§ MR. HUMEinquired of the noble Lord at the head of the Foreign Department, whether there was any intention on the part of the Government to repeal an Act passed in the year 1845 respecting the Brazils, and making the slave trade there carried on piracy?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONreplied, that the Act in question had been proposed by the late Government, on the same principle as that on which a measure of a similar character was proposed by the Government which preceded them with respect to Portugal, namely, on the ground that the Government of Portugal at one period, and that of the Brazils at another, had declined fulfilling their engagements with regard to the slave trade. The Government of Brazil were to agree to a certain treaty for the suppression of the slave trade, and had they done so, it would have been the duty of the British Government to accept that treaty in lieu of the Act now existing. Most assuredly it was not the intention of the British Government to repeal the Act of 1845, until Brazil concluded an amicable treaty for the suppression of the slave trade, as a substitute for the measure in question.
§ MR. HUMEobserved, that what he was anxious for was, that something should be done to prevent a state of things such as now existed, and which had produced such unseemly events as that which had recently occurred in a case where, after British officers had been murdered by certain inhabitants of the Brazils, the guilty parties were permitted to escape with impunity, though they were brought to trial here.