This, however, is not the point to which I wish now to refer. The object of this publication, and of the preceding and following remarks, is not any vindication of myself, nor a crimination of the motives of any one beyond what the statement of facts may carry in itself; my vindication I consider ample in the exhibition of the facts themselves—in the verdict of the Jurors, after hearing a trial of two days duration, after a long and elaborate charge delivered when a clear day had elapsed subsequent to the defence—a verdict, which was not agreed to without consideration, which was pronounced by the foreman in the emphatic manner which the crowded Court witnessed, which was received by the spectators, consisting of some of the most respectable merchants, bankers, and professional men of the City of London, who had sat daily and patient witnesses of the proceedings, in a manner which has been noticed by the public press, and echoed by the leading journals of London, of Liverpool, and of other important mercantile cities of Europe.
The chief object proposed in this publication, and in these observations, is to place before my brother-merchants, in a connected form, the whole of the facts, which form my case, or rather the case of the firm of Zulueta & Co., from the first communication which preceded my examination before the Committee of the House of Commons, to the close of the proceedings at the Old Bailey, in order that the merchants of England may judge for themselves, and reflect upon the position in which they are placed, as resulting from the principle and doctrines which the proceedings contained in the following pages have disclosed to emanate from an Act of Parliament which has been passed these twenty years, but which has been for the first time tried upon my case. It may be said, that by merchants in general it is hardly known: we all know that dealing in slaves is prohibited, under severe penalties, by the law of England—we know that it is repugnant to the prevailing tone of education, to the opinions and feelings of our people—we know that, at all events, as it is carried on and can only be carried on, it is at variance with the spirit of Christianity, and therefore no man need read an Act of Parliament to abstain from having any, the slightest, concern in or with such a traffic; but even if these considerations were not enough—which England surely will not suffer to be supposed of her own merchants—even if these considerations did not go to the extent of precluding British merchants from laying out their capital on slave adventures, whether for themselves or others’ account, common prudence, in which respectable merchants in this country cannot be said to be deficient, does at once warn a man not to trust his funds to the issue of speculations which afford no security, over which he can exercise no control—so much so, that it is hardly possible to conceive in what shape, looking at all like business, British capital could be lent for the purpose or on the security of a slave trade adventure. All this has contributed to maintain merchants in utter ignorance of the provisions of this Act of Parliament, or of the use which might be made of its legal phraseology: but now, when a merchant, not at all suspected by his fellows—for that is on record—has been, to the astonishment of every one, dragged from his office to the police-station, and to the Old Bailey dock (more especially when this is done in spite of the resolution of the House of Commons’ Committee, in spite of the opinion of the law officers of the Crown) by a London attorney, it is time to look at the exposition of the law and the practical application of its provisions, which so extraordinary a proceeding has elicited; the more so, as it has been stated that “higher game is in view,” and that the prosecutor is still occupied in analysing the evidence given before the Committee; and when the Anti-Slavery Committee adopt and publish a resolution, in which it is stated, in reference to the late prosecution, that by it “it may be hoped a salutary check will be given to the notorious implication of British capital and commerce in that nefarious traffic, the slave trade.” At any other time the absolute folly of the assertion would have suffered it to remain unnoticed; experience has shown, however, that there is somewhere the means, and that the will does exist, of doing mischief to an appalling degree.
As explaining the practical operation of the law, then, I shall look upon the summing up of the learned Judge, not with a critical eye, in order to decide whether the law has been well or ill administered—this is the province of a professional man, into which it would be preposterous for me to enter. Upon the propriety or impropriety of the Judge’s acts and opinions, or even of his exposition of the law and its requirements, I must be understood as maintaining a complete reserve. For the present purpose, and for every practical purpose that can affect others, the law must be taken as laid down by his Lordship. As to its meaning, the evidence which is required under the Act to bring an individual to trial, the degree of evidence which will send a case to the Jury, that upon which a case in answer shall be demanded of the accused—until it is otherwise declared by competent authority—until then, those who really wish to obey the law must look upon the late administration of it as that which is to be expected, and the extent and applicability of the Act of Parliament to be that which is exhibited in the late proceedings.
The first consideration which presents itself is the nature and definition of the offence. In the outset of his summing up, the learned Judge stating the nature of the charge, alluding to the vessel which the prisoner is alleged to have employed, lays down, “that it was not necessary to be proved that the ship in question (the Augusta) was intended to be used for the conveyance of slaves from the coast of Africa. If there was a slave adventure—if there was an adventure, of which the object was that slaves should be brought from the coast of Africa, that there should be slave trading there—and if this vessel was dispatched and employed for the purpose of accomplishing that object, although it was intended to accomplish that object otherwise than by bringing home the slaves in that vessel—that is within the Act of Parliament. So, if the goods were loaded for the purpose of accomplishing the slave trade ... the crime charged in this indictment would be committed, the allegations in the indictment would be supported, and the prohibition of the Act of Parliament would be violated.”
