THE COMING CHANGE IN ANTI-SLAVE-TRADE MOVEMENTS.
ECONOMY will now enforce those arguments that prove the utterly useless and mischievous character of the West African blockade, and signs are not wanting of the next turn which opi- nion on that subject is destined to take. Lieutenant W. T. F. Jackson who has just returned from the coast, promulgates through the columns of the Times his clear and direct testimony to the futility of the attempt to keep down the slave-trade by a blockade or any other form of armed pre- vention.
" Viewing the slave-traffic merely as an illicit trade, which Government ves- sels have to suppress, it is a well-known axiom in our Customhouse that any con- traband trade yielding 30 per cent cannot be stopped; for such is human nature, that individuals will always be found willing. to risk the severest punishment for that amount of profit. Are the philanthropists in England aware of the profit of a single slave? The average price of a slave on the coast is a doubloon, or 31.8s., supposing that a slave is paid for in coin instead of goods, which form generally the greatest part of the purchase—then there is profit on profit again. This slave, on being landed in the Brazils, is, since our blockade, worth from 501. to 701., leaving a percentage, after all deductions of goods and agency, far, far above the Customhouse standard. A few years ago, a slave-merchant made a consider- able profit if one vessel in three landed her cargo. Now, owing to the large force we maintain on the coast, they have been able to raise their prices, so that if a merchant has six vessels on the venture, and one escapes, he is amply repaid. For this I have the authority of the slave-captains and the slave-factors them- selves. I have been repeatedly told by the captains of slavers and the factors on shore, that if we gave up the blockade they must give up business. It is true, we have iu some measure deterred the small trader, the petty trafficker in human flesh, from pursuing his avocations, because, perhaps, the capture of one or two ships might rain him; but we have put the trade on a larger scale, and the great Rio traders carry on their business in a gigantic manner compared with their operations previous to the blockade."
Mr. Jackson suggests, that instead of throwing away three millions sterling a year on the blockade, we should increase our colonies and spread our influence among the African chiefs.
" Formerly, during Governor Turner's time, we held the sovereignty from Sierra Leone to Gallivas; but, owing to some false economy, we withdrew our protection and lost our authority. I would rather hold up Liberia as an example to our Go- vernment than offer my own remarks: the Americans have established a colony, and from that spread North and South from Cape Mount to Cape Palmas, be- tween which places slavery is now hardly known. When we look upon this hand- ful of people, unprotected by their own Government, alone and unaided, and con- fider what they have done, I think we may well blush at the futility of our own efforts."
We find concurrent ideas in a different quarter : an intelligent writer in the Morning Post propounds a plan of economizing the expenditure of money and life, by more generally substituting African for European soldiers in the West Indies. He points to the fidelity and orderly conduct of the African troops, and to their successful employment in guarding several of our colonies, besides the extra-colonial trading settlement of Belize and the African colony of Sierra Leone ; and he proposes to employ a similar force as a military constabulary in the West Indies, with a sort of landwehr formed out of the same materials. His plan is—
"1. A concentration of the West India Regiments on two stations, Jamaica and Barbados; withdrawing the detached portions on the coast of Africa, and raising a force especially for that colony. "2. An organized system of recruiting in Sierra Leone: first, by volunteering from the local regiments to the West India Regiments ; secondly, by careful se- lection of men in the emancipation-yard from captured cargoes of slaves.
"3. A drafting of the older and steady soldiers from the West India Regiments, after three to five years' service, into the island constabularies. "4. And, as their services ran out, placing these men on the roll-call of the is- land militia, and locating them in districts on Crown lands, so as to be brought into active service on any emergency."
This plan is thrown out in conjunction with a larger plan to be described hereafter, for "a comprehensive system of transport between the Western coast of Africa and the West India Islands"; in other words, the writer is advocating a plan for putting the African coast and the West Indies in a state of close and constant communication.
These ideas will be familiar to our readers, as suggestions for attaining the objects of all Anti-Slavery proceedings by a more intelligible, safe, and efficacious way than the blockade. For whatever kind of labour in the West Indies, whether for defence or agriculture, the Negro is better fitted by constitution than the European ; but he can attain to his civilized development best, in the field of agriculture or arms, when officered by Europeans; and it is in the West Indies that the two races meet on the most favourable conditions. It is through the West Indies therefore that Africa has the best chance of civilization : elevate her races above a condition which is on a level with that of slaves in the colo- nies of Europe, and you cut off the supply of slaves ; thus ex- tinguishing the traffic at its very source. That you can do so by any process of converting the African chiefs, is hopeless : you have no channel to reach their understanding or their heart. But by developing our colonies on the coast, we might so extend our example and influence as to Anglicize Western Africa. Now that operation would be incalculably assisted by the help of the West Indies, a training-school for the Negro; who might be in- vited, by many advantageous plans, to return to his native con- tinent as a settler. On the other hand, you cannot drain the West Indies of their Negro population without recruiting it from Africa ; and that could best be done by the help of extensive set- tlements on the African coast. The Negro population of that re- gion would form the best recruiting-depots for the West Indies; the West Indies would be best training-school for the African settlements : the joint operation demands an extensive system of transport and retransport. Such a system would call into exist- ence a widely-spread community of intelligent free Blacks, the fittest for labour and action in the Tropical lands of the Atlantic; but that population would be wedded to England and her institu-
tions, as the great safeguards of Negro freedom. t.
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