5514. Chairman.] The legality or illegality will depend upon circumstances, which are not before you?—Yes; all that I know of it is from this report. There is a gentleman here to-day who seized the vessel, Captain Hill; he will explain all the circumstances.
5515. Mr. Forster.] Do you consider that any vessel laden in this country, and legally cleared at the custom-house for a slave factory on the coast of Africa, is seizable as being engaged in an illegal transaction?—She is seizable, but if the captor seizes her wrongfully, the person seized would have a claim for damages. She is certainly seizable by any man-of-war, but her condemnation would depend upon the fact whether or not the captor made out a case.
5516. Chairman.] The mere fact of conveying goods to a slave factory would not be ground of condemnation, would it?—Certainly not.
5517. Mr. Forster.] Upon what ground can a vessel conveying a cargo of legal merchandise to the Gallinas be condemned?—On the ground of guilty knowledge, if it can be proved.
5518. Mr. W. Patten.] And that guilty knowledge would have to be left to the jury?—Yes.
5519. Chairman.] You have been asked upon the case of the Almirante, in [question 5238]; can you in any way state what the transaction was, and are you able to give any explanation of it?—All I remember respecting that transaction is, that a merchant at Sierra Leone, of the name of Benjamin Campbell, on my arrival in Sierra Leone, in 1830, spoke to me about a sum of 500l., not 600l., that was due by him to Mr. Kenneth Macaulay, who was at that time dead—he died in 1829—for a vessel that Mr. Campbell had purchased from him. I did not know of that vessel having gone into the slave trade till it was mentioned just now.
5520. The sale was made by Mr. Kenneth Macauley to Mr. Campbell?—Yes.
5521. Mr. Forster.] Was not Mr. Campbell an agent of the house of Macaulay & Babington?—No, not at that time; he had been one of the clerks in the house, but many years previously; he had long ceased to have any connexion with the house, I suppose about five years. He was in business for himself at the time, and in rather a large way of business.
5522. Mr. W. Patten.] At Sierra Leone?—Yes.
5523. Chairman.] You have spoken in your despatch, which you read at the last meeting of the Committee, of an extended scheme for promoting emigration from the coast of Africa to the West Indies; will you explain that more fully?—I would propose that the negroes should be sent to the West Indies after emancipation, in the same way as they have been of late years sent to the different colonies there from Havannah. Dr. Madden, who has made this Report, was the person appointed by Government, and specially sent out for the purpose of superintending the emigration of the emancipated negroes from Havannah to the different West India islands, and he would be able to give to the Committee all the details of the regulations which were adopted and sanctioned by the Government. I am not aware of the rules that were laid down for his guidance; but it appears in the slave trade papers of former years, during the time that the Duke of Wellington was Foreign Secretary, that he required a certain proportion to be observed between males and females, and also that negroes should be examined by a medical man, and no unhealthy ones sent; there were other regulations also by which he was bound; all the negroes that he could get he sent to Trinidad in the first instance, and I believe he sent some afterwards to Honduras and other places.