Such is the nature of the offence. If there is a slave adventure in the port of destination of the vessel and goods which you dispatch, for the purpose of accomplishing which they may be said to have been intended, the prohibition is violated; but as, in the case of the vessel and the goods in question, no attempt was even made to prove the existence of any such adventure, but only a general slaving character of the port of destination, it follows that not even the existence of such particular slave adventure is necessary to be proved in order to support an indictment under the Act, but it is enough if a general slaving character of the trade at the port of destination is proved, in order to lay the ground of an indictment. Let this general slave trading character be discovered by any one of a port in Africa, to which you may have sent goods—and of course, if a port not in Africa is (as may very well be) largely concerned in the trade, the case is not very much altered—and you stand open to a charge under the Act, for the crime has been committed. It is as when a man is found murdered in the street—the crime has been committed—the only thing is to find out the criminal. How this is done under the Act of Parliament on the slave trade is the next thing to be seen.
“The employment, the dispatch of the vessel,” says the learned Judge, “is no conclusive proof of the guilt, till going further, and showing that the party doing so did it for the illegal purpose charged.” But then, for the purpose of beginning the inquiry, without which there would have been no beginning of it, the foundation must be laid in the employment of the vessel by the person accused. If slave trading is intended, and the vessel be sent for the purpose, the important consideration then is, whether the person employing the vessel is cognizant of the intention. We have seen the large meaning of the terms slave trading. It is not like wine trade—dealing in wine: it is not dealing in slaves, but dealing in Manchester and Birmingham goods, adapted and purposely manufactured for the African markets, so long as it is found that slave traders, that is, as heretofore the term has been understood, dealers in slaves—resort to the port for which they are shipped. Of course the crime having been committed by some one, that is, by the person who intended that slave traders should use them for slave purposes—and no other will be supposed as possible—the existence of the law punishing such an intention demands that an inquiry should be made. For this purpose the commission-agent in England, who employed the vessel, must be laid hold of—not that in that one act there is a conclusive proof of guilt, until it be further shown that he was cognizant of and intended the illegal object, but because an inquiry is imperative under the Act. With whom the right and duty of making it rests it matters not—any one that may be so disposed from a philanthropic and public-spirited motive. It is not enough that a Parliamentary inquiry has been made already—it is not enough that the law-officers of the Crown see no reason to institute a further inquiry—it matters not, if the case has been lying in all its details before the public, the ends of public justice are never satisfied until the so-called inquiry takes the shape of a bill before the Grand Jury—the inquisition of the country. There certain depositions are secretly made upon oath, which you shall never see; and upon this mild and fair procedure you will have your very life, and the life of every one dear to you placed in jeopardy, for I believe that there is nothing in the mercantile profession which is likely to prepare a man, and a man’s family, for his being treated as a felon. It is indeed true, that in the evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons merchants are treated by some of the witnesses in a tone and manner becoming only those times in which merchants were tolerated for the sake of the money that might be extorted from them, but otherwise were considered as a caste whose instinct was money-making by all means, right or wrong, and against whom every crime might be presumed; but, whatever may be in the heart of some, and whatever may rise to their lips, against a profession which England honours and distinguishes, a distinct avowal dare not be made such as will justify the insinuation that there is absolutely nothing in carrying a merchant, considered respectable, from his private office to a felon’s den, without his knowing his accuser, or upon what he is charged, which ought to shake his mind or that of his family.
But, then, unless you are proved to have been cognizant of the intended purpose, you will be acquitted. The nature of the offence has been explained and laid down to embrace a very wide compass. If there existed a slave adventure at the port of destination of a vessel, to accomplish which that vessel carried goods, the offence has been committed. The penalty, to whomsoever committed it, is by the Act only short of the greatest imposed by the law. You employed the vessel—this is not conclusive of guilt, until it is shown further that there was slave trading intended, and that you were cognizant of the intention. Let us see how both things are to be proved and brought home to you. Heretofore the way between your office and the Old Bailey is one which there is no merchant, trading with countries wherein the slave trade is allowed to exist, may not be dragged through without risk or responsibility by any ruffian in London. Now, perhaps, though not exactly at the earliest stage that may be desirable for the safety of the innocent and the repose of honourable families—still now, perhaps, the requirements of the law in regard to proof are commensurate with the facility afforded on the outset, and with the terrible penalty which follows a conviction.
The Judge proceeds upon this part of the evidence as follows: “It appears from the evidence, that the Gallinas is a place described by some witnesses of great experience—two captains in the navy, and Colonel Nichol, who was the governor of a district in the neighbourhood” (about 1,500 miles from it, see [his evidence]), “whose employment was mainly to watch the slave coast, of which the Gallinas forms a part, and to contribute to the putting down the slave trade—that the Gallinas is a place of slave trading, and of no other trade at all.” His Lordship continues as follows: “It is said, and I think with great probability, that the Gallinas is not generally known as a slave trading place, in fact, it seems very little known at all; it seems to be a place where any other description of felons may resort to concert their schemes and hide their stolen goods, and which, of course, they do not make public, and which is not likely to be known by honest and true people. Except those employed as police or otherwise in aid of justice, as these captains were, of course it would not be spoken of at all. There might be slave traders in London knowing it very well, but they would be perfectly silent probably, and hardly mention it by name even in speaking one to another. It is very probable, therefore, that the place was not very well known; that when these persons spoke of the Gallinas, they might say the Gallinas on the coast of Africa; and a person might be very conversant with the geography of Africa in an honest way, who had not been active in putting down the slave trade, and yet might not know where it was, except that it was on the coast of Africa.”
