razil may
be free and happy. I see no reasonable prospect of such a change in the
United States.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said much about that system of maritime police by which we
have attempted to sweep slave trading vessels from the great highway of
nations. Now what has been the conduct of Brazil, and what has been the
conduct of the United States, as respects that system of police? Brazil
has come into the system; the United States have thrown every impediment
in the way of the system. What opinion Her Majesty's Ministers entertain
respecting the Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord Aberdeen
which has, within a few days, been laid on our table. I believe that I
state correctly the sense of that letter when I say that the noble Earl
regards the Right of Search as an efficacious means, and as the only
efficacious means, of preventing the maritime slave trade. He expresses
most serious doubts whether any substitute can be devised. I think that
this check would be a most valuable one, if all nations would submit
to it; and I applaud the humanity which has induced successive British
administrations to exert themselves for the purpose of obtaining the
concurrence of foreign Powers in so excellent a plan. Brazil consented
to admit the Right of Search; the United States refused, and by refusing
deprived the Right of Search of half its value. Not content with
refusing to admit the Right of Search, they even disputed the right of
visit, a right which no impartial publicist in Europe will deny to be
in strict conformity with the Law of Nations. Nor was this all. In every
part of the Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the Cabinet of
Washington have toiled to induce other nations to imitate the example of
the United States. You cannot have forgotten General Cass's letter. You
cannot have forgotten the terms in which his Government communicated to
him its approbation of his conduct. You know as well as I do that, if
the United States had submitted to the Right of Search, there would have
been no outcry against that right in France. Nor do I much blame the
French. It is but natural that, when one maritime Power makes it a point
of honour to refuse us this right, other maritime Powers should think
that they cannot, without degradation, take a different course. It is
but natural that a Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask why the
tricolor is to be le