possessions of Spain had been broken up into republics, and those were
all slave-dealers. The great colony of Portugal, Brazil, had rushed
into this frightful commerce with the feverish avidity of avarice set
free from all its old restrictions. North America, coquetting with
philanthropy, and nominally abjuring the principle of slavery,
suffered herself to undergo the corruption of the practice for the
temptation of the lucre, and the Atlantic was covered with
slave-ships.

But rash, ill considered, and unfortunate as was the precipitate
measure of Fox, we shall never but rejoice at the abolition of the
slave-trade by our country. If England had stood alone for ever in
that abolition, it would be a national glory. To have cast that
commerce from her at all apparent loss, was the noblest of national
gains; and it may be only when higher knowledge shall be given to man,
of the causes which have protected the empire through the struggles of
war and the trials of peace, that we may know the full virtue of that
most national and magnanimous achievement of charity to man.

It is only in the spirit of this principle that the legislature has
followed up those early exertions, by the purchase of the final
freedom of the slave, by the astonishing donative of twenty millions
sterling, the largest sum ever given for the purposes of humanity. It
is only in the same spirit that our cabinet continues to press upon
the commercial states the right of search, a right which we solicit on
the simple ground of humanity; and which, though it cannot be our duty
to enforce at the hazard of hostility, must never be abandoned where
we can succeed by the representations of reason, justice, and
religion.

The curious and succinct narrative to which we now advert, gives the
experience of a short voyage on board of one of those slave ships. And
the miseries witnessed by its writer, whose detail seems as accurate
as it is simple, more than justify the zeal of our foreign secretary
in labouring to effect the total extinction of this death-dealing
trade.

H.M.S. the Cleopatra, of twenty-six guns, commanded by Captain Wyvill,
arriving at Rio Janeiro in September 1842, the reverend writer took
the opportunity of being transferred from the Malabar, as chaplain. In
the beginning of September the Cleopatra left the Mauritius, to
proceed to the Mozambique Channel, off Madagascar, her appointed
station, to watch the slave-traders. After various cruises a