TO
THE MERCHANTS,
MANUFACTURERS,
AND
TRADERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
The case, which will be laid before you in the following pages, must be
admitted to be one of an unprecedented character.
A merchant, to all practical purposes a British merchant, the junior
member of a firm of unquestioned respectability, in which his father and
brother are active partners with himself, which has been established for
upwards of seventy years in Spain, and of twenty in the City of London,
during which period they have maintained, both as merchants and as
individuals in private life, the character which will be found in the
following pages to have been given them upon oath by several of the most
eminent of their fellow-merchants--this individual finds himself
suddenly arrested, in the manner hereafter described, within the
precincts of his own private office, which is situated in the most
conspicuous spot in the City of London, whilst in the pursuit of his
ordinary business, upon a bench-warrant, as it is said (but which was
never shown to, or has been since seen by him), a true bill having been
found against him by the Grand Jury of the County of Middlesex. The
charge will be found in the two indictments inserted in pages 211 and
214, the former for felony, under the Act of 5 Geo. IV, cap. 113,
entitled “An Act to amend and consolidate the Laws relating to the
Abolition of the Slave Trade;” the latter for conspiracy, to do that
which the former indictment describes as done, _viz._ “manning,” &c.
&c., “and shipping certain goods on board a certain vessel, called the
Augusta, for the purpose of dealing in slaves;” and the penalty,
amounting, in fact, to a person in the rank and station of the accused
and of his family, to a forfeiture of life, and those objects which are
dearer than life itself. He is carried in custody to the police-station
on Garlick Hill, where shortly afterwards, a London attorney, whose name
he had never before heard, appears and prefers a charge of slave
dealing. The prisoner is immediately conveyed to the Central Criminal
Court, then sitting at the Old Bailey; there the two indictments are
read to him _pro formâ_, for they leave him in utter ignorance of who
the prosecutor is, or upon what depositions the Grand Jury had found the
bill, although his defence, to be effectual, must be directed against
them: they remain to this moment an undisclosed mystery, and no one is
answerable for the accuracy of those statements, whilst who the
prosecutor was, was only disclosed by the counsel for the prosecution at
the trial, before the examination of the witnesses began.
The prisoner’s application to the Central Criminal Court to be admitted
to bail was strenuously opposed by the prosecuting attorney in person,
when the Court, yielding to the representation of the probable result of
the refusal upon the members of an honourable family thus violently
taken by surprise and distracted, granted the application on terms
indeed which the Court itself deemed excessive, but which were the only
terms to which the attorney’s consent could be obtained. It was found
impossible, on account of the lateness of the hour, to meet with one of
the two individuals who had been approved of by the attorney; and under
these circumstances the Court consented to receive one security alone
for 2,000_l._, and the prisoner’s own recognizance for 6,000_l._ Thus
it happened, that he who had left his home, his wife, and his children
in the morning, with as assured a conscience as any of you can do,
returned about ten o’clock in the evening a prisoner, with the
possibility of a sentence of transportation hanging over his head, as
ignorant of his accuser, or of the facts deposed to against him, as if
he had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition.
The whole transaction, embracing the purchase and dispatch of the vessel
Augusta, named in the indictment, had formed part of the subject of an
examination, for which the house of Zulueta & Co. tendered themselves in
the person of Pedro de Zulueta, before a Select Committee appointed in
March, 1842, by the House of Commons, to inquire into the State of the
British Possessions on the West Coast of Africa, and which was sitting
in July and August, 1842, and the Report of whose proceedings had then
been nearly a year before the public. Before that Committee, among
several other witnesses, two officers of the navy (whose names may be
seen on the back of the indictments), who had been in command of British
cruizers on the African coast, and another individual, who it seems has
discharged the duties of a Judge at Sierra Leone, appeared and were
examined. Their examinations were published in the Report, and from
thence are inserted in the following pages; but it should be observed
that the last-mentioned of these three individuals did not appear in the
prosecution, his evidence being inserted here only from the anxiety that
a complete case should be placed before you.
As it is in the power of every reader to verify the correctness of any
observations that may be made upon the merits of the evidence given by
these individuals before the Committee, it cannot be improper to call
attention to the temper which evidently pervades it, not for the purpose
of invective, but because it is a circumstance of very great practical
application to the matter in hand. It is impossible not to be struck
upon its perusal with the absolute recklessness of statement, both as to
fact and theory. The most formidable conclusions are built upon the most
slender foundations. Facts and theories are so mixed up together, that
it is only after much sifting that it turns out that what was stated as
fact was no more than a theory in the speaker’s mind; and these
theories, too, embracing all questions, whether of commerce, of fiscal
science, policy, legislation, international law, education, morals, and
religion: after which, the character of individuals, or that of a
commercial house, is no doubt a matter about which much circumspection
cannot be expected to be exercised. The fate of Africa, the immense
interests of British commerce, of the commerce of the world; the
interpretation of existing laws, under which property, life, honour, may
be forfeited; their modification and adjustment; public opinion with its
powerful influence, so dangerous when misled, so difficult to be set
right; all these awfully important matters seem to hang upon the lips of
those two officers of the navy--and they do not seem to feel any
hesitation in disposing of such momentous interests. Can it be expected
that they would stop and consider before they make a statement regarding
private individuals, even though they may happen to be, to say the least
of it, accounted by the first men of this city, and in others of the
first cities of the world, honourable by birth, profession, and personal
character? The crime of which they would be guilty, were mere assertion
to be taken as positive proof, is according to the witnesses so heinous,
that it exceeds in their estimation almost every other, not only in the
law of man, but in the law of God; and yet it is to be imputed upon
their construction of some rumours which they themselves, it is quite
possible, indeed very probable, may quite unconsciously have helped to
mould into a shape by their readiness to accumulate this miscalled
evidence. Whether this representation of the general character of the
evidence given before the Committee by these individuals is, or is not,
correct, may be seen at once by a reference to it in the following
pages.
