And what is the false position in which this country appears before the whole world in the matter before us? It is this. Here is a people with whom trade and manufactures form very important elements of wealth, independent of the justly admitted tendency of both to promote civilization—a most important, but not the present consideration—these people thrive largely by their mercantile intercourse with Cuba, with the Brazils, with Spain and with Portugal, with the United States, with Africa, so much so, that they cannot dispense with that trade. Those of their people who follow the commercial career in all its branches, their merchants, manufacturers, and ship-owners, and conduct the intercourse with those countries, materially contribute to the welfare and to the prosperity of every class of the community in which they live. They contribute not a little to the support of the State, and when an emergency arises, when the credit of the country and the honour of the Crown are at stake, they are among the first upon whom the call is made, and is not made in vain: and yet the state of the law among this people who derive the important benefits, which have not certainly been exaggerated, from a commercial intercourse with the countries just mentioned, is such as to place those of their fellow-countrymen, who conduct that intercourse, and are therefore nearest in contact with those countries, liable to be dragged from the scene of their labours, so vital to the prosperity of this people, as common felons, upon an indictment secretly procured and obtained; and their very acts, notoriously necessary for carrying on the very operations of commerce, which the country cannot dispense with, are in the first instance to form the presumption of the guilt, and afterwards the proof of it, unless they can prove them to be not guilty. It is true that this people have anathematized a branch of trade which subsists in those countries, and have expunged that trade from their code of licit pursuits at an immense sacrifice to themselves, and are determined to extinguish it among the nations of the earth, as far as it can be done by lawful means; but inasmuch as they cannot dispense with all other intercourse with other countries, although fully aware that from that intercourse the proscribed traffic must necessarily derive assistance (since it cannot be separated from any one licit pursuit in the countries wherein it prevails), they are bound so to construct the law as to protect the men who conduct that intercourse, against any attacks which may be founded more or less on the use to which others, and not themselves, may turn the acknowledged necessary and legitimate acts, without which the intercourse cannot exist. And if such be the meaning of the law, as I have no doubt whatever there is not one man in Great Britain at all acquainted with these matters, who has not been, to this moment, in the understanding that such and no other was the state of the case—if it be not meant that the intention is that a law shall be made with apparently one meaning, and to be used for a quite different purpose—when the perversion which it seems to authorise shall have been discovered, sharpened by the application of the right of private prosecution, and in the form of a secretly procured indictment, which destroys before it convicts—there is only one of these honest courses left—either let the law—a clearer law—be substituted for that which exists, or let it be clearly explained; and, at all events, let the right of prosecution be placed exclusively in hands, and limited to a course of proceeding, which will afford some guarantee for its right use. Let us cast away from us the worst features of the Inquisition.
It cannot be meant to leave matters so—that the nation shall be deriving all the benefits of commercial intercourse with the countries already mentioned, trusting to our desire for profit as merchants to get the better of our prudence as reasonable men—that we shall be content to run the risk of private prosecution, and secretly procured indictments, of arrest, imprisonment, ruin, disgrace, transportation, the sacrifice of all that is dear to a man on earth; and, therefore, that the nation will go on prospering by our labour, whilst we ourselves may be told that we need only be a little more careful. And all this, as if it was meant to be insinuated that if a victim is now and then made, it is expedient that it should be so; that it is not extremely harsh, since merchants are to be thought of only as men accustomed to risks, and therefore who get obdurate against adversity—as if it were assumed, that as to the victim so made, it is sure to be some one who has deserved his fate by a more than ordinary degree of temerity, by going a little too far, or by an act of rebellion against the attempt to fix the brand on his forehead, which really, when once we have suffered ourselves to be so far stigmatised, there can be little doubt will be designated as a degree of fastidiousness to which an exclusively money-making and money-loving race can have no just pretensions. You may trust to their rapacity (it would seem to be argued by this defamatory process, which before it is openly avowed must work its way by implying as much in action, as, if it were not too revolting, would be stated in as many words)—you may trust to their rapacity for any necessary amount of risk being encountered, and therefore no fear of trade being given up, because we make it a little—only just take care that it shall not appear too dangerous.
This is not, I am sure, the position which is meant to be taken by the country towards a profession heretofore deemed honourable, and which has become interwoven with the highest ranks of our society. It is not, it cannot be meant, that such be the state of things at home, as between the merchant and the country.
