SLAVE-TRADE SUPPRESSION. (Hansard, 21 August 1843)

§ Sir T. Wilde
proposed certain amendments to meet the objections of the Attorney and Solicitor-General as to certain clauses of the bill on Friday last.

§ Mr. Hawes
said, that with the introduction of the clauses in question, he thought that the law for the suppression of the slave-trade was not placed on a satisfactory foundation. He confessed himself, that he did not understand what the effect of the present measure would be; but, unless the Attorney-general would give him an assurance that it would not have the operation which he dreaded, he would advise that the measure be postponed to the next Session, in order to give time for a more full consideration of it than it could receive at present.

The Attorney-General
said, that the object of the present measure was to prevent any indirect encouragement being given to the slave-trade by British merchants in foreign countries, and yet at the same time to enable British agents to recover their bonâ fide debts in those countries.

§ Mr. Forster
did not object to the bill as it was framed now; but it was necessary that its provisions should be clearly understood. The hon. and learned Attorney-General said, that it left the law as respects trade with Africa exactly as it was before: but that explanation was not quite sufficient, because the act of the 5th George 4th, the main provisions of which were embodied in the preamble of this act, had been so much misrepresented and misunderstood that it became absolutely necessary to have a clear understanding of its meaning, in order to protect the traders on the west coast of Africa from those charges and complaints which 984 had been grounded on erroneous constructions of the act in question, which would then become a part of the present act. It was well known to the noble Lord, the Member for Liverpool, who so ably presided over the committee on Western Africa which sat last Session, as well as to every member of that committee, and all who had read the evidence and report, that the complaint was not that the African traders had anything to do with the slave trade themselves, either directly or indirectly, but that the goods they sold in exchange for African produce were in some cases afterwards employed by the buyers in the purchase of slaves, when the seller had ceased to have any control over them, and such dealing, it was contended, was contrary to the provisions of the act of the 5th George 4th. Now, in order that the traders might know what they were about, and that these complaints and aspersions might be put an end to, he wished to ask the hon. and learned Attorney-General, whether a British trader on the coast of Africa who sold goods to Spanish and Portuguese traders would be held responsible under the bill for the use made of the goods if the buyer employed them in the purchase of slaves after the seller had parted with all his interest in them?

The Attorney-General
said, that without undertaking to say, what was the construction of former acts, he would simply state his opinion, that the present bill would not have the slightest effect upon transactions such as those to which the hon. Member referred.

§ Mr. Hawes
asked the Attorney-General whether the bill legalized any act connected with the slave-trade which was formerly illegal. Unless he had the assurance of so high a legal authority that it did not, he would take the sense of the House on the engrossing of the bill. He did not perfectly understand the terms of the bill, but he was afraid that his suspicions with regard to them were true.

The Attorney-General
said, he could not be answerable for the doubts of other persons, but could only express his own unhesitating opinion that the bill did not legalise anything which under the 5th George 4th, was held to be illegal.

§ Mr. Forster
said, that in consequence 985 of the misapprehension of some observations which he had made on a former evening with respect to the effects of the pawn system, he wished to quote some authorities in justification of the remarks he had made. Bosman, the celebrated Dutch traveller, who visited Guinea, and wrote a description of it 150 years ago, speaking of the pawn system, says:— What is most commendable among the negroes is, that we find no poor amongst them who beg; for, though they are ever so wretchedly poor, they never beg. The reason of which is, that when a negro finds he cannot subsist, he binds himself for a certain sum of money, or his friends do it for him; and the master to whom he bath obliged himself keeps him in all necessaries, setting him a sort of task, which is not in the least slavish, being chiefly to defend his master on occasion, and in sowing time to work as much as he himself pleases. So that, as I have before told you, here are no beggars obliged to be so from poverty. Such was Bosman's description of the system. The rev. Mr. Hanson, who was born and lived on the coast, a gentleman of the highest character and intelligence, now here, and who had been very properly appointed by the noble Lord Chaplain to the British forts on the Gold Coast, an appointment for which I give the noble Lord the greatest credit, described the system in a letter to him, and denied that it was a system of slavery, but on the contrary one of actual relief and benevolence to the pawn, and one which prevents distress and pauperism. Mr. Bartels, a gentleman of the highest intelligence and respectability, now here from the Gold Coast, and who had resided there for thirty years, gave the same or even a still more favourable description of the beneficial working of the system, which he says is not slavery or anything like slavery, but a practical obstruction to it. On this subject Mr. Bartels's testimony is beyond all suspicion, because he is a Dutch gentleman, residing at Elmina, and therefore cannot be affected by this bill. It is a system, also, which prevents an increase of the export slave trade, by retaining an indigent person among his own family and friends, in place of reducing him to obtain the necessary relief from strangers, who, having no sympathy or affection for his person, would feel no hesitation in selling them to the first slave dealer that came in their way.