioners, that these things result from the mode of forming and continuing the councils, is a point on which the Committee, not having fully considered it, have forborne to decide. Under these circumstances, your Committee have thought it would be most satisfactory to its own Members as well as to the House, to include in their Report, not only the evidence, but also the several distinct resolutions it has come to in reference to these matters; and to express their hope, that if the House shall think proper to appoint the same or another Committee upon this subject, in the next Session of Parliament, this and the remaining allegations of the petitioners may undergo a full and adequate consideration. Your Committee cannot omit to notice in their Report the evidence subjoined relative to the burgh of Cupar. An inquiry into the particulars of this Burgh was instituted, and witnesses summoned, in consequence of a specific allegation of the petition from thence, That seats in the council of that burgh had frequently been bought and sold: and that the system of alternate election and re-election between individuals, by bargain, in continual succession to each other, prevailed there, among the merchant-councillors, as a constant and uniform practice. Your Committee lament to report, that the evidence has fully confirmed this allegation; that these proceedings, so gross and iniquitous in their nature, and so injurious in their effects, have been fully established; nay, even admitted to be true by the very persons |