The first information, which any of the members of the house of Zulueta
& Co. had of even the existence of the Committee, was the receipt of a
letter (see p. 1) accompanying a copy of a lengthy Report, by a Dr.
Madden, on the Coast of Africa, which called forth a reply (see p. 5)
addressed by Zulueta & Co. to the Chairman of the Committee--a reply,
which, in truth, contains the whole of their case, and to which they may
well look back with just pride, since the keenest appetite for the
discovery of guilt has not been able to detect one single circumstance
contradictory of one tittle of its contents. Neither the examination
before the Committee in 1842, nor the trial in 1843, circumstances which
could not be foreseen or anticipated, have elicited one single fact at
variance with the statements of that letter, impossible as it was to
have contemplated at the time it was written, that its accuracy would be
subject to so severe a test as either the examination before the
Committee, which took place two months afterwards, or the trial, which
did not occur till after the lapse of more than a year.
After that letter was sent, it became known to the house of Zulueta &
Co. that further statements, unfavourable to their character as
merchants, had been made before the Committee; and in consequence of a
verbal representation of the unfairness of such mode of accusation,
copies of the examinations of two of the witnesses were sent to them.
The individual who now addresses you, then offered himself, at the
request of his partners, to be examined, the selection of himself being
made for no other reason than that he was thought more capable of making
himself understood.
It was thus therefore that I, Pedro de Zulueta the younger, appeared
before the Committee, and, as will be seen by the minutes of my
evidence, entered into an examination of every statement which was
brought before me as having been made by the witnesses concerning my
house, contradicted several of them, explained others, and volunteered a
description of the nature of the dealings of my firm with the two others
(whose names had been flung at us) from the time of the establishment of
Zulueta & Co. in London, twenty years ago. I also underwent a
cross-examination, of which one very remarkable feature was, that
Captain Denman himself, one of the witnesses against me both at this
examination and at the trial, was sitting close to several members of
the Committee, and was seen by me to whisper repeatedly into the ear of
more than one member, what, it is not unnatural to suppose, may have
been directions for the more effectual discovery of the truth.
I can hardly restrain the expression of my feelings when I consider now
the use which has been made of the unreserved frankness, the unguarded,
because unsuspecting, candour of the statements made by me before that
Committee. The thought never occurred to me, that evidence, professedly
taken for the benefit of the public service, required any thing more
than substantive truth, and a general bearing upon the points in
question; nor could I ever have conceived that it would be scanned with
critical severity, in order to take advantage to my detriment of the
worst construction that might be put upon this or that verbal slip, so
as to place my very existence at stake upon it. I considered myself as
doing nothing more than (whilst attempting to eradicate from the minds
of the Committee any unfavourable impression, which might have been made
upon them by incorrect statements against the character of my house)
affording information for placing the legislation on the subjects before
the consideration of the Committee on a more satisfactory basis--not by
indulging in assertion of crude theories, or in vague declamations, but
by the simple statement of a practical case--anxious to show in the
instance of my house the situation in which a firm of acknowledged
honour and respectability, whose private character, and the prominent
political position of one of its members in another country, renders
them at least very unlikely abettors of the slave trade--may yet be
placed, because, living in England, they happen to have a mercantile
intercourse with persons residing in places where this trade is
unhappily one of the existing evils, and in which therefore those
persons may be more or less implicated, inasmuch as it is well known
that no trade whatever can be carried on with a country where the slave
trade exists without its being, in some measure, of more or less direct
assistance to this illicit traffic. And as the assertion which had been
made against some of our correspondents tended, if true, to place this
position of merchants in England in a very striking light, I did think
that whilst the statements made _might_ be true (and to disprove them
could not be in my power nor in the power of any man in my situation)
the proper and fair course was not to controvert the matter at all; but,
taking the statements for granted, practically to direct the attention
of the Committee to the position in which British merchants are left
upon the very case itself, which was made out by the bitterest impugners
of the character of British commerce.
I appeal to every man who reads my evidence before the
Committee--without a previous determination to find out some one upon
whom an experiment of the power of the Act of 5 Geo. IV may be tried,
and a corroboration of the theory respecting the alleged existence of
British slave trading--whether upon any other hypothesis, but that of
conscious innocence or of consummate effrontery, my answers to the
questions put by the Committee can be possibly reconciled with common
sense or common prudence, much less be consistent with that deep
skilfulness and far-seeing intelligence, which have been so lavishly
attributed to me and to my partners for the purposes of my destruction.
Not for an instant, even when those outraged feelings, which have not
been spared, possessed greatest sway over my mind, has the thought
occurred to me, that at the time of my examination the object of any one
member of the Committee, or even of Captain Denman himself (for I have
alluded to the fact of his being present), could be the collecting
materials for a secret accusation before a Grand Jury; and I wish very
distinctly to protest against any such inference being drawn from my
remarks, not for the sake of the members of the Committee, who are above
being injured by insinuations, but for my own sake, who alone could be
injured by the supposition. I am conscious of having appeared before
several men whose names are, and have been ever since I can recollect
having heard them, associated in my mind with nothing but what is
honourable and high principled: I received from some of them
complimentary expressions upon the apparent candour and openness, the
straightforward character of the evidence given; and I cannot help
believing that my statements were considered moreover valuable, as
tending to show the inexpediency, the gross injustice, of encouraging on
the one hand trade with countries in which slave trade prevails, and
yet, on the other hand, attempting to make the natural and well-known
tendency of all trade to mix itself with the general state of society of
the country into which it is carried, the evidence of some peculiar
criminal knowledge in the parties necessarily nearest in contact with
those countries, and visiting that knowledge upon them, after the
community have derived profit and advantage from the transaction,
although it is well known that the parties so to be sacrificed have it
not in their power to guard any but themselves from being directly
instrumental to the deviation of the trade into channels rendered
illegal by Act of Parliament. I venture to assert, that the prominent
feature of my evidence was felt by the Committee to be its
_unconnectedness_ with any party or theory; and this feature stamped it
with the character of truth which, if fairly and honestly stated, must
at times militate against one theory or another.
