1830.] Sierra Leone Saints, and Wcsi India Sinners. 563 



northward !" On the 19th August, Mr. Smith expresses his opinion that 

 the Brazilians will continue the trade, notwithstanding our treaty with 

 them to the contrary, and that we cannot prevent them. On the 23d of 

 March the capture of an armed slaver is reported, and that " traders are 

 becoming more daring every day," in fact, the trade is assuming a new 

 character, and the vessels now employee 7 are of such a class as not only 

 to lessen the chance of capture by superiority of sailing, but also to 

 enable them to make a more formidable resistance. On the 26th June 

 the Commissioners write, " We regret to add that the slave-trade is 

 manifestly reviving, with additional activity, at the Gallinas, only 150 

 miles from Freetown ! !" 



The mortality which takes place in these captured vessels, between 

 the time of capture and adjudication, is truly horrible. In one case the 

 number of deaths was 60 out of 201 ; in another, 179 out of 448 ; in 

 a third, 115 out of 271 ; in another, 65 out of 218; in another, on the 

 passage from Fernando Po to Freetown, 109 out of 226; and there 

 are numerous other cases. 



From Havannah the same accounts of the increased activity and 

 desperation of the traders, is given by Mr. Macleay. One slaver wa 

 run ashore on the coast of Cuba, by the Skipjack, and was blown-up. 

 There was only one wretched negro found on board. (f There is every 

 reason to believe, though it may be difficult to prove the fact, that the 

 crew set fire to her, as in the case of the ' Mexico,' with the horrible 

 intention of destroying the captors, together with such negroes as they 

 had not time to land/' In the case of the Midas, captured by the 

 Monkey, out of 562 negroes taken from Africa, 241 died, and forty 

 threw themselves overboard making altogether a mortality of exactly 

 one half. Another slave pirate, who arrived safe in Cuba, " had plun- 

 dered other slave vessels of about 980 slaves, and had scarcely sailed 

 for this island with them, when the small pox and other contagious 

 disease^ broke out, which reduced a crew of 157 to 66, and the 980 

 slaves to about 300 ! ! 



Mr. Macleay, in his letter to Lord Aberdeen, of the 1st January, 

 states, that the number of slaves landed in 1828, exclusive of those 

 liberated by the Mixed Commissions, amounted to 7.000 at least ; and 

 he attributes the increased activity to 1st, the great number of sugar 

 estates now forming on the island 2dly, to the enormous profits attend- 

 ing the illicit slave-trade 3dly, to the certainty, now prevailing among 

 the slave-traders, that they are favoured and protected by the local 

 government, if not by the government at home. " The coffee planters," 

 says he, " who had in former years realized money, have above all 

 turned their attention to sugar cultivation ; and as, taking sugar and 

 coffee estates at their average extent, one of the former requires about 

 three times as many negroes as a coffee plantation, of course the demand 

 for slaves has in proportion increased. 



It must appear quite evident to every man of common sense, that the 

 most effectual encouragement that can possibly be afforded to the 

 Spaniard to continue this nefarious traffic, is precisely that which our 

 abolitionists at home are now pursuing namely, to increase the demand 

 for foreign sugars, by ruining the British sugar-planters ! And that, 

 on the other hand, to encourage the produce of our own colonies, and 

 thereby render supplies from foreign colonies unnecessary, would be 

 the surest means of abating it ! But this does not suit the politics of 



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