PROSECUTION OF PEDRO DE ZULUETA ON A CHARGE OF SLAVE-TRADING.

THIS volume proceeds from the gentleman whose trial on a charge of slave-trading excited so much attention and comment last autumn. It consists of Mr. GURNEY'S report of the trial, a variety of documents illustrative of the case from evidence given before the Parliamentary Committee, and other official matter, together with an address to the trading community, pointing out the risk which must be run by every person whose business connects him with Tropical countries, if the views of Sir GEORGE STEPHEN and the Anti. Slavery party are to be acted upon. It also contains some critical remarks upon the Judge's charge, and narrates the jesuitical and cruel proceedings attending the author's arrest. Though the address has in some parts a character of foreign diffuseness, and in others a half-legal air, as if attorney and client had drawn it up between them, yet it has also several very just observations on the impossibility of carrying on trade with countries where slavery mingles with every act of life and every transaction of business, if such prosecutions be encouraged. The evidence before the Committee, though much of it has no relation to the charge against M. ZULUETA, is curious for its picture of the coast of Africa ; and the trial has a greater interest than when published by the daily press, from the more finished style of the report, which preserves the by-play and dramatic effects. The book, however, possesses a larger interest than is derived from its personal or literary charac- ter. The case of M. ZULUETA today may tomorrow be that of any other person who executes the order of a correspondent living in a slave-holding community—that is, in the rather wide range of Asia, Africa, and America, British possessions and some disorganized republics excepted. The time, the money, the feelings, and to a Certain extent the character of all such persons, seem to be at the mercy of any malicious or meddling individual with sufficient art and activity to get up a case and sufficient nerve to act as a public prosecutor. Nor are rate-payers without an interest in the matter. The Jury having refused a verdict of condemnation, Mr. Justice MAULE allowed the prosecutor his expenses,—falling upon the City, to the amount, it is said, of between one and two thousand pounds. To a professional man like Sir GEORGE STEPHEN the business-disbursement of such a sum may be of no consequence ; but, if the case do not act as a stimulus to bustling, speculative, and needy attornies, it would seem that the sense of what is fair between man and man is stronger among pettifoggers than professed philanthropists.

Stripping it of all but essential points, the case is this. A vessel with a Russian name, and sailing under Russian colours, was cap- tured off the coast of Africa, in 1839, as a suspected slaver. As

she had Russian papers, they could not adjudicate upon her at Sierra Leone, and she was sent to England. On her arrival, the Russian Consul claimed her ; and she was eventually sold in the open market ; ZULUETA and Co., British subjects, and established as merchants in London for twenty years, buying her as the agents of their correspondents, MARTINEZ and Co., —or rather, advancing money, by order Of .MARTINEZ and Co., IO JENNINGS, a skipper in the employ of MARTINEZ, to make the purchase. She was then openly freighted at Liverpool, by the firm of ZuLusra, on account of MARTINEZ, with a cargo admitted to be legal in its nature, and consigned to Gallinas, a port of Africa. On her way thither she was again captured; but " nothing was found on board to warrant her being supposed to be fitted out as a slave-vessel." * The captain and apparent owner, JENNINGS, was tried at Sierra Leone, for slave-trading, and acquitted. Lieutenant HILL, who captured the ship, in giving evidence before the House of Com- mons Committee on Africa, not only stated the facts of the case so far as he knew them, but took upon himself to say, " It is my opinion, the house of Zulueta have aided and abetted the slave- trade for a number of years, by acting as agents for slave-dealers" ; and others put forward similar ideas. The Chairman forwarded the examination in which these remarks were permitted to be made to ZULUETA and Co.; when young M. ZULUETA, as speaking Eng- lish better than his father or brother, voluntarily appeared before the Committee to explain the connexion of the firm with the trans- actions alluded to. From the evidence thus volunteered, the Anti- Slavery people were able to get up the case on which M. ZULUETA was put upon his trial ; and, so far as we can form a judgment, the grounds of proceeding were- 1. ZULUETA and Co. finally advanced 600/. for the vessel, though they at first said their orders were not to exceed 500/.