This is an offence to all who thrive upon theories, and in exactly the
proportion of their affected or unreasonable belief of them. An
instinctive alarm takes possession of such minds, and as they themselves
cannot conceive that other people may have no theory of their own to
serve upon that particular subject, which to them, and therefore in
their opinion to all, must be paramount, they are disposed to imagine
one theory of their own, which they at once fix upon the party thus
offending against the assumed mental necessity of universal theorism. If
the writer is not much mistaken, the irritation which is produced by
this process of the mind, still more if self-interest is at the bottom,
will materially help to reveal the moving-spring of the proceedings
which are recorded in the following pages.
Be this as it may, one thing is altogether unquestionable (and indeed
there has been no attempt to disguise the fact, and to it I beg to call
the attention of every man in Great Britain)--it is this: Pedro de
Zulueta could never have been placed in the position in which he was
(charged with felony under the finding of the Grand Jury), with the
remotest chance of a conviction, if he had not voluntarily offered
himself for examination before a Committee of the British House of
Commons--the way being this--a London attorney lays hold of the printed
Report of the proceedings; every part of the evidence given by Pedro de
Zulueta, that was destructive of the hypothesis of his being a
well-knowing and wilful abettor of an alleged slave trading speculation
_in 1840_, is disconnected from those passages in which he had stated
that, _in 1842, when he was speaking_ (after hearing and reading a mass
of evidence given for the first time before that Committee), he had
heard statements about his correspondents being participators in the
slave trade which might be true, which were not, he felt, material to
himself, and which, as he had not the means of disproving, he _then_
stated that he must _then_ believe; and then using this intelligible
admission, _made in 1842_, the only one that could be found at all
available, as the only presumptive proof of _guilty knowledge in 1840_.
Nothing could be done or attempted against the house of Zulueta & Co.,
much less against the individual who was attacked, without this
management, this distortion of the evidence--for some knowledge of some
kind must be made out _in_ 1840, and although the fallacy was
transparent, it might and unfortunately did serve for the purpose of the
attack at the heart, and might still serve for the next, but not the
sole object, of the prosecution. It is true, that the whole of the
evidence given by me was read at the trial, for so the law requires it;
but that same law, as was observed, also permits that those parts of a
man’s statements which make in his favour should not be believed or
taken for any thing, whilst such admissions as might be made to appear
criminatory of himself are received as evidence against him. By such a
process of distortion alone could a case be made out against my house,
or fixed upon myself, who was totally unknown to the so-called witnesses
as they themselves admitted, and who did not personally appear in any
part of the transactions excepting at my own examination before the
Committee. If the facts are not so, let it be at once explained what
other circumstance marked me out for prosecution. Let the reader of the
following pages, after perusing the trial carefully, attempt to solve
the problem for himself of how (apart from the fact of my appearing, and
of the application which is made of my statements before the Committee
of the House of Commons) the firm of Zulueta & Co. came to be prosecuted
in my person to the exclusion of others. Let every other part of the
evidence given before and at the trial, of matter of fact, by the
witnesses on the transaction of the Augusta be considered, and where is
one single fact that can connect Zulueta & Co. with the alleged, and
only alleged, designs of the parties by whose orders they had acted in
that transaction--an acting in itself admitted to be innocent? And if
the reader does not find any other solution of the difficulty, it is
clearly demonstrated that Pedro de Zulueta has been prosecuted upon
partial statements from his own evidence, given before a Committee of
the House of Commons, where he appeared voluntarily, where he was
encouraged to explain transactions of business, and neither refused nor
even hesitated to answer one single question that was put to him, as
conducive to a great public object; but without the slightest intimation
of the ulterior object to which it has been perverted.
For the purpose not certainly of clearing up the question, but of
sophisticating a very plain case, it will perhaps be asked, whether, if
a man should avow himself before a Committee of the House of Commons to
have been guilty of a crime, or to have partaken in it, is it meant to
be contended that his candour is to be the safeguard of his guilt? One
short answer is, that the remark is inapplicable to the case; for no
such avowal has been even contended to have been made, but on the
contrary a distinct and repeated general and circumstantial disavowal
was made. Whether my declarations did or did not amount to such degree
of information in my mind, at the time of giving my evidence, as
presumed a knowledge two years before, that would be brought under the
description of the _guilty knowledge_ described in legal phraseology, in
an Act of Parliament, very obscure as is generally admitted, and never
before put in practice, this was the utmost that the ingenuity of the
prosecution could make out of my evidence--and this cannot be called an
avowal of crime. The question is not, whether a crime avowed before a
Committee of the House of Commons should or should not be prosecuted,
using the avowal as one of the means of conviction--a question, which
even so put is argued, I believe, on both sides by eminent lawyers--but
whether in my case, such as it is, I have not a right to complain of the
grossest and most unparalleled breach of good faith--whether the use
made of my evidence is not one against which the conscience of every man
revolts--whether it is likely to facilitate the public service, or to
increase the respect due to the British Legislature at home and abroad,
or to their proceedings--even if in other respects the course adopted is
free from legal objections, which I believe is at least doubtful.
The fact itself is unquestionable, and I must repeatedly assert it--that
the materials for my prosecution were collected from my own evidence as
laid before the public, in the printed Report of the Committee, for
whose information it was given--that in collecting these materials the
statements, although formally read as they were made, were virtually
vitiated--that, although the whole was read, only that part which was
thought susceptible of some adverse construction was avowed to be of any
necessary weight; and statements, such as they were, which had been
_made in 1842_, after information that was at any rate only furnished in
that year, were applied for the purpose of raising _a presumption of
guilty knowledge in 1840_.