It is impossible more correctly to state, in stronger language, or more clearly, the possibility of the place of destination of a vessel being a slave trading place, and that exclusively, without in the least diminishing the great probability of its being unknown to the party in England who ships goods for that place as a commission-agent, by order and for account of somebody else abroad. Thus, the great probability of my statement before the Committee of the House of Commons of the ignorance of the character of the trade carried on at Gallinas was completely vouched for, and the observation, that those who knew were not likely to tell, and not likely to as much as name the place, was forcible in my favour, since the house had entered and cleared the Augusta for Gallinas, and not for Africa, as ships with destinations for the West Coast are generally dispatched, and as the Augusta might most certainly have been, had the house even suspected an improper object which required concealment. It is singular that, in the explanations prepared for instructing counsel, the case is stated in nearly the same terms as to the ignorance of the character of the place, as those used by Judge Maule. Merchants easily understand this, because it is the case more or less with every one. In shipping goods by foreign order and for foreign account to distant ports in all parts of the world, with which there is hardly any communication, and with which the shipper himself has none, and need not have any for the purpose of such a transaction, it most frequently happens, that the nature of the trade carried on at that particular port is very imperfectly or rather not at all known. In the multitude and the rapidity of operations which must be disposed of almost without thinking, the inquiry (not being either interesting or profitable, and of course quite unnecessary) is not made, or indeed as much as thought of, especially when heretofore, I believe, it will be acknowledged that it has not been considered that the nature of the trade carried on at any place could involve the mere shipper, without a connexion or any interest in that place, in the slightest responsibility.
But what follows? The character of the place is thus settled: “That it is itself a slave trading place appears to be very evident from the case on the part of the prosecution. Probably those honest persons, those honestly dealing persons, who know best about it, are those who have been called upon by their public duty to ascertain it. Such persons have been called, and they give it this character and description, and they state that it is distinguished from other parts of the coast of Africa; for on other parts of that coast, it is said, slaves are sold as one article of export, but that other things, such as palm-oil—I believe that is the principal thing—and ivory, and wood, and other things, are sold in immense quantities on the coast of Africa; but that that is not the case at the Gallinas. They might be carrying out goods to other parts of Africa, intending to bring home palm-oil, or slaves, as might be most profitable; they might intend to bring home an honest commodity, and not have to do with this dishonest and perilous commodity; but it appears difficult to conceive what a person, carrying a cargo of goods to the Gallinas, could intend to do with it, unless he intended to have those goods employed in the slave trade. The prisoner might say they were to be employed by others in the slave trade; that would be plain and simple: it is wrong, but it is a plain and simple account of that which was intended to be done. It is a place, as it appears, without any trade; and if there be an obvious plain interest in a person carrying goods to that place, it appears to me that it may be taken that they were for the purpose of the slave trade. If that be the plain and obvious inference, it appears to me that might be the inference very properly drawn by Colonel Nichol, that this was a slave adventure, unless the contrary were proved.” Here the character of the place seems the only point upon which the observations of the learned Judge bear; and that character having been laid down as very probably indeed unknown to any one but the dealer in slaves, and the police employed against them, they do not seem to touch the prisoner. But at the same time an answer is suggested which the prisoner might give about what was intended, thus seeming to imply, that he ought to be furnished with evidence in answer, capable of accounting for what was intended, without which the full weight of an inference by one of the witnesses must remain, so far attaching to him the knowledge that he must necessarily be supposed to entertain of what was intended by others. I had said before the Committee, in the evidence read in Court, that the house knew nothing of what was to be done with the goods. Therefore, this not being admitted, it seems to follow that the law, as laid down by Judge Maule, requires some plain and simple account of what was intended to be done with the goods from the commission-agent in England who ships them by order and for account of a merchant residing abroad. It had before been laid down, that to ship the goods for slave trade purposes is an offence under the Act, if the shipper was cognizant of the intent: it is now said, that the port is an exclusively slave trading port, and it is not suggested that this was probably unknown, as it had before been said, to any but the dealer in slaves and the police employed against them, nor any account taken of the statement of the accused before the House of Commons, which had been read in Court, disclaiming the very possibility, as a mere shipping-agent, of any knowledge of what was to be done with the goods: the only answer suggested is one which may give a plain and simple account of what the merchant abroad intended to do with the goods at such a port. It seems to follow, therefore, that the mere shipping-agent in England is bound by the Act to be provided with such an account; and if he does not give it, the inference, to be drawn as to the object of the shipment from the character of the port, will not only attach to the adventure, but will cut deeper, since if you are bound to have and to produce a knowledge, and you do not produce it, it seems that the account is to be held not to be producible.