terror, and substituted the traffic in ivory and gum for that in slaves. Matters have been carried so far as to besiege towns, as at Lagos in 1852, and to replace one chief therein by another.*

"When we compare what took place a few years ago,' said Lord John Russell, June 8, 1860,† "when we remember that 140,000 slaves were yearly carried away from Africa, while this year the number has not reached 30,000, we should neither deny the progress nor abandon the hope of a complete suppression of this traffic."

In short, this commerce, which was the appanage of kings, is considered as a crime; all the nations of Europe have promised by treaties the suppression of the slave-trade, and interdicted by laws its practice to their subjects; this odious traffic has been driven to bay, circumscribed, punished, and diminished, at an epoch when the immense increase of the consumption of colonial products would have infallibly augmented it. Have the colonies been ruined? Has their production decreased? Not at all! The slave has only become more costly, and consequently has been better treated; servile labor increasing in price, emancipation has encountered fewer obstacles. The crime dishonored, the slave-trade rarer, the slave happier, freedom easier, these are immense and satisfactory results.

Another result I style very important, the conviction that the entire abolition of the slave-trade will never be wrought except by the entire abolition of slavery.

So long as men are sure of selling a kind of merchandise

* Revue coloniale, 1852, VIII. 270, 360.

† Papers relating to the Slave-Trade. Barclay, London, 1861. Exportation of Sugar from the English West India Colonies: Before the abolition of the slave-trade, 1801-1806

After the abolition of the slave-trade,

1,138,390,736 kil.

1817-1822

1,141,197,628

at a high price they always find the means of procuring it. The risk increases the gain.*

But slavery is not everywhere abolished, and the nations who have abolished it, in order to procure additional laborers for their colonies, engage in the importation of free Africans, known under the name of "immigration," which is accused of being a return to the slave-trade. What are we to think of this?

* The surveillance of Cuba is easy. The navigable passes are not broad. The wind almost always blows in one direction, and for about four hours in the morning there is a dead calm, which gives steamers a great advantage over sailing-vessels; yet, notwithstanding, at least 30,000 slaves are annually imported into Cuba. (Mr. Cave's Speech in the House of Commons, June 8, 1860.)

II.

IMMIGRATION, OR THE IMPORTATION OF FREE NEGROES FROM THE COAST OF AFRICA.

SINCE the French have taken the liberty of contracting for free negroes on the coast of Africa, despatches have poured in from every post where an English flag floats over a consular house, which seem to have been copied one after the other.

Thus Mr. Sunley, Consul at the Island of Mauritius, wrote in 1857 to Commodore Trotter, commanding the station of the eastern coast of Africa, to inform him of the arrival at the Comoros, Oibo, and Johanna of ships bound from the Isle of Bourbon, with permissions and agents of the French government * to hire ransomed or freed negroes. He pointed out no abuses. He even declared that Capt. Durand of the Aurélie had refused to anchor at Maroni, in the Comoro Isles, to give the sultan time, as he proposed, to form slave depôts on the coast, because he was expressly forbidden it by the instructions of the government. Notwithstanding, he added that he could. not hinder the native sultans, despite the treaties which bound them to England, from seeking to profit by the ransom of negroes effected by France. Upon this, Commodore Trotter wrote to the admiralty: "There is no attempt to transport slaves around the Cape of Good Hope. But it is greatly to be regretted that the French government persists in its system of the emigration of negroes from the eastern coast of Africa to the Isle of Bourbon, a sys

*New York Journal of Commerce, April 6, 1858.

tem which naturally leads the chiefs, in order to supply the market on the coast with laborers, to bring slaves from the interior, instead of the products of the soil."

We find the same complaints arise from the western coast of Africa. The unique little republic of Liberia, founded in 1822, on the old Grain Coast, between Cape Palmas and Sierra Leone, by the American abolitionists, in order to re-export thither free negroes to their native soil, is well known. This republic, where negroes alone are citizens, is far from being a model.* Nevertheless, it endures and grows; has a constitution, elective president, senate, and parliament, property qualification and irremovable judiciary body, and numbers 11 towns, nearly 400,000 souls, 50 churches, 30 schools, and a college. It treats with the European nations, who keep up the friendship by small gifts; as for instance, England has presented it with a steamboat, and France, it is said, has given it a thousand Zouave uniforms. Finally, it seeks to aggrandize itself, and sends explorers into the interior. In a letter, dated February, 1858, from one of these explorers, George Seymour, despatched to the territory of Pessay on the eastern coast, I read: "The French system of seeking emigrants from this coast for its Indian colonies leads the native chiefs in the neighborhood of Cape Mount to resume their old practice of kidnapping, and to make wars of pillage upon each other in order to supply themselves with emigrants."

* As an attempt gradually to abolish slavery in the United States, and to remove the colored race, according to the hopes of Mr. Clay, the Republic of Liberia is only an illusion. The most idle and turbulent negroes are thus got rid of, and men born in America are sent to Africa. Liberia costs as much to those who desire abolition as to those who repel it, and are not sorry to have free negroes out of the sight of their slaves. Finally, there is no doubt that President Roberts, as well as several other high functionaries, was paid to second the slave-trade. Liberia is interesting only as an experiment as to how negroes can govern themselves and labor, even in detestable conditions. See the Edinburgh Review, 1859, pp. 550-565.

Less than this would have sufficed to cause France to be openly accused in England of resuscitating the slave-trade, and to reawaken all the echoes of Exeter Hall, all the fervor of the old abolitionists of both Houses of Parliament.

On July 17, 1857, Lord Brougham questioned the French government concerning the importation of negroes into the French colonies. He believed that the Emperor was deceived; he hoped that the religious influences which surrounded him would demonstrate to him that this importation would resuscitate the slave-trade, that the negroes were incapable of comprehending the contract proposed to them, that, in bringing them to the coast, the chiefs abandoned themselves to all imaginable horrors. He proposed an address to the Queen. This was sustained by Lord Malmesbury and Lord Harrowby. Lord Clarendon responded, that he was greatly concerned about these facts, that he had written to the French government, that he was watching. The address was adopted.

Nevertheless, public opinion was not yet greatly moved, for the Times of July 18, in giving an account of the meeting, adduced several arguments, pro and con, and ended by declaring that each country ought to act in the matter as it thought fit.

But two events, occurring in 1858, inflamed public opinion and revived the discussion.

The first was the mutiny of the negro emigrants and massacre of the crew of the Regina Cœli of Nantes, afterwards captured by an English ship and carried to Monrovia. The journals of June, 1858, have all recapitulated the thrilling details written by a witness of the massacre, M. de Brulais, the ship's surgeon, who saw the captain hacked to pieces and all the sailors killed, and only survived by force of courage, and as it were by a miracle, after passing two days and nights in the midst of the mutinous negroes, true wild beasts.