I have insisted so much upon this point, because it is very material
that it should be borne in mind throughout the perusal of the following
pages. I do not hesitate to believe that the unsophisticated sense of
the people of this country will revolt at the fact of a Committee of the
House of Commons having been turned into a trap wherein to take a man--a
snare to his good faith--the more effectual, because the members who
happen to compose the Committee stand high for honour and integrity in
the land, and therefore their very names seemed to afford a guarantee
that the fairest construction would be put upon the words of a
respectable individual, who appeared voluntarily before them, without
assuming from the outset that he is a self-convicted felon, who comes
before them for no other purpose than to deceive, and who must be
listened to only in order to see if he does not betray himself into some
acknowledgment of his crimes, of which advantage is to be taken to
secure the ends of justice, which he craftily endeavours to defeat. It
may suit those who want such a monster of craft and subtlety in order to
justify the monstrous proceedings, which have been deemed necessary to
support a mischievous and unfounded theory that British capital is
employed in the slave trade--it may suit them, to make me out to be this
desideratum in their system; but, without laying claim to any more
extended or more favourable notoriety than that which is on record, I
venture to say that the attempt must fall to the ground, by the weight
of its intrinsic absurdity, before the common sense of the people of
this country.
But what the Committee thought of the evidence, after hearing at length
the very individuals who appeared against me at the Old Bailey, and
after hearing my own evidence, which formed the chief weapon against me
in that Court, will be found in their own Report, printed in the
following pages. Every reader may judge for himself, whether, in point
of fact, it is not an anticipated condemnation of such proceedings as
have been inflicted upon me--a verdict of not guilty, not only upon the
transactions of the Augusta, but upon the whole of Zulueta & Co.’s
agency for the houses mentioned, in my evidence, if the representation
given by me of the transaction be substantially correct. In page 203 the
following words will be found:--“In the first place, it is fair to state
that we have no evidence, or reason to believe, that any British
merchant, concerned in the trade with the West Coast of Africa, either
owns or equips any vessel engaged in the slave trade, or has any share
in the risk or profits of any slave trade venture”--a declaration this,
the correctness of which every one conversant with the characteristic
features of British commerce must acknowledge. Have any facts been
elicited subsequent to this Report, and previously to the prosecution
being instituted--any new evidence, which was not before the Committee
of the House of Commons? This is a question which happily every reader
of the following pages may settle for himself. Let him, as he peruses
the evidence, at each stage of it ask himself the question--Was this
before the Committee of the House of Commons? That it was, must be the
answer upon every point. Not one statement was elicited from a single
witness which had not been before the Committee. There was indeed an
unworthy attempt to create a false impression about some casks and
shackles having been left on board, even after the most unsparing of the
witnesses for the prosecution had acquitted the vessel of even the
shadow of a suspicion of containing the least implement available for a
slaving equipment. How the attempt was foiled by their own witness
afterwards will be seen; and I will not say a word more about an attempt
upon which the very existence of a fellow-creature perhaps might hang,
leaving it to be visited with the feeling of abhorrence which it must
excite in every reader. Apart from this, there was before the Committee
much more against me than there was before the Court, as may be seen by
a comparison of the evidence as given before the one with that given
before the other; because the nature of legal proceedings keeps the
witness, even if otherwise disposed, within the limits of matter of
fact--limits, which before the Court they did attempt to transgress, as
may be seen very prominently in the case of the chief of them, but from
which before the Committee it was in their power to wander, and they did
accordingly so wander at every moment. Is it not fair to infer, that it
was not to serve the purposes of justice, but at the very best that of
some fancied expediency, that this prosecution was undertaken--a
prosecution demonstrated to have been undertaken against the recorded
sense and opinion of the Select Committee of the House of Commons?
Suppose, for a moment, that by some quibble of law, by the forced
interpretation of an Act of Parliament, admitted to be sufficiently
obscure--not to speak of attempts to pervert evidence, or of the effort
to carry off the victory, which constitutes the very essence of all
legal conflict between individuals, and which of itself renders the
right of private prosecution of public wrongs the destruction of civil
liberty and of individual security--suppose, that by such means, what to
the deliberate judgment of the Committee of the House of Commons did not
appear to deserve even animadversion, might have been made out before an
Old Bailey Jury to be such evidence of guilt, as to have procured an
adverse verdict--is this the kind of justice which the people of this
country would have approved? Impossible! I cannot believe it: the idea
cannot be for a moment entertained.
But this is not all. We have seen what the Committee of the House of
Commons decided. The Government--the proper, and the only proper agents,
in a prosecution of this kind, upon whom, if sufficient ground existed,
it was a bounden duty to have taken it in hand--seem to have treated the
matter in the same manner as the Committee. All the documents which have
been received in evidence, and some which were offered and were not
received by the Court--that, in short, which forms all the evidence
against the accused at the trial, and more, were in possession of
Government before the last Administration went out (the proceedings
before the Committee alone excepted)--that Administration did not take
up the prosecution. The law-officers of the present Administration have
had them also, and moreover the proceedings before the Committee, one of
the members of which was a leading member of the preceding
Government--they have not taken up the prosecution. A print in the
favour and confidence, as it seems, of the parties to the late
proceedings, has stated, that the actual law-officers of the Government
were consulted and decided against their being undertaken; that again,
when the bill was found by the Grand Jury, the prosecution was offered
to them, but that they declined to be parties to it. These statements
are followed up by remarks upon the apathy and indifference of the
Government, which can only serve to render the testimony borne to the
fact the more unexceptionable, because unwilling; for, otherwise, they
afford only a lamentable specimen of how much mischief is done to a
cause, the sole merit of which must consist in its being one purely of
humanity, by its being used for the purposes of political warfare. This
indeed is to trade with the cause of the slave.
The fact remains unshaken, that neither the Attorney-General of the
present nor of the late Administration has prosecuted by himself or by
others, and therefore the Queen’s name was as much usurped under the
cover of the forms of the Court, as that of the public, whose name is
invoked in support of these proceedings. I will venture to say, that no
one who has really looked into them for himself, and is possessed of all
the facts from the examination before the Committee of the House of
Commons, can think with other feelings than those of shame and
indignation, that they can take place in England--feelings, the more
strong, because such proceedings are pretended to be undertaken in order
to serve a cause with which, if they are identified, they will only
serve to disgrace it. I cannot but believe that all this is felt by the
majority (I know it is felt by very many) of the members of a society,
whose zeal may be imposed upon at times, but the majority of whom must
have that real benevolence of heart and soundness of judgment, which
will make them wish for no other principle of action than that contained
in the well-expressed sentiments of a noble lord--“That a good, however
eminent, should not be attained otherwise than by lawful means[1]:” it
may be added, that by no other can it be permanently attained.
