562 Sierra Leone Saints, and West India Sinners. [Nov. 



it is now proved to have been, from the beginning, a pestilential charnel- 

 house ! The African and other settlers were, even in the recent pam- 

 phlet of Kenneth Macauley, said to have rapidly advanced in civiliza- 

 tion, and that religious instruction had produced the most blessed fruits. 

 We now find the population in a state of the most degrading ignorance, 

 and that brutal licentiousness is universal. It was said that the Maroons 

 had made such progress in wealth and respectability that their brethren 

 in Jamaica were not to be compared with them; we nowjtnd these people 



PETITIONING TO BE SENT BACK TO THE WEST INDIES. 



We were assured that the Foreign Slave Trade was to be entirely 

 annihilated, and Africa civilized by the moral example and political 

 ascendency of this religious assemblage of free negroes ! We now see 

 that the Foreign Slave Trade, so far from being destroyed, is carried on 

 with greater vigour than ever, and is said to be fostered and encouraged 

 by this very settlement, established for its suppression ; and that the 

 only effect of its civilization, upon the neighbouring tribes, has been, 

 to create dissensions, introduce new vices, and to render the name of 

 " white man" a term of reproach throughout Africa. We see that 

 the unhappy beings seized in the slave vessels, die by hundreds even 

 before they can be landed at the settlement j and that many thousands 

 of the survivors, whose liberation costs this country millions of public 

 money, have wandered, no one knows where, or been again sold into 

 slavery ; and that even a schoolmaster has been detected in selling his 

 pupils ! 



One of the last documents presented to the late Parliament,* places 

 the dreadful mortality of all classes in a frightful point of view. 



Wm. Smith, Esq. thus writes to Lord Aberdeen, on the 10th of June 

 <c Amongst the numerous deaths I have to report to your lordship, 

 that of Mr. Richard Groves, Marshal to the Courts of Mixed Commis- 

 sion." On the same day he writes, " It is with feelings of unfeigned 

 regret that I have to report the death of Mr. S. M. Magnus, first clerk 

 to His Majesty's Commissioners." On the llth he states that Mr. 

 Jackson, the commissary judge, had been obliged to return to England 

 in a dangerous state of health ; and on the 3d of July, he says, " It is 

 with the most poignant feelings of regret, that it again becomes my 

 melancholy duty, &c. Mr. RefFell, the registrar, died on the 3d 

 instant." On the 19th of August, he writes, " I have again a melan- 

 choly duty to perform, in acquainting your lordship with the death, on 

 the 3d instant, of Mr. T. M. Walker," the young gentleman appointed 

 to fill one of the situations vacant by the above-mentioned deaths, and 

 in the same letter Mr. Smith states that a Mr. Frederick Jarvis, who 

 succeeded Mr. Groves as marshal, only held the situation two weeks, 

 <e having unfortunately died on the 9th ultimo, after ten days' illness ! !" 



These papers shew a frightful increase of the slave-trade in every 

 direction. Mr. Jackson, writing to Lord Aberdeen, on the 5th January 

 .of last year, mentions " the unprecedented number of slaves which within 

 the last four months have been brought before the several Courts of 

 Mixed Commissions : a proof of the perseverance of those engaged in 

 this inhuman traffic ;" and the Commissioners further wrote, on the 19th 

 February, " the slave-trade seems to be breaking out afresh to the 



* Class A, Session 1830. Correspondence with the British Commissioners at Sierra 

 Leone, &c. 



