(signed) “W. Wightman.”
“Inner Temple, July 8th, 1840.
(Vide Report, West Coast of Africa, Part II, Appendix, &c., p. 25.)
“If a person fitted out a vessel to traffic with slave factories and settlements, and sold goods to those factories, out and out, though they were such as might be used for the slave trade, as well as the innocent commerce of the coast; and though, in point of fact, they were used in slave trading, he was of opinion that this did not amount to slave trading: whether it was a commendable use of capital or not, was a different question. If the goods sent out were of such a description that it could not be doubtful that they were to be used in the slave trade alone, such as a cargo of fetters or other implements that could only be employed in such a trade, he had stated that he deemed this much more doubtful, yet he was not prepared to say that it was an act of slave trading which would render the exporter of such articles liable to be tried for felony. But if goods were sent, whether of one kind or the other, whether of an ambiguous description, or plainly fitted for the slave trade alone, and the price of the goods was to depend (as the petitioners stated to be the fact) upon the slave trade, in which such goods were to be employed, he had stated that his opinion was that this was an act of slave trading, being in truth a partnership with slave traders, and the persons exporting such goods would be guilty of a felony within the meaning of the Abolition law.”
(Extract from Lord Brougham’s Speech before the House of Lords, Oct. 5, 1841. Vide Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Vol. LIX, fo. 1116.)