[1] Lord Aberdeen’s Letter to the Lords of the Admiralty, 20th May,
1842.
The Society, to which I am alluding, was not more eager to start or to
adopt the prosecution than the Committee of the House of Commons
disposed to find a ground for its being undertaken, or than the last and
the present Administration; indeed, the Society volunteered a disavowal
of any connexion with the proceedings at their commencement, and did not
express even an approval of them. In this, their organ only represented
faintly the sentiments more strongly and decidedly repeated to myself by
many members of that Society in a tone of unequivocal reprobation, and
viewing the proceedings as calculated only to injure the cause which
they had at heart. That such has been a very generally prevailing
impression is fully attested by the plaintive remarks of the organs of
the prosecution, and the libellous stimulants which, whilst the
proceedings for the trial were in progress, they thought it necessary to
apply. It is, indeed, but too true that a society, proposing to itself
the accomplishment of some great moral and benevolent object, is most
specially bound to confine itself to the use of such means only as are
of as unexceptionable and even as benevolent a character as the end.
Crime is, indeed, a just object of abhorrence; but a society, like the
Anti-Slavery Society, is specially bound to guard themselves against the
danger of encouraging one species of crime in their attempt to put down
another; every one of the means they employ or sanction must be of as
unquestionable purity as the end they profess to aim at: expediency, as
distinct from justice, must be jealously guarded against, apt as it is
to insinuate itself into all human proceedings, and never more subtilely
than under the cloak of zeal in a good, cause: the smallest degree of
evil to be done must stand as an insurmountable barrier to the
accomplishment of the most undoubted good. It is in the power of man to
destroy the very end in view, whilst he thinks he is advancing it; but
he cannot alter the law of Providence, which dooms to certain defeat,
even amidst the tokens of apparent triumph, whomsoever dares to modify
for himself the moral code of the universe: the moment that violent
hands are laid upon it, in order to smooth down a difficulty in the way
of action, the very end itself becomes contaminated. All this is evident
enough, and approves itself to the enlightened conscience. A society, as
a body, taken in the abstract, may be supposed less likely to be led
away by such apparently _short cuts_ when presenting themselves in their
path; but these societies are, in practice, managed by individuals of
whom the least scrupulous are sure to appear as the most zealous and
most efficient--they are the most busy and the most forward--and, hence,
the additional necessity for caution on the part of the more
conscientious, inasmuch as the names of the good are too often the cover
of the deeds of the bad, whose power consists exclusively in the moral
weight attached to the acts which the good are made to appear as having
sanctioned.
It would have been well for the credit of the Anti-Slavery Society,
therefore, if the London Committee had retained the position in which
they placed themselves by their own act of disavowal; instead of which,
after being taunted by one or two prints, which have, pending the
proceedings, used every exertion in their limited power to stimulate the
passions of those whose good sense it was necessary to mislead, the
London Committee have passed and published the following resolution:--
“At a meeting of the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society, held at No. 27, New Broad Street, London, on Friday, December
8, 1843, Josiah Forster in the Chair,--The conduct of Sir George
Stephen, in the prosecution of Pedro de Zulueta, Jun., in October
last, being taken into consideration, the following resolution was
unanimously adopted--
“That this Committee feel it to be due alike to Sir George Stephen
himself, and the public interests of justice and humanity, to express
their high sense of his philanthropic and public spirited conduct, in
carrying on, upon his own responsibility, the prosecution of Pedro de
Zulueta, Jun., and another, for slave trading; a course in which the
decision of the Grand Jury, and the declared opinion of the Judge,
have fully sustained him, and by which it may be hoped a salutary
check will be given to the notorious implication of British capital
and commerce in that nefarious traffic.
JOSIAH FORSTER, Chairman.”
Here, after using that description of the charge, which is calculated to
convey a false notion of what was, and could alone, even by the worst
construction and perversion, be imputed, as if the charge had been
dealing in slaves, they express a high sense of the philanthropic and
public spirited conduct of the prosecutor--necessarily including the
inquisitorial proceeding before the Grand Jury--the mode of apprehension
of the accused--the resistance to his being released on even large bail,
and to his having time given him to prepare his defence--the shrinking
from appearing as a witness in public, and stating there what he, the
prosecutor, had been ready to swear before the Grand Jury--the bringing
up of a witness to raise an appearance of the existence of facts, the
very contrary of which had been deposed to before the Committee of the
House of Commons by the leading witness for the prosecution in
Court--all this forms that conduct, which must have been taken into the
consideration of a committee of a benevolent society, and which in
discharge of a duty of both justice and humanity that committee have
pronounced as both philanthropic and public spirited.
The resolution proceeds to state, that in the course adopted by the
prosecutor he has been fully supported by the decision of the Grand Jury
and the declared opinion of the Judge. It is impossible to estimate what
value to attach to the finding of a Grand Jury without knowing upon what
evidence their finding was based. In the present case, one fact is
beyond all dispute, viz. that Sir George Stephen appeared before the
Grand Jury as the first witness, his name standing as such on the back
of the indictment, and that he did not present himself in the
witness-box at the public trial, although in Court from the beginning to
the close of it--from which it results, that the Grand Jury had before
them a witness, giving to them in private, evidence which he did not
think proper to give in public. Must not the inference be permitted,
that the Grand Jury would have thrown out the bill, as the Petty Jury
threw out the indictment, unless some evidence, which was not offered to
the latter, had been given to the former by a witness, and that too,
unfortunately, by a witness who seems to have preferred the secret
inquisitorial form, which still remains in British law, to the open and
public path which was before him, and which is the proper boast of
British justice?