Neither is another position (in every moral point of view equally indefensible) to be taken by British merchants towards their correspondents abroad, even supposing it could last. It is well known and admitted, that a mercantile intercourse imposes a tacit contract between the two parties who carry on a correspondence, a breach of which can be visited by the law; that in the progress of the intercourse all acts mutually required within the mercantile usage, and not otherwise illegal or improper, shall be performed. If a man carries on a correspondence with another and a course of business, he is not at liberty, either as a matter of principle or of law, to break it off when and how he pleases. Are we called upon as merchants in England, either by the requirements of the law, or by public opinion, to encourage our foreign correspondents to send their sugars and their coffees, their tobacco and their cotton, their copper ore, their minerals, and other produce, to us in England, and when we are quite sure of our profits, when they begin to dispose of the proceeds of their property, and we fancy (which must be very soon, after what the late proceedings have exhibited) that we may render ourselves liable to a prosecution—are we then to turn round upon our correspondents, and say, “I cannot accept your bill until you show me that its proceeds are not going to buy slaves with?” “I cannot honour the credit you have opened in behalf of A, B, or C, because I see in the ‘Anti-Slavery Reporter,’ that ‘he is a notorious slave dealer.’” Are we, when our correspondent sends an order to buy a ship which is on public sale, and which may be employed in any trade, and goods which you, reader, may happen to manufacture yourself—are we then to turn upon our correspondent and say, “Show to us satisfactorily that these things are not intended by you or any one connected with you, indeed that they cannot be used, in promoting the slave trade?”
And again, are we to trust to the circumstance of his being in our power, and to the odium which the simple imputation of slave dealing will attach to him, to bear us out in our justification, should he bring an action against us? Are we, upon receiving an order from our correspondent, to lay it before counsel for their opinion, which we have seen will advance us very little? Shall we disclose the name of our correspondent with the insinuation that he may be a slave dealer, or that we suspect him to be one, or that some one else suspects him, thus helping, as far as we are able, to put his property in peril, and to render every communication with him dangerous? Shall we advertise our counting-houses in England, not, as they have been hitherto considered to be, the symbol of security and good faith, but as nests of treachery, deceit, and suspicion? and shall our intercourse with foreign merchants assume the character of covert espionage? A state of things such as this, inflicting gross injustice, cruel injury, inexpressible degradation, upon one class of men, and that class of which England has had hitherto good reason to be proud—such a state of things at home, and so much scandal and disgrace abroad, is not, cannot be, contemplated without feelings of the deepest horror.
I denounce this state of things as involving a national crime—as attended with national disgrace; I denounce it as a stain which should be wiped off without delay from the character of a nation eminently jealous of its public as much as of its private morality, as an offence to the religious feeling which is not wanting among us; I appeal to the conscience of every man in Great Britain against this state of things. May I not take upon myself to say, that I make this appeal in behalf of a class which yields to no other of the community in high principle or right feeling—a class which is not at all below the standard of morality, religious convictions, tastes, education, which may be set by the most distinguished in this country? I do appeal to the Legislature and to the Government of the land, which do not make laws or maintain them as a snare or a trap against a particular class of their subjects. I appeal to the Honourable Members of the Committee of the House of Commons on the West Coast of Africa, before whom I appeared in 1842; I appeal to them as senators, as gentlemen, as men of honour and principle—I do appeal to all, whether the position of merchants in mercantile intercourse with countries in which the slave trade and slavery exist, should remain as it has been shown to be now by the late proceeding; whether the laws should not be made such, that, whilst we should be answerable for our own acts, and for our participation and consent in the wrong acts of others, we may not be undone before we are even heard in our defence; that we may not be required to prove ourselves innocent before we are proved to be guilty; and, above all, that the right of prosecution may be confined to such hands, and its use to such a procedure as will afford the British merchant a guarantee against private, malicious, secretly conducted attacks, and will make his personal security something more than a mockery. I make this appeal with the same confidence in the result, which my conscience felt when I stood before the British Jury, into whose hands it pleased Providence, by so unexpected a proceeding, to place, in point of fact, my very existence—the existence of all that is dear to me on earth—of much that the world has had opportunities to try and has stamped as honourable in character—of much, not the less valuable because the world can never know of it—the Jury upon whose verdict hung the honour of this country—a country for whose honour and estimation among the nations of the earth I must feel strongly—and from which a gross and cruel injustice would be doubly felt, bound to it as I am by those ties, which it has been attempted barbarously to tear asunder, but which it is only in the power of God to dissolve.
P. DE ZULUETA.
London, 17th January, 1844.