428 
be over before our comment could 
meet the public eye. And we are not 
without hope that, before we have to 
appear again, curiosity will be so far 
glutted by diurnal descriptions, as not 
to render it necessary for us to devote 
the whole of our ensuing pages to the 
details of pageants and festivities. 
— 
SPAIN, 
Peruars, if we were not somewhat 
weary of a name which had so long been 
prologue only to the themes of dis- 
gusting tyranny, debasement, and im- 
becility, might afford some matter of 
conjectural anticipation. The utter 
impossibility of its long continuance in 
its present state of miserable misrule, 
cannot but have occasionally crossed 
the reflecting mind; and symptoms 
have recently, it seems, occurred that 
might lead to the expectation of no very 
distant catastrophe. Armies are apt to 
become patriotic, when Tyrannies can 
longer reward their services. The 
troops, it seems, quartered at Seville 
(finding themselves neglected by the 
government, and reduced to a state of 
hopeless destitution, while their bre- 
thren of the body-guard, who surround 
the palace at Madrid, and, still more, the 
priesthood, who are every where in 
swarms, monopolized every thing which 
the rapacity of Ferdinand could extort 
from a beggared nation,) have broken 
out into insurrection, and have attacked 
and plundered the houses of the clergy ; 
and, what is still more ominous, when 
the rabble, who joined with them in the 
hope of plunder, would have proceeded 
to like excesses against the suspected 
liberals, these soldiers, it is said, re- 
solutely opposed them, protected the 
liberals, and raised the cry of “ down 
with the priests !—down with the absolute 
king ?? . The extent of these excesses, 
as might be expected, has been as much 
as possible concealed; and it may per- 
haps be only a temporary and partial 
ebullition, Butif the intelligence can 
be at all relied upon, it is a symptom, 
at least, of that general explosion which, 
in all probability, must ere long occur : 
—though what, under the present cir- 
cumstances of federated despotism, 
might be the issue even of a general re- 
action of constitutional liberalism, is 
a question of doubt and difficulty. 
“ Woe!” however, we may venture 
to pronounce, “ Woe, at any rate, in 
the event of such an occurrence, to the 
rapacious and tyrannic Priesthood !” 
Topics of the Month :—Spain—The Slave Trade. 
(June 1, 
THE SLAVE TRADE. 
Tuis is a subject to rivet the atten- 
tion of benevolence with a still deeper 
sympathy; nor can we speak of it 
without feelings of mortification and 
horror that amount almost to sickening 
despondency. How painful, how de- 
grading to the hopes and efforts of 
humanity! that the perusal of the cor- 
respondence lately published by the 
House of Commons should only lead 
to the conyiction, “that, after all the 
labours of this country, and of its 
most virtuousand distinguished citizens, 
for abolishing this unnatural and unholy 
traffic, they should have proved aperfect 
nullity ; that though we may have wash- 
ed the blood from our own consciences, 
withdrawn ourselves from the dreadful 
partnership of crime, and set, so far, 
an upright example to mankind, yet we 
have not diminished by one. jot the 
mass of human guilt or of human suffer- 
ing ;—that the slave trade still flourishes 
with as much horrible activity as at any 
former period;—that if England is clear 
of the pollution, the melaneholy and 
mortifying truth must be declared, that 
the amount of African misery has not 
been reduced a single particle ;—that it, 
on the contrary, if any thing, has been 
aggravated by theabolition of the British 
slave trade;—that there is scarcely 
another ‘flag but that of England in Eu- 
rope, or, with the exception of the United 
States, out of Europe, by which this abo- 
mination is not masked or shielded; that 
the evidence should be unquestionable, 
that wars are perpetually instigated for 
the supply of slaves, who are furnished 
in such abundance, that the price to 
the slave-merchant varies only from 
half-a-dollar to between two and three 
dollars a piece ;—that they are cram- 
med—we might say potted—into the 
hold of a vessel, where space is assigned 
to them (and for a voyage, be it remem- 
bered, across the Atlantic,) in the 
following proportions:—The ship Mi- 
nerva, of 270 tons, had a passport from 
the Emperor of Brazil for 675 slaves, 
a little more than one-third of a ton 
for each! The brig Cerqueira, of 304 
tons, was licensed for 761 slaves! The 
schooner Arola, 108 tons, 270 slaves! 
Such is the art of potting Negroes for 
use.” 
Captain Woollcombe, of his Majesty’s 
ship Victor, who had been happily 
instrumental in successively rescuing 
740 miserable negroes from this most 
horrible of all slavery, speaking of a 
Brazilian 