Regarding the support derived from the expressions of Judge Maule, when
applied to by Serjeant Bompas for an order for the payment of the
expenses of the prosecution, it is not for me to speak; but that it does
not extend to a sanction, in point of propriety, to the part taken by
the prosecutor, nor to the manner in which he has discharged it, is very
obvious.
This, however, is not the point to which I wish now to refer. The object
of this publication, and of the preceding and following remarks, is not
any vindication of myself, nor a crimination of the motives of any one
beyond what the statement of facts may carry in itself; my vindication I
consider ample in the exhibition of the facts themselves--in the
verdict of the Jurors, after hearing a trial of two days duration, after
a long and elaborate charge delivered when a clear day had elapsed
subsequent to the defence--a verdict, which was not agreed to without
consideration, which was pronounced by the foreman in the emphatic
manner which the crowded Court witnessed, which was received by the
spectators, consisting of some of the most respectable merchants,
bankers, and professional men of the City of London, who had sat daily
and patient witnesses of the proceedings, in a manner which has been
noticed by the public press, and echoed by the leading journals of
London, of Liverpool, and of other important mercantile cities of
Europe.
The chief object proposed in this publication, and in these
observations, is to place before my brother-merchants, in a connected
form, the whole of the facts, which form my case, or rather the case of
the firm of Zulueta & Co., from the first communication which preceded
my examination before the Committee of the House of Commons, to the
close of the proceedings at the Old Bailey, in order that the merchants
of England may judge for themselves, and reflect upon the position in
which they are placed, as resulting from the principle and doctrines
which the proceedings contained in the following pages have disclosed to
emanate from an Act of Parliament which has been passed these twenty
years, but which has been for the first time tried upon my case. It may
be said, that by merchants in general it is hardly known: we all know
that dealing in slaves is prohibited, under severe penalties, by the law
of England--we know that it is repugnant to the prevailing tone of
education, to the opinions and feelings of our people--we know that, at
all events, as it is carried on and can only be carried on, it is at
variance with the spirit of Christianity, and therefore no man need read
an Act of Parliament to abstain from having any, the slightest, concern
in or with such a traffic; but even if these considerations were not
enough--which England surely will not suffer to be supposed of her own
merchants--even if these considerations did not go to the extent of
precluding British merchants from laying out their capital on slave
adventures, whether for themselves or others’ account, common prudence,
in which respectable merchants in this country cannot be said to be
deficient, does at once warn a man not to trust his funds to the issue
of speculations which afford no security, over which he can exercise no
control--so much so, that it is hardly possible to conceive in what
shape, looking at all like business, British capital could be lent for
the purpose or on the security of a slave trade adventure. All this has
contributed to maintain merchants in utter ignorance of the provisions
of this Act of Parliament, or of the use which might be made of its
legal phraseology: but now, when a merchant, not at all suspected by his
fellows--for that is on record--has been, to the astonishment of every
one, dragged from his office to the police-station, and to the Old
Bailey dock (more especially when this is done in spite of the
resolution of the House of Commons’ Committee, in spite of the opinion
of the law officers of the Crown) by a London attorney, it is time to
look at the exposition of the law and the practical application of its
provisions, which so extraordinary a proceeding has elicited; the more
so, as it has been stated that “higher game is in view,” and that the
prosecutor is still occupied in analysing the evidence given before the
Committee; and when the Anti-Slavery Committee adopt and publish a
resolution, in which it is stated, in reference to the late prosecution,
that by it “it may be hoped a salutary check will be given to the
_notorious_ implication of British capital and commerce in that
nefarious traffic, the slave trade.” At any other time the absolute
folly of the assertion would have suffered it to remain unnoticed;
experience has shown, however, that there is somewhere the means, and
that the will does exist, of doing mischief to an appalling degree.
As explaining the practical operation of the law, then, I shall look
upon the summing up of the learned Judge, not with a critical eye, in
order to decide whether the law has been well or ill administered--this
is the province of a professional man, into which it would be
preposterous for me to enter. Upon the propriety or impropriety of the
Judge’s acts and opinions, or even of his exposition of the law and its
requirements, I must be understood as maintaining a complete reserve.
For the present purpose, and for every practical purpose that can affect
others, the law must be taken as laid down by his Lordship. As to its
meaning, the evidence which is required under the Act to bring an
individual to trial, the degree of evidence which will send a case to
the Jury, that upon which a case in answer shall be demanded of the
accused--until it is otherwise declared by competent authority--until
then, those who really wish to obey the law must look upon the late
administration of it as that which is to be expected, and the extent and
applicability of the Act of Parliament to be that which is exhibited in
the late proceedings.
The first consideration which presents itself is the nature and
definition of the offence. In the outset of his summing up, the learned
Judge stating the nature of the charge, alluding to the vessel which the
prisoner is alleged to have employed, lays down, “that it was not
necessary to be proved that the ship in question (the Augusta) was
intended to be used for the conveyance of slaves from the coast of
Africa. If there was a slave adventure--if there was an adventure, of
which the object was that slaves should be brought from the coast of
Africa, that there should be slave trading there--and if this vessel was
dispatched and employed for the purpose of accomplishing that object,
although it was intended to accomplish that object otherwise than by
bringing home the slaves in that vessel--that is within the Act of
Parliament. So, if the goods were loaded for the purpose of
accomplishing the slave trade ... the crime charged in this indictment
would be committed, the allegations in the indictment would be
supported, and the prohibition of the Act of Parliament would be
violated.”
Such is the nature of the offence. If there is a slave adventure in the
port of destination of the vessel and goods which you dispatch, for the
purpose of accomplishing which they may be said to have been intended,
the prohibition is violated; but as, in the case of the vessel and the
goods in question, no attempt was even made to prove the existence of
any such adventure, but only a general slaving character of the port of
destination, it follows that not even the existence of such particular
slave adventure is necessary to be proved in order to support an
indictment under the Act, but it is enough if a general slaving
character of the trade at the port of destination is proved, in order to
lay the ground of an indictment. Let this general slave trading
character be discovered by any one of a port in Africa, to which you may
have sent goods--and of course, if a port not in Africa is (as may very
well be) largely concerned in the trade, the case is not very much
altered--and you stand open to a charge under the Act, for the crime has
been committed. It is as when a man is found murdered in the street--the
crime has been committed--the only thing is to find out the criminal.
