As the vessels bearing Portuguese, Spanish, and Barbarian flags, are the only ones employed in the conveyance of slaves from America within the tropics, it is hardly necessary to allude to the treaties which Government has, with a praiseworthy pertinacity, concluded with other countries that never had any slave trade at all. For the same reason we pass by those entered into with the enlightened chiefs who rule on the coasts and rivers of Africa, and whose sanction has been purchased by scarlet coats, cocked hats, and plush unmentionables. The conclusion of the whole matter is, that our treaties have been in vain. We are as far from the desired end as ever.
On the 26th of December, 1839, Lord John Russell, after referring to the failure of treaties that had been concluded, stated, “That her Majesty’s confidential advisers are therefore compelled to admit the conviction that it is indispensable to enter upon some new preventive system.”—(Parl. Papers, No. 57, 8th Feb. 1840.) In the same year Sir Fowell Buxton made a confession of a similar character. “It is then,” he writes, “but too manifest, that the efforts already made for the suppression of the slave trade have not accomplished their benevolent object. Millions of money and multitudes of lives have been sacrificed; and, in return for all, we have only the afflicting conviction that the slave trade is as far as ever from being suppressed.”—(Buxton, p. 203.) “Once more, then, I must declare my conviction, that the slave trade will never be suppressed by the system hitherto pursued.”
In 1821, her Majesty’s commissioners at Sierra Leone report only one case brought before them, and that the trade was decreasing. Ten years afterwards they report its increase. “There would then appear at present, we regret to say, but little likelihood of the slave trade ever being suppressed by the present restrictive measures employed to prevent that traffic.”—(Parl. Paper, A., 1831.)
On the 31st of December, twenty years after the establishment of the mixed commission courts, Messrs. Macaulay and Doherty made the following statement to Lord Palmerston, in which they confessed the utter failure of the means that had been pursued. After referring to the powers possessed by England for the purpose of putting down the inhuman trade in slaves, they observe:—
“But whatever other means may be necessary in a time of profound peace to give effect to England’s interpretation of the law of nations, those means she will not surely hesitate to adopt, when her only other alternative is, retiring at once from a contest which she has long waged, baffled, beaten, and insulted by a set of lawless and outcast smugglers, or wilfully continuing to sacrifice thousands of valuable lives, and millions of money, with the full knowledge that the only result of her further efforts will be fresh triumphs to the slave traders, and the increased misery of their victims.
“Desirable as would be the concession by America of the right of mutual search, experience has shown we can expect no permanent advantage from it.
“Disappointment has followed every effort hitherto made, and stronger measures are now imperatively called for—measures which, without violating the laws of nations, or the faith of treaties, will at length accomplish the earnest desire of the British nation by the total abolition of the African slave trade.”—(Parl. Papers, A., Further Series, 1838 & 9.)
Our treaties have thus been powerless for good; and, what is worse, they have been powerful for bad. The horrors of the middle passage have been immeasurably increased. The more stringent the treaties the more inhuman becomes the trade; and the only result will be aggravated sufferings to the unfortunate victims of our well-meaning philanthropy. The greater the risks the higher the profits; and there will always be desperate men—men who have nothing to lose—who will expose themselves to any dangers to win the gold they love. One successful voyage amply compensates for the sufferings and dangers they endure. Instead of having large roomy vessels, we have compelled the slave dealers to use vessels the most unfit in character, and destitute of the most necessary accommodation. In 1841, the Jesus Maria, of 85 tons size, with 278 slaves, and 19 passengers and crew, made the voyage across the Atlantic. If the reader thinks of a Cowes pilot-boat, with 297 human beings beneath the sun of the tropics, he may form some idea of the sufferings to which the slaves must have been exposed. By our present system we cannot destroy, though we can add, and that in no common degree, to the cruelty of the voyage. The high profits will always attract the man of ruined hopes and character, and such there always are to seize every project—to encounter every risk. On the east coast of Africa negroes are usually paid for in money, or coarse cottons. The men fetch 15 dollars, the boys 12. At Rio Janeiro their value may be estimated at 52l. for the men; 41l. 10s. for women, and 31l. for boys. Thus on a cargo of 500, at the mean price, the profits will exceed 19,000l.
| Cost price of 500 at 15 dollars, or 3l. 5s. each | £1,625 |
| Selling price at Rio of 500, at 41l. 10s. | £20,750 |
Have our readers met with “Fifty Days on Board a Slaver,” by the Rev. Pascoe Grenfell Hill? That shows the value of armed suppression. Mr. Hill has done good service by exposing the horrors of British mercy. Mr. Hill was chaplain on board her Majesty’s ship the Cleopatra, when she captured the Progresso last April twelvemonth, in the Mozambique channel. When she fell in with the Progresso, the slave vessel had been laden but a few hours, and there had been no time to generate disease. However a change soon took place, and we must borrow Mr. Hill’s words:—
“A squall approached, of which I and others who had laid down on the deck received warning by a few heavy drops of rain. Then ensued a scene the horrors of which it is impossible to depict. The hands having to shorten sail suddenly, uncertain as to the force of the squall, found the poor helpless creatures lying about the deck an obstruction to getting at the ropes, and doing what was required. This caused the order to send them all below, which was immediately obeyed. The night, however, being intensely hot and close, 400 wretched beings thus crammed into a hold, twelve yards in length, seven in breadth, and only three feet and a half in height, speedily began to make an effort to reissue to the open air. Being thrust back, and striving the more to get out, the after hatch was forced down on them. Over the other hatchway in the fore-part of the vessel, a wooden grating was fastened. To this the sole inlet for the air, the suffocating heat of the hold, and, perhaps, panic from the strangeness of their situation, made them press, and thus great part of the space below was rendered useless. They crowded to the grating, and, clinging to it for air, completely barred its entrance. They strove to force their way through apertures in length fourteen inches, and barely six inches in breadth, and in some instances succeeded. The cries—the heat, I may say without exaggeration, the smoke of their torment—which ascended, can be compared to nothing earthly. One of the Spaniards gave warning that the consequences would be ‘many deaths.’ Thursday, April 13th, (Holy Thursday,) the Spaniard’s prediction of last night was this morning fearfully verified. Fifty-four crushed and mangled corpses lifted up from the slave deck; some were brought to the gangway and thrown overboard; some were emaciated from disease; many were bruised and bloody. Antonio tells me that some were found strangled—their hands still grasping each other’s throats—and tongues protruding from their mouths. The bowels of one were crushed out; they had been trampled to death, for the most part, the weaker under the feet of the stronger, in the madness and torment of suffocation from crowd and heat. It was a horrid sight as they passed one by one—the stiff distorted limbs smeared with blood and filth—to be cast into the sea; some still quivering were laid on the deck to die; salt water thrown on them to revive them, and a little fresh water poured into their mouths.”
But we hasten to the close of this scene of death.