2. Gallinas was proved, by British officers employed on the coast of Africa in suppressing the slave-trade, to be a place whose only articles of exports are slaves and dollars.

3. MARTINEZ and Co. of Cuba, in the opinion of the same British officers, are "notorious slave-dealers"; and the persons to whom the vessel was consigned at Gallinas were "notorious slave-dealers" too. Hence it was inferred, that ZULUETA and Co. were principals, or in collusion with MaarmEz and Co., or with JENNINGS, in a design of slave-trading ; or, at all events, they knew that somebody was going to use the cargo they supplied for that purpose ; and were therefore guilty of slave-trading within the meaning of the act.

The idea entertained of the charge by indifferent persons may be judged of by a few facts. The Committee of the House of Commons, which had heard all the talk of a principal witness for the prosecution, Lieutenant HILL, unchecked by any rules of evidence or sense of propriety, and which subsequently had M. ZULUETA under two days' examination, pronounced in their Report —"Now it is fair to state, that we have no evidence, or reason to believe, that any British merchant concerned in the trade with the West coast of Africa either owns or equips any vessel engaged in the slave-trade, or has any share in the risks or profits of any slave- trade venture." When the Anti-Slavery body had, by means of M. ZuLuirra's indications, hunted out all the witnesses in any way engaged in the matter, they laid the case before the Law-officers of the Crown, urging them to take it up; but the Attorney-General refused to entertain the proposal. The question was then brought before the Anti-Slavery Committee; but a majority declined to prosecute—perhaps under a wholesome dread of turned tables.t Sir GEORGE STEPHEN then took it up ; and from beginning to end, it was conducted with the serpent-like wisdom, tender cruelty, and manly openness of conduct, which distinguish ultra-philanthro- pists. During the twelvemonth they were preparing the case, not an indication escaped them ; no preliminary proceedings were taken before a Magistrate ; the bill was presented to the Grand Jury without either notice or intimation; the first information that M. ZULUETA received was by the apparition at his office of Mr. SCOBLE and a Policeman to take him into custody ; and Sir GEORGE STEPHEN struggled might and main to have a gentleman as respectable as himself sent to Newgate as a felon ; accompany- ing, his professional conduct towards the accused with a delicate regard as a man towards the feelings of Mrs. ZULUETA. Scene, the Stationhouse, whither M. ZULUETA was taken in custody of the Police- " Mr. Lawford (M. Zulueta's solicitor) spoke aside with Sir George Stephen, for the immediate and pressing question was the bail. Sir George expressed& firm determination to resist bail to any amount. Then the dreadful thought was, what was to become of my family, since it never has happened that I have been absent without their being acquainted with all the circumstances ; and I do not think I have slept one night out of my house while in town. The late hour made it quite unlikely, with opposition to the bail, and as counsel must be heard, that I could escape passing the night in Netvgate. Mr. John Lawford, with the greatest kindness and feeling, expressed to me that such was his fear. My reply was, that they might do what they pleased with me, only that my wife should be seen to, for I was quite sure of the result of her hearing suddenly of such an occurrence, together with my not going home. Sir George coldly remarked, that 'it must already be known at home, for he had sent there to take me, in case I had not been taken at the office.' The agony which such a statement caused was perceptible ; and one of the officers in the room remarked, that I need not apprehend any thing, as all the officers could do would be to watch the house."

The continuation of the case was worthy of the commencement. If there be any truth in the suspicions and accusations of the sea- Trial, page 291. Examination by Jury. f M. Zur..uzma is surprised that the Committee should themselves refuse to prosecute, yet pass an unanimous resolution approving of the conduct of the prosecutor, Sir GEORGE STEPHEN, and a series of resolutions containing eta indirect reflection upon the Jury, and a general libel upon the mercantile com- munity. The refusal was only another trait of the "wisdom of the serpent ": it is possible the prosecution of their body might have borne the construction of a conspiracy. captains and Anti-Slavery people, the whole affair, both as regards the firm of ZULUETA and MARTINEZ, must have been known to JENNINGS, the captain of the Augusta, and to one BERNARDOS, who commanded her whilst sailing under Russian colours : but the wisdom of the serpent included both these men in the indictment with M. ZULUETA, so that their testimony, if procurable, was shut out ; and that too after JENNINGS had been tried and acquitted at Sierra Leone on this identical charge. When seized under Russian

colours, the vessel had large water-tanks on board, such as slavers

carry : when purchased by ZULUETA and Co., these tanks were broken up by a cooper at Portsmouth, and branded in the regular way ; but, on the arrival of the ship at Liverpool, they were all sent on shore. The fact of breaking-up the tanks, as if for future use, was ostentatiously presented to the Jury ; but the agents for the

prosecution suppressed the fact that they had been sent on shore.