How this is done under the Act of Parliament on the slave trade is the
next thing to be seen.
“The employment, the dispatch of the vessel,” says the learned Judge,
“is no conclusive proof of the guilt, till going further, and showing
that the party doing so did it for the illegal purpose charged.” But
then, for the purpose of beginning the inquiry, without which there
would have been no beginning of it, the foundation must be laid in the
employment of the vessel by the person accused. If slave trading is
intended, and the vessel be sent for the purpose, the important
consideration then is, whether the person employing the vessel is
cognizant of the intention. We have seen the large meaning of the terms
slave trading. It is not like wine trade--dealing in wine: it is not
dealing in slaves, but dealing in Manchester and Birmingham goods,
adapted and purposely manufactured for the African markets, so long as
it is found that slave traders, that is, as heretofore the term has been
understood, dealers in slaves--resort to the port for which they are
shipped. Of course the crime having been committed by some one, that is,
by the person who intended that slave traders should use them for slave
purposes--and no other will be supposed as possible--the existence of
the law punishing such an intention demands that an inquiry should be
made. For this purpose the commission-agent in England, who employed the
vessel, must be laid hold of--not that in that one act there is a
conclusive proof of guilt, until it be further shown that he was
cognizant of and intended the illegal object, but because an inquiry is
imperative under the Act. With whom the right and duty of making it
rests it matters not--any one that may be so disposed from a
philanthropic and public-spirited motive. It is not enough that a
Parliamentary inquiry has been made already--it is not enough that the
law-officers of the Crown see no reason to institute a further
inquiry--it matters not, if the case has been lying in all its details
before the public, the ends of public justice are never satisfied until
the so-called inquiry takes the shape of a bill before the Grand
Jury--_the inquisition_ of the country. There certain depositions are
secretly made upon oath, which you shall never see; and upon this _mild_
and _fair_ procedure you will have your very life, and the life of every
one dear to you placed in jeopardy, for I believe that there is nothing
in the mercantile profession which is likely to prepare a man, and a
man’s family, for his being treated as a felon. It is indeed true, that
in the evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons merchants
are treated by some of the witnesses in a tone and manner becoming only
those times in which merchants were tolerated for the sake of the money
that might be extorted from them, but otherwise were considered as a
caste whose instinct was money-making by all means, right or wrong, and
against whom every crime might be presumed; but, whatever may be in the
heart of some, and whatever may rise to their lips, against a profession
which England honours and distinguishes, a distinct avowal dare not be
made such as will justify the insinuation that there is absolutely
nothing in carrying a merchant, considered respectable, from his private
office to a felon’s den, without his knowing his accuser, or upon what
he is charged, which ought to shake his mind or that of his family.
But, then, unless you are proved to have been cognizant of the intended
purpose, you will be acquitted. The nature of the offence has been
explained and laid down to embrace a very wide compass. If there existed
a slave adventure at the port of destination of a vessel, to accomplish
which that vessel carried goods, the offence has been committed. The
penalty, to whomsoever committed it, is by the Act only short of the
greatest imposed by the law. You employed the vessel--this is not
conclusive of guilt, until it is shown further that there was slave
trading intended, and that you were cognizant of the intention. Let us
see how both things are to be proved and brought home to you. Heretofore
the way between your office and the Old Bailey is one which there is no
merchant, trading with countries wherein the slave trade is allowed to
exist, may not be dragged through without risk or responsibility by any
ruffian in London. Now, perhaps, though not exactly at the earliest
stage that may be desirable for the safety of the innocent and the
repose of honourable families--still now, perhaps, the requirements of
the law in regard to proof are commensurate with the facility afforded
on the outset, and with the terrible penalty which follows a conviction.
The Judge proceeds upon this part of the evidence as follows: “It
appears from the evidence, that the Gallinas is a place described by
some witnesses of great experience--two captains in the navy, and
Colonel Nichol, who was the governor of a district in the neighbourhood”
(about 1,500 miles from it, see his evidence), “whose employment was
mainly to watch the slave coast, of which the Gallinas forms a part, and
to contribute to the putting down the slave trade--that the Gallinas is
a place of slave trading, and of no other trade at all.” His Lordship
continues as follows: “It is said, and I think with great probability,
that the Gallinas is not generally known as a slave trading place, in
fact, it seems very little known at all; it seems to be a place where
any other description of felons may resort to concert their schemes and
hide their stolen goods, and which, of course, they do not make public,
and which is not likely to be known by honest and true people. Except
those employed as police or otherwise in aid of justice, as these
captains were, of course it would not be spoken of at all. There might
be slave traders in London knowing it very well, but they would be
perfectly silent probably, and hardly mention it by name even in
speaking one to another. It is very probable, therefore, that the place
was not very well known; that when these persons spoke of the Gallinas,
they might say the Gallinas on the coast of Africa; and a person might
be very conversant with the geography of Africa in an honest way, who
had not been active in putting down the slave trade, and yet might not
know where it was, except that it was on the coast of Africa.”
