Vouchsafed to the English government? It is also to be observed that no payments are made to any of these poor creatures, when they are freed after more than fourteen years of apprenticeship, though the government has been receiving wages for those let out to private persons, and has given nothing but food and clothing to those worked in government establishments, and though the destination of these wages to the expenses of re-exportation, or in some other way to their benefit, has been often officially proclaimed.

I am unwilling to leave this subject without producing a few passages from the notes and despatches of my distinguished predecessor, Sir James Hudson, to show that the language and tone of recent communications to the Brazilian government, both as to the emancipados and as to the questions which occasioned the reprisals, have not been stronger than, if indeed so strong as, the language and tone of one whose prudence and conciliatory qualities have been recognised in a subsequent career at a sympathetic Court in Europe.

In the following passage of a despatch to your lordship, October 17th, 1846, Sir James Hudson exposes the readiness of the Brazilian government to make excuses :—

"Your lordship will perceive from the enclosed copy of the note which the Baron de Cayrú has addressed to me, that his Excellency adopts the defence set up by the public officer at Victoria, whose conduct has been called in question, and that he is satisfied and accepts-and expects Her Majesty's government will be satisfied and will accept the explanation given by this provincial authority, viz. that his good faith is not to be doubted,' and that 'a slip of the pen' caused Brazilians to be entered

on the muster-roll of the 'Diana' as Portuguese. It is hard to conceive that so lame an excuse would satisfy the government, but it does."

Here is another passage, February 13th, 1847, in which Sir James Hudson sarcastically compares the acts of the Brazilian government with its professions :

"With reference to your lordship's despatch of the 18th November, on the subject of the fraudulent abduction which took place in the month of January, 1846, in the port of Maranhão, of fifty-six negroes from a slavevessel which had been captured by Her Majesty's sloop 'Alert,' and instructing me again to press the Brazilian government for a reply to the notes on this subject, which had been addressed to them from the Legation, I have the honour to enclose herewith the copy of a note which the Baron de Cayrú has addressed to me in reply to those notes, from which your lordship will perceive that the Brazilian government hold it to be their most sacred duty to punish those subjects of this Empire who dared to place those unfortunate Africans in slavery.

"If the exertions of the Brazilian government are attended with no greater energy in pursuing and in bringing to justice the abductors of the Africans in question, during the present year, than in that which has just passed, these unfortunate negroes have but little hope of being rescued from bondage."

The following is an indignant remonstrance addressed by Sir James Hudson to a Brazilian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senhor Souza Franco, November 4th, 1848.

"Upon several occasions of late I have had the honour to receive from your Excellency assurances, conveyed to me in a manner so positive, solemn, and impressive, of the determination of the Imperial government to put a stop to the scandalous importation of slaves into Brazil, that I

did not hesitate to convey them to my government with entire conviction that Brazil, under the auspices of your Excellency and your colleagues, was about to enter upon a series of measures which had for their object the complete and effectual repression of the traffic in slaves.

"The assurances which I received from your Excellency of the determination of the Imperial Cabinet to put a stop to the traffic in slaves, the recorded declarations of your Excellency and of your colleagues before the world, as given in your speeches from your places as Ministers of this empire in the Legislative Assembly at Brazil, wearing the solemn air of truth, and carrying with them that complete conviction which unsullied justice invariably commands, left no doubt on my mind of the honesty of purpose and singleness of heart which animated and guided the Imperial Councils. I so expressed it to the government of the Queen.

"It was not therefore without surprise that I recognized in the Project of Law No. 133 the same scheme which the late Marquis of Barbacena presented to the Senate in 1837, and which in its thirteenth paragraph contains the deadliest blow ever levelled by a Brazilian statesman at the only remedy which Brazilian law affords to the slave to assert his rights to freedom.

"I am willing to believe that your Excellency and your colleagues do not comprehend the drift and scope of the thirteenth paragraph of this decree.

"Your Excellency and your colleagues cannot intend to offer this specimen of the legislation of Brazil to the world as the great and crowning work which your Excellency vaunted to me, and which I was led by you to laud beforehand to my government.'

I will conclude these extracts with two notes addressed

*More strong language of Sir James Hudson about this conduct of Senhor Souza Franco and his colleagues, in a despatch, may be read in the Appendix, p. 186.

by Sir James Hudson to the Brazilian Minister for Foreign Affairs, condemning a favour granted by the Brazilian government to a notorious slave-dealer, actively engaged at the very moment in importing slaves :

"Rio de Janeiro, July 9th, 1851.

"The Undersigned, &c. having informed his government that one of the most notorious slave-dealers in Brazil, the Portuguese José Bernardino de Sá, had been raised by the Portuguese government to the dignity of a Baron of Portugal, by the title of Baron de Villa Nova do Minho, and further, that the Emperor of Brazil had granted permission to that slave-dealer to accept and use that title in Brazil, is now instructed by the government of the Queen to observe to his Excellency Senhor Paulino José Soares de Souza, &c. that it will be difficult for mankind to believe in the sincerity of those declarations which the Brazilian government make of their desire to fulfil the obligations of treaties, when they see the Brazilian Crown conferring favours upon such notorious slave-dealers as this José Bernardino de Sá.

"The undersigned, &c.

(Signed) "JAMES HUDSON."

Mr. Hudson to Senhor Paulino de Souza.

"EXCELLENT SIR,

"Rio de Janeiro, July 31st, 1851.

"I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Excellency's note of the 26th instant, asserting the right of the Imperial government to submit the names of whatever persons they think proper for honourable distinction by the Crown of this country, and stating the reasons which induced the Imperial government to propose that a titular distinction should be granted in this empire to the

notorious man-stealer José Bernardino de Sá; and I have to assure your Excellency that I will not fail to convey a copy of your Excellency's note to the government of the Queen.

"At the same time, I imagine that your Excellency will coincide with myself in thinking it a remarkable circumstance that, almost at the period when your Excellency, in Rio, was demanding, not rumours, but the legal conviction of the complicity of this Sá in the slave-trade, the Imperial steamer "Urania" should have captured at Itabapoama, a slave-vessel with 400 Africans on board, belonging notoriously to this slave-dealer Sá, whose cashier, one Antonio Sevelino de Avellar, a well-known slave-dealer of the River Zaire, was on the spot, waiting to receive these unhappy victims of this ennobled kidnapper.

"I avail, &c.

(Signed) "JAMES HUDSON."

From the ten thousand, more or less, of "free Africans,' towards whom your lordship lately complained of the conduct of the Brazilian government, I passed, in my letters, to the general subject of slavery in Brazil, where the number of slaves is estimated to exceed three millions in a population of about seven millions and a half. When a motion for the repeal of Lord Aberdeen's Act of 1845 is loudly threatened, this large number and proportion of slaves, the hold of the "institution" in Brazil, and the absence of effort and disposition in the Brazilian government to prepare for the abolition of slavery, or even to mitigate existing evils, are considerations of the highest importance for those who believe that, where slavery pre