The Judge charged for a conviction ; which he not only had a right to do, but which it was his business to do, as long as he kept

within the record and was supported by evidence. But it strikes us that he fell into a growing practice of indulging in metaphysical speculations and moral assumptions, not warranted by wholesome practice, having slight relation to the case, and no legal connexion

with it at all. For example, the name of JENNINGS appears in the evidence, but we see nothing indicative of his capacity : yet Mr. Justice MAuLE, qualifying by anif, proceeds to draw a cha- racter, in the historical line, of JENNINGS as a slave-captain, to explain why he should be chosen for the command ; it having been urged for the defence, that had slave-trading been intended, the vessel would have sailed under Spanish colours with a Spanish captain, as furnishing better means of evading or resisting the British cruisers. The Judge diverges from the record, into a dis- quisition on the difference between a "thing prohibited by posi- tive law, and that kind of thing against which the plain natural sense and conscience of mankind would revolt "; and he "sup- poses" that "many persons of very good character " are now in that predicament as regards the propriety of slave-trading if it can be done secretly ; leaving it to be inferred that the accused is one,— though numbers of the first men in London, who had known him for years, speaking to character, had sworn the direct contrary : as, inter altos, Sir Jona Prars—" A gentleman very unlikely to give encourage- ment to this nefarious trade."

Mr. RICARDO—" He is quite incapable of engaging in any transac- tions of a questionable nature."

Baron ROTHSCHILD—" I should think incapable of being connected in any way with the offence charged."

And it was known to the Court, though it could not be produced an evidence, having no direct bearing upon the issue, that when his father, as a creditor, received some slaves under a bankruptcy in Cuba, he immediately manumitted them. There are other points of a similar character: and the eharge contains, though apparently denied in terms, the monstrous proposition, that when a prosecutor fails to establish guilt the accused is bound to prove his innocence, though in many cases, as in that before us, he would have to prove a negative. So far as we perceive, there was no case to go to the Jury ; and but for the halo of philanthropy which Anti-Slavery threw over the proceedings, we do not think it would have gone. Looking, not at the legal evidence, but at the reports collected by sea-captains on the coast of Africa, and the inferences or con- jectures they draw from hearsay and their African experience, it is probable that the goods when landed might at some time or other, wholly or in part, have been used for the purchase of slaves : but there was no legal proof, and no legal and scarcely any moral in- ference of' such effect, still less any legal proof of a slave-adven- ture being designed by JENNINGS, or of a direct use of the vessel for such purpose, but several inferences to the contrary. Indeed, the principle really involved by the prosecution was, to render a merchant or manufacturer who sold goods, or an agent who ordered them, responsible, unless they proved innocence, not only for the use which might be made of them, but for the use which the purchaser might intend to make of them. Nay, in its fullest extent, it would render a banker or other person with deposits in his bands liable to answer for the design with which a customer might draw upon him, and the acts or intentions of the party in whose favour the order was drawn, if any discretion was given as to the amount of the advance.

It may be asked, could this prosecution originate in formed mo- tives to injure the reputation of a mercantile firm, to destroy the happiness of a respectable family, and to doom a young man of education, standing, and the highest character, to a sentence of transportation, worse to him than death ? We do not suppose that the parties to it are so bad as an affirmative answer would imply. Beyond the blind yet not unmalignant dislike with which the hu- manity-folks par excellence regard all who oppose their nostrums or whom they choose to accuse of encouraging slavery, we do not sup- pose they had any personal feeling towards M. ZULUETA at all. He was merely their medium—the animal to be dissected alive with an ulterior object. This object seems to have been neither more nor less than an audacious endeavour to defy and override Parliament and the authorized interpretation of a statute. The first aim of these people was to get from the Parliamentary Committee a recommendation to make it felony to trade with any place where any slave-trading is carried on, or with anybody known (that is suspected or reported by them) to be engaged in slave-dealing : failing in this, they looked out for somebody with whom they might take the chance of a judge and jury to establish their principle by