It is impossible more correctly to state, in stronger language, or more
clearly, the possibility of the place of destination of a vessel being
a slave trading place, and that exclusively, without in the least
diminishing the great probability of its being unknown to the party in
England who ships goods for that place as a commission-agent, by order
and for account of somebody else abroad. Thus, the great probability of
my statement before the Committee of the House of Commons of the
ignorance of the character of the trade carried on at Gallinas was
completely vouched for, and the observation, that those who knew were
not likely to tell, and not likely to as much as name the place, was
forcible in my favour, since the house had entered and cleared the
Augusta _for Gallinas_, and not for _Africa_, as ships with destinations
for the West Coast are generally dispatched, and as the Augusta might
most certainly have been, had the house even suspected an improper
object which required concealment. It is singular that, in the
explanations prepared for instructing counsel, the case is stated in
nearly the same terms as to the ignorance of the character of the place,
as those used by Judge Maule. Merchants easily understand this, because
it is the case more or less with every one. In shipping goods by foreign
order and for foreign account to distant ports in all parts of the
world, with which there is hardly any communication, and with which the
shipper himself has none, and need not have any for the purpose of such
a transaction, it most frequently happens, that the nature of the trade
carried on at that particular port is very imperfectly or rather not at
all known. In the multitude and the rapidity of operations which must be
disposed of almost without thinking, the inquiry (not being either
interesting or profitable, and of course quite unnecessary) is not made,
or indeed as much as thought of, especially when heretofore, I believe,
it will be acknowledged that it has not been considered that the nature
of the trade carried on at any place could involve the mere shipper,
without a connexion or any interest in that place, in the slightest
responsibility.
But what follows? The character of the place is thus settled: “That it
is itself a slave trading place appears to be very evident from the case
on the part of the prosecution. Probably those honest persons, those
honestly dealing persons, who know best about it, are those who have
been called upon by their public duty to ascertain it. Such persons have
been called, and they give it this character and description, and they
state that it is distinguished from other parts of the coast of Africa;
for on other parts of that coast, it is said, slaves are sold as one
article of export, but that other things, such as palm-oil--I believe
that is the principal thing--and ivory, and wood, and other things, are
sold in immense quantities on the coast of Africa; but that that is not
the case at the Gallinas. They might be carrying out goods to other
parts of Africa, intending to bring home palm-oil, or slaves, as might
be most profitable; they might intend to bring home an honest commodity,
and not have to do with this dishonest and perilous commodity; but it
appears difficult to conceive what a person, carrying a cargo of goods
to the Gallinas, could intend to do with it, unless he intended to have
those goods employed in the slave trade. The prisoner might say they
were to be employed by others in the slave trade; that would be plain
and simple: it is wrong, but it is a plain and simple account of that
which was intended to be done. It is a place, as it appears, without any
trade; and if there be an obvious plain interest in a person carrying
goods to that place, it appears to me that it may be taken that they
were for the purpose of the slave trade. If that be the plain and
obvious inference, it appears to me that might be the inference very
properly drawn by Colonel Nichol, that this was a slave adventure,
unless the contrary were proved.” Here the character of the place seems
the only point upon which the observations of the learned Judge bear;
and that character having been laid down as very probably indeed unknown
to any one but the dealer in slaves, and the police employed against
them, they do not seem to touch the prisoner. But at the same time an
answer is suggested which the prisoner might give about what was
intended, thus seeming to imply, that he ought to be furnished with
evidence in answer, capable of accounting for what was intended, without
which the full weight of an inference by one of the witnesses must
remain, so far attaching to him the knowledge that he must necessarily
be supposed to entertain of what was intended by others. I had said
before the Committee, in the evidence read in Court, that the house knew
nothing of what was to be done with the goods. Therefore, this not being
admitted, it seems to follow that the law, as laid down by Judge Maule,
requires some plain and simple account of what was intended to be done
with the goods from the commission-agent in England who ships them by
order and for account of a merchant residing abroad. It had before been
laid down, that to ship the goods for slave trade purposes is an offence
under the Act, if the shipper was cognizant of the intent: it is now
said, that the port is an exclusively slave trading port, and it is not
suggested that this was probably unknown, as it had before been said, to
any but the dealer in slaves and the police employed against them, nor
any account taken of the statement of the accused before the House of
Commons, which had been read in Court, disclaiming the very possibility,
as a mere shipping-agent, of any knowledge of what was to be done with
the goods: the only answer suggested is one which may give a plain and
simple account of what the merchant abroad intended to do with the goods
at such a port. It seems to follow, therefore, that the mere
shipping-agent in England is bound by the Act to be provided with such
an account; and if he does not give it, the inference, to be drawn as to
the object of the shipment from the character of the port, will not
only attach to the adventure, but will cut deeper, since if you are
bound to have and to produce a knowledge, and you do not produce it, it
seems that the account is to be held not to be producible.
The notion that the Act of Parliament must be understood, not only as
punishing a proved guilty knowledge, but as demanding from the accused
party proof of an innocent knowledge of the plans and objects of a
foreign merchant residing abroad, in respect of a transaction, in which
the former has had no other share than that of a simple shipping agency
in England, by order and for account of the latter, pervades the whole
of the proceedings, and shows itself more clearly in the remarks that
follow. “It is possible,” continues the Judge, “that this might be an
adventure, not slave trading; if so, nothing can be more simple than to
prove it: Martinez & Co. might prove that it is an honest adventure. If
it was a dishonest adventure, it could not be expected that Martinez &
Co. should be called to give evidence at all; but if it were an innocent
adventure, it would be very easy for them to be called. It is true that
persons are to be convicted, not by evidence they did not produce, but
by evidence produced against them--not on suspicion, but on conviction;
but where such evidence is offered of the trade being slave trading, as
is offered here, namely, that the vessel was loaded with goods” (in
itself, as the learned Judge had formerly stated, not conclusive of
guilt)--“that a cargo of goods was dispatched” (to which the same former
observation applies) “to a place, where slave trading is the only known
object for which vessels _ever_ go” (known to slave traders and the
police employed against them, as was also aptly remarked by his
Lordship; although one of these, Captain Denman, seems to have known of
800 tons, according to his evidence (see p. 329); and upwards of 1,000
tons, according to his official dispatch to the Governor of Sierra
Leone, dated 12th December, 1840[2], as having been landed at Gallinas,
without being able to say that the object was slave trading)--“a
slave-mart and nothing but a slave-mart--you have a case, though it is
an answerable case; but if the answer, which if it exist could be easily
given, is not given, it may very fairly be inferred that the vessel was
proceeding on a slaving voyage, a voyage either for the purpose of
bringing home slaves, or of landing those goods for the purchase of
slaves.”
[2] Vide “Report. West Coast of Africa. Part II, Appendix,” &c. p.
460.