THE SELECT COMMITTEE appointed to Inquire into the State of the
BRITISH POSSESSIONS on the WEST COAST OF AFRICA, more especially with
reference to their present Relations with the neighbouring Native
Tribes, and who were empowered to Report their Observations, together
with the MINUTES OF EVIDENCE taken before them, to The House;----HAVE
considered the Matters to them referred, and have agreed to the
following REPORT:
YOUR COMMITTEE, previous to reporting the result of their Inquiries
into the subject which has been submitted to them by Your Honourable
House, think it desirable to state the circumstances which led to
their appointment. In the course of the Year 1839 information was
communicated to the Marquis of Normanby, then Secretary of State for
the Colonies, that a Spanish Slaver, the Dos Amigos, had, a short time
previous to seizure, been allowed to trade freely at Cape Coast, a
British Settlement on the Gold Coast, and had been supplied there by a
British Merchant, a Magistrate, with some of the Goods, not
Equipments, requisite for carrying on her unlawful Traffic. This
information led to further inquiry, in the course of which it appeared
that such practices were not unusual, and that Captain Maclean, the
Governor, appointed by the Committee of Merchants in London, on whom
the charge of the Settlements of the Gold Coast had been devolved by
Parliament, in the Year 1828, did not consider himself entitled to
interfere with the Traffic of any Vessel of a friendly Nation,
whatever her purpose, coming to purchase Goods, in themselves lawful,
within the waters of a British Settlement. In consequence of this
information, Lord John Russell, then Secretary of State for the
Colonies, concurring with his predecessor, gave strong Instructions
for the discontinuance of this practice, and for the punishment of it
as illegal, expressed his opinion that it was desirable the Government
of these Settlements should be resumed by the Crown, and instructed
Dr. Madden, a gentleman who had formerly been employed as a
Stipendiary Magistrate in the West Indies, and subsequently in the
Mixed Commission at Havana, to proceed as Commissioner to the Gold
Coast, and the other British Settlements on the West Coast of Africa,
for the purpose of investigating these and other matters connected
with the administration and condition of these Settlements. He was at
the same time instructed to inquire into, and report upon, the
Prospects of Emigration from Sierra Leone to the British West India
Colonies.
The Reports which were the result of this gentleman’s inquiries,
involving materially the interests of Humanity and of Commerce, and
impeaching gravely the character of individuals engaged in the British
Trade with Africa, in a manner which seemed to call for further
investigation before any conclusion could be fairly come to upon the
questions at issue, have been laid before Your Committee, have in fact
formed the basis of their proceedings, and are published with this
Report; but in publishing them, Your Committee beg to state, that
while they do full justice to the value of much of the information
contained in them, and to the zeal and diligence of Dr. Madden, they
do not concur in all his conclusions, or intend to warrant the
accuracy of his statements. His inquiries were conducted over a vast
surface of Coast in a short period, and under circumstances of
considerable interruption from health disordered by the climate, and
in many instances he apparently found himself compelled to take his
information from third parties, the accuracy of whose statements and
the correctness of whose opinions he had not the opportunity of
testing.
In many of his recommendations they concur; on some, and those of no
slight importance, they have come to an opposite opinion; but thinking
it would be more convenient that they should give their own
conclusions upon the whole subject submitted to them in a consecutive
form, rather than in the shape of a commentary upon his Reports, they
beg to submit the following statement and recommendations to The
House, as the conclusions at which they have themselves arrived.