a verdict, and M. ZULUBTA'S voluntary and unguarded explanations

to the Committee made him their man. The state of things from which the intuitive common sense of the Jury enabled the mer- cantile community to escape, may be judged of from the Commit- tee's Report. The passage contains so many points indicative of Anti-Slavery folly, and its allusions to the Right of Search question, by which faction and folly may embroil us with France or America, are so judicious, that we quote its more striking parts. "Owing to the equipment article in our recent treaties, which has prevented.. the actual slaver from hovering on the coast in safety, a large portion of the goods necessary for the slave-trade is driven into vessels innocent in their apparent character, but subserving the purposes of the slaver ; and, in con- sequence, a somewhat larger portion of this kind of traffic may possibly now pass directly from the English or other merchant to the coast of Africa, than heretofore, when those supplies went round by Cuba and Brazil in the slavers themselves, without risk of capture. "Now an opinion has prevailed, and that in very influential quarters, and it runs through Dr. Madden's Report, that at least such direct dealing is illegal, and punishable under the Statute of the 5th Geo. IV. c. 5; and if not so already, the same parties would urge on Parliament to make it so by new enactment ; and some even would extend it to all connexion, however indirect, in which a guilty knowledge of the destination of the goods or of the vessel could be presumed." The Committee, on the authority of the Law-officers of the Crown, deny this construction of MADDEN and Co.; which was the point sought to be established by the trial. As regards making it so, they remark, inter alia, " Some witnesses have argued, that this question of degree [of slave-trading in a place or by a person] need not be defined, but may be left to be solved by the practical sense of a jury. By what jury ? In England or at Sierra Leone ? Under what uncertainties and obstructions would the most scrupulous trader deal with the coast of Africa, if, for the misinterpretation of such instructions, as the nature of such a case will admit, by a supercargo, his vessel and goods are liable to be brought some hundreds or thousands of miles out of their course, to have the question decided by a jury, whether some person or some factory dealt with was principally or not engaged in the slave-trade, it being unlawful if principally, lawful if partially, in some unknown and varying proportion, so engaged ? " The question for the Legislature to consider is, whether it is worth while to do all this—to infuse so much risk and uncertainty into a trade which it wishes to encourage, which it looks to as one of the main instruments for the civilization of Africa, for the sake of interfering with so small a proportion of the facilities which commerce, permitted at all with Africa under her present circumstances, must of necessity afford more or less to the trade in slaves. For, unless all other countries can be persuaded to take the same view, it must in- deed be a small proportion, and little indeed will have been done towards the object ; an obstruction will merely have been raised for such length of lime as may be required for conveying the same goods from England or from foreign countries through other channels. It would be merely a transfer, and a trans- fer to parties less friendly to the object, and less under control. We have had ample evidence, that foreign vessels already carry on this trade to a consider- able extent ; nor is there any right by existing treaty with foreign nations, nor can it be expected that we should obtain it, to interrupt foreign vessels engaged in such a traffic. But, indeed, how would it be carried out ? The right of search, in any shape, is one, as we know by experience, that requires the greatest delicacy in carrying out with the ships of friendly nations. But what kind of search must that be which would seek to ascertain, on board of an ap- parently innocent vessel, innocent in her build and in her equipment, and freighted with innocent goods, whether the destination of such goods was not made unlawful by some document hidden in the most obscure recesses of the vessel ? How prolonged, how minute, consequently how irritating at all. times, bow vexatious if unsuccessful; how likely to be unsuccessful if not guided by more obvious indications; how likely, consequently, to lead to dis- putes and collisions among nations, most injurious if not fatal to that har- monious cooperation for the common object which is so absolutely essential to success ? It must not be lost sight of, how large a share of these evils must be inflicted on those who are engaged in our own lawfal commerce, if such a search be applied to them."