410 
THE SLAVE QUESTION. 
horrible middle passage, or in the repetition of it 
after having been taken by our cruisers — enough to 
be thrown overboard to avoid capture, — or to die of 
drowning when wrecked, — so that there may be a suffi- 
cient number of survivors, through the unparalleled 
sufferings of a transatlantic passage, to supply the ori- 
ginal demand for labour, in the plantations which furnish 
our luxuries. No account is here taken of the surplus 
Now, if even one-third die, or nearly so, leaving 212 slaves to 
be landed and fit for market at 50?. each, you have the sum of 10,600?., 
or equivalent to the loss of 6 and a fraction of such full slavers ; the 
items 2 and 4, wages of captain and crew, being saved to the 
owner (as before stated) in case of capture, or equivalent to the loss 
of 14 empty vessels, items 2 and 4, f.e., the wages of captain and 
crew, being saved to the slave-owner. 
In the “Times” newspaper, dated May, 1848, there appears a state- 
ment (generally believed to be correct,) “that 5,000 slaves were 
landed at Bahia in two months, from 13 vessels, (average 384 each 
ship,) and 7,000 at other places, viz., Campos, Rio Grande, and Rio 
Janeiro, total 12,000 now each of these slaves, at the average price 
60?., would realize no less a sum than 600,000?., or equivalent to the 
loss of 217^ vessels full of slaves or slave-cargoes for 450 slaves, are 
as fitted up in scale (1), items 2 and 4, being saved, or equiva- 
lent to the loss of 424/ff empty vessels fitted and equipped, as in 
scale (1 ), without slaves or slave-cargo, items number 2 and 4, being 
saved. By applying this method of calculation to the 60,000 slaves, 
stated in Lord Howden’s letter to Viscount Palmerston, dated Rio 
Janeiro, 9th February, 1848, to have been landed in the Brazils 
during the 3 ^eai’ 1847, we find that the profits on tliem are equiva- 
lent to the loss of 2,124 empty vessels fitted as before ^own, and 1,084 
with full cargoes of 350 slaves each. Or the profits of one year are 
equal to the purchase mone^* of one million of slaves! Can it be 
supposed that any force will arrest the progress of a torrent of such 
fearful magnitude? — See Dr, Thomson’s Evidence before the Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons^ and others. 
