LORD JOHN Russell’s statement. 
25 
to form treaties of commerce and for the suppression of 
the external Slave Trade, with the most influential chiefs 
on the coast of Africa and on the hanks of the principal 
rivers. 
This movement was followed by Lord John Russell’s 
letter of 26th of December, 1839, to the Lords Commis- 
sioners of the Treasury, in which his Lordship, with his 
usual perspicacity, gave a comprehensive view of the ap- 
palling increase of the Slave Trade ; and showed that 
“ the average number of slaves Introduced into foreign 
states or colonies in America and the West Indies, from 
the western coast of Africa annually, exceeds 100,000.” 
But, “the number of slaves actually landed in the 
importing countries, atfords but a very imperfect indica- 
tion of the real extent of the calamities which this 
traflic inflicts on its victims.” “ No fact can be more 
certain, than that such an importation presupposes and 
involves a waste of human life, and a sum of human 
misery, proceeding from year to year without respite or 
intermission, to such an extent, as to render the subject 
the most painful of any which, in the survey of the 
condition of mankind, it is possible to contemplate.” 
His Lordship, after observing that with the existing 
powerful stimuli to the prosecution of the Slave Trade, 
the whole British navy, employed as a marine guard, 
would scarcely be sufficient for its repression, then states 
that “ Her Majesty’s confidential advisers are compelled 
to admit the conviction, that it is indispensable to enter 
upon some new preventive system, calculated to arrest 
