290 Sierra Leone, and [MARCH, 



millions of dollars for the immediate abolition of her slave trade ; we 

 have had to pay her for our unjust seizures 400,000 ; to Portugal we 

 have had to pay on the same score about 350,000, besides 600,000 to 

 induce her to forego the slave trade north of the line.* And to the irri- 

 tation Created at that time by the ignorance and imprudence of the abo- 

 litionists and their agents, as much as to the jealousy of foreign go- 

 vernments and their desire to rival the British colonies by increasing 

 the number of labourers in their own settlements, we may attribute that 

 private determination on their part, which has since been brought into 

 full operation, to connive at that continuance of a contraband slave 

 trade, which, in spite of all our exertions is now carried on with greater 

 atrocity, and more activity than at any former period ;f and, to their 

 blind zeal and the culpable rapacity of their agents, we may ascribe a 

 great part of those horrors which have since been practised in carrying 

 on this dreadful traffic. 



To return to Sierra Leone the supply of slaves consequent upon the 

 seizure and condemnation of an immense number of valuable vessels, 

 kept up and increased the number of settlers, adding, at the same time, 

 in various ways to the immense fortunes acquired by certain individvals 

 connected with the association. Their agents, with a view to com- 

 mencing slave cultivation, obtained, as already stated, considerable 

 numbers of these slaves, under pretence of apprenticing them for fourteen 

 years (after the expiration of which period they may, according to act of 

 parliament, be apprenticed for a further term.) And, to render it pro- 

 fitable to establish plantations by the forced labour of these slaves, they, 

 in 1816, attempted to follow up their schemes by smuggling a bill 

 through parliament, introduced by a leading philanthropist, called the 

 African Goods Bill, which, if its concealed object had not been disco- 

 vered and defeated by the West-India Body when it had nearly passed 

 the House of Lords, would have enabled them to bring to England, 

 rum, and all other West-India commodities (sugar excepted) on the 

 same duties as those from the old colonies, and to compete with British 

 sugars, in the European markets, with African slave-raised sugars ! 



Nor was this the only scheme for promoting private interests under 

 the mask of philanthropy and pretence of civilizing Africa. Their 

 attempt to get possession of the forts of the African Company their 

 endeavours to obtain British registers for ships condemned for carrying 

 on the slave trade which could only benefit individuals resident at 

 Sierra Leone and various other measures, clearly evince the disinterested- 

 ness of certain members of their body, and the blindness of government 

 in becoming the dupes of cant and hypocrisy. We need only adduce 

 one other instance of the deceptive nature of the " reports" promul- 

 gated at home, to show how little of the real state and progress of the 

 settlement can be known from these reports, Their ninth report, 

 dated in April, but not published till August 1815, states, in reference 

 to the liberated Africans, that it could hardly have been believed how 

 " comfortable" and useful they had in a few months become, and " that 

 they appear now to be as happy and comfortably situated and as likely 

 to rise in the colony, as any class of persons in it." Now, it so hap- 

 pened, that, at a meeting of the mayor and aldermen of Freetown, held 



Papers respecting the Slave Trade (and Convention with Portugal, 21st Jan. 1815) 

 p. 48. 



f Vide on this subject Monthly Magazine for February last, pp. 144, 145. 



