After having been purchased from the native Princes, this timber is put on board the ships, principally by the labour of Kroomen. Of these unhappy people, who yet remain, without a single exception, in their native dark and barbarous state, the Commissioners, p. 17, state-" It has not been the fate of the Kroomen to have much intercourse with the individuals who were likely to bestow much pains upon their moral and religious improvement; ON THE CONTRARY, they have been employed chiefly BY THOSE to whom they have been recommended by THEIR

PHYSICAL CAPACITIES AND DISPOSITION FOR LABOUR. It could not, therefore, be expected that much time or attention would be bestowed upon the improvement of their mind by such persons, who, although THEY find it profitable to employ them in preference to others, acknowledge their UTTER WANT of morality and religion !!"

How often, I am here compelled to remark, have the West Indian Colonists been reproached, unjustly reproached, and by Mr Z. Macaulay, with considering and estimating their slaves only according to "their physical capacities and disposition to labour," while his agents and his house are really pursuing the same system with the Kroomen !!

The Gold Trade of Sierra Leone is next in importance to the timber trade. Let us see in whose hands it is, and how those hands came to obtain the whole of it.

"The trade in this article," say the Commissioners, p. 79, "is of recent origin, having commenced in 1822; and if the opinion generally entertained by the OTHER MERCHANTS be correct, it is chiefly possessed AT PRESENT BY THE FIRM OF MESSRS MACAULAY AND BABBINGTON; that house must, therefore, be considered most capable of estimating the quantity exported. Mr K. Macaulay computes it to have been to the value of between L.20,000 and L.30,000 during the year 1825," &c. How that house come to be masters of the gold trade, let the merchants of St Mary's, Gambia, through the Commissioners, p. 79, tell. "The merchants of St Mary's" assert, that in proportion as the gold trade of Sierra Leone has increased, that of Bathurst has DIMINISHED. This circumstance they at

tribute to an UNDUE INFLUENCE gained by the merchants of the former place, through the medium of the presents dispensed from Sierra Leone by the Colonial Government. Those presents, they say, though designed to induce the Chiefs of the golden districts to favour commerce generally, have had practically the effect of turning to Sierra Leone the gold traders who FORMERLY RESORTED TO THE GAMBIA. No presents being made from this place, it becomes the interest of the Chiefs to use THEIR AUTHORITY in promoting the trade of the other settlement, from which they derive the greatest advantage; this authority,

IN SOME INSTANCES AMOUNTING TO

FORCE, has, according to the statement of the Gambia merchants, been exerted greatly to their prejudice!"

The sums charged against, and drawn from, the British Treasury, and expended in these presents, are, we learn from the Commissioners, p. 86, between the years 1814 and 1825, L.9,945, 15s. 10d. sterling, while the vouchers that were produced could only show L.6,928, 6s. 8d.!! Those large sums were expended in presents to the native Chiefs in the interior, as the Commissioners and merchants of St Mary's very pointedly state, by the Colonial Government, as directed by Mr Kenneth Macaulay; and who, by this "undue influence," drew, not only the gold trade, but the most valuable branches of every other trade, to his house; for, say the Commissioners, p. 83, the merchants there "ascribe the superior success of what they term THEIR FIRST HOUSE, to the possession of more extensive means, as well as to what they consider an UNDUE ADVANTAGE derived by THE AGENT of this house from his seat in the Council. The feeling of jealousy entertained on this account by the other merchants, appears to be NOT ILL FOUNDED."

Thus, sir, we have seen developed the secret of the increase of the Sierra Leone trade so loudly and so often bruited abroad in this country from certain sources-a trade which, while one concern obtains L.100,000 in gold at the expense of the profits and the exertions of less favoured merchants, that honest, simple, plodding ass, JOHN BULL, pays L.10,000 out of his pocket to enable them to obtain it!!

Let all these facts be considered, and say wherein I have misrepresented the situation, or brought one false accusation, or one erroneous charge, against Sierra Leone, or those who assume the control of it. To blacken it is impossible.

That the liberated Africans in the place are compelled to work by the application of the whip, has been stated. I am ready, and offer, to prove the fact. The Commissioners indirectly admit this, when, in page 55, they state, that to make them work, some mild coercive power seems necessary. But this power should not be, as IN SOME INSTANCES IT

APPEARS INEXCUSABLY ΤΟ HAVE BEEN, LEFT IN THE HANDS OF PERSONS LIKELY TO ABUSE IT." I hold in my hands a communication from the place, dated the 28th May last, which runs thus: "Those liberated Africans that are obliged to work for the public good, are employed in carrying stones, or bricks, for public buildings; or learning some trade, as masonry, and shingling house-tops, or the like, and require to be kept to their labour, by the dread of the whip; even under this discipline I HAVE SEEN THEM idling when the eye of the whipper-in was turned in another direction. This man of the cord is a black invariably. I have often seen one in the wharf when a vessel was unloading, WITH THE CAT IN HIS HAND, and I have asked him what use he made of it. I received for reply-Suppose THE SLAVE no work good, you know, I can flog him.' This he said with a savage pleasure, and accompanied the words with a smile, and flourish of his whip! What is this better than slavery? or is it as good treatment as the slaves in the West Indies receive under the present administration !!"

The whip and chain, it is clear, are common in Sierra Leone. "The punishment for minor crimes," say the Commissioners, in page 58, is "hard labour in chains. It is by no means uncommon at Freetown to see thirty or forty culprits CHAINED IN PAIRS, and employed in a desultory kind of labour," &c.; and, says Mr Kenneth

Macaulay, page 59, "I have myself scen a Maroon, a Nova Scotia settler, the son of a native chief, a Grumettu,* a Krooman, and a liberated African, working in the same GANG. They are confined by a chain passing round the MIDDLE; and generally two, sometimes three, but I believe seldom or never more, are fastened to the same chain !"

This country has been surfeited with the boasts about the advantages which the liberated and other Africans enjoy under the blessings of English law in Sierra Leone. The whole is a farce. The Commissioners draw aside the veil of delusion. At

page 91, they state, "when it is asserted that the English laws are universally in practice,' it is to be understood that they are in practice, but modified by the dispensers of them, so as to meet the general circumstances of the colony, and THEIR OWN VIEW of the merits of each particular case!!" That is, men who are totally ignorant of what law is, make it what, and apply it just as they please! Under such a state of things, the Commissioners justly and forcibly observe, “the law must, for a long time, be so only IN NAME!!"-"A