5504. Then it is upon those grounds that you designate Messrs. Zulueta & Co. as connected with the slave trade?—Upon the grounds that I have stated altogether.
5505. Chairman.] Do you consider a merchant trading with King Peppel, a notorious slave trader in the Bonny, and receiving the produce of the country in exchange, to be acting against the purport of the Act of Parliament?—No, certainly not; because there there is a legitimate trade carried on alongside of the slave trade.
5506. Then you do not look merely at the person dealt with, but at the object for which the traffic is carried on?—Just so: I would designate as improper any trade carried on by a person who knew that the goods he sold would be employed in the slave trade.
5507. Mr. Forster.] If you consider it lawful for a British merchant to sell goods to so notorious a slave dealer as King Peppel, on what ground do you consider it illegal for Messrs. Zulueta & Company to ship a cargo of goods to Pedro Blanco or to Gallinas?—In the one case the trader receives his return in produce, and in the other case he sells goods which he knows will be employed in the slave trade, and for which he receives a return in money.
5508. How do you know that he is paid in money?—I do not know that Zulueta ever shipped goods to Pedro Blanco.
5509. Would you consider it legal if he did?—I think I have answered that question before, that the illegality depends upon the guilty knowledge of the party concerned, and that is a question for a jury to decide, if he is put upon his trial.
5510. Then that depends upon your construction of the Act of the 5th of George the Fourth?—Yes; no one can read the Act without understanding its purport.
5511. And you think the same principle applies in the case of slave vessels?—Yes.
5512. Mr. Wortley.] You stated just now that you were not aware that Messrs. Zulueta ever shipped any goods to Pedro Blanco; did you not previously state that that was one of your reasons for believing Messrs. Zulueta to be connected with the slave trade?—No; the ground I stated was the bills which Pedro Blanco drew upon them, which bills were current all along the coast, and I have seen some of them at Sierra Leone; they were drawn by Pedro Blanco on Zulueta; the transactions which gave rise to those bills I do not know.
5513. Mr. Forster.] Do you consider the shipment of goods referred to in the case of the Gollupchik an illegal shipment?—It was after my time; but I presume that it was illegal, because the vessel appears to have been condemned.