COPY OF A LETTER
FROM
MESSRS. ZULUETA & CO. TO LORD VISCOUNT SANDON.
My Lord, London, 25 April, 1842.
A letter has been addressed to us under date of the 15th inst., by Mr. R. R. Gibbons, sending to us, at your Lordship’s desire, a copy of Dr. Madden’s Report on the Gold Coast of Africa, and its dependencies, and stating that this is done in consideration of “our being personally interested therein, but that we are to consider it as entirely confidential.”
In common with all other merchants in this city, we may of course be said to possess more or less of a professional interest in all matters which relate to commerce.
As having occasionally executed shipping orders for ports in the coast of Africa, on foreign account, of lawful merchandise, lawfully, and therefore publicly cleared at Her Majesty’s Customs, in lawful vessels, and as far as we, as mere shipping agents, could be supposed or expected to know, to the best of our knowledge, for no unlawful purpose, without any other interest or emolument in the operation antecedent or subsequent to the shipment than that of the simple and regular commission usually charged in, or legitimately connected with the invoice, and possessing no control, direct or indirect, over either vessels or goods, from the moment they left the shores of Great Britain, we may perhaps be supposed to feel a more direct interest in whatsoever throws light on the subject of trade with ports with which, in the course of our mercantile career, we may have had general business transactions, although they have not been either extensive or frequent.
Still more as shippers, in the form and capacity just described, and in no other, of a cargo consisting not only of legal, but even unsuspected merchandise on board the English schooner Augusta, Captain Jennings, the Report of Dr. Madden, as a document in which the capture of that vessel is alluded to, may also be supposed to form an interesting piece of information, whatever its merits may be in other respects.
Such is the nature and the extent of the interest which we acknowledge to possess in the Report of Dr. Madden, neither more nor less; and we submit that, in describing it as personal, a supposition is advanced which, considering the nature of that Report, we have reason to deem unfavourable to our characters, which the facts will not justify, and which we may say, even appearances will not warrant.
The Report brings together a number of transactions, not one of which have we even the remotest knowledge until the perusal of it, with the sole exception of the case of the Augusta. Now, as when looking at them together as a whole, and in conjunction with the other facts, most probably equally unknown to us, which in the course of the investigation now carried on before the Committee may be brought forward, there is no telling to what extent the association of our name with the matters of the Report may be carried, we have thought it right to explain to your Lordship what kind of interest we have no objection to be supposed to possess in the perusal of Dr. Madden’s Report, or in the inquiry now before the Committee. Beyond casual shipments in the manner described, and the acceptance of credits opened at our establishments by parties abroad, in behalf of parties resident in that coast, we have not even one single correspondent, or have we even consigned or sold, or in fact transacted any business whatsoever, or had any intercourse with individuals resident in those parts. We possess no interest in the trade with them, and even the agency for buying and shipping, which now and then we have had, is so insignificant, that we look with the most perfect indifference, as may easily be believed by any one who knows any thing of our business, as to any future legislation which may be the result of the present Parliamentary inquiry, or, indeed, as to any construction which may be put upon that now in existence. It is not, therefore, with the view of in any degree influencing the deliberations of the Committee, or of offering any remark on the facts or on the opinions contained in Dr. Madden’s Report, that we address your Lordship. Let the result of the labours of the Committee be what they may, and let the merits or the influence of Dr. Madden’s Report be what it may, whatever legislation may emanate from these proceedings, as a matter of business, it is of no moment to us, and therefore it is not our intention to throw the weight of a feather in the balance. Our sole object is to place our position in its true light; and the simple fact of our possessing no interest whatever, either personal or otherwise, in any branch of trade with the coast of Africa, much less with that lamentable branch of it which, much before the law was carried to even its present extent, our firm has shunned in all its branches and ramifications during an existence in business of more than seventy years, independent of the consideration of its illegality, without partaking in many of the views entertained by others concerning it, but from the principle of not wishing to derive profit or advantage from the sufferings of humanity, whether avoidable or unavoidable.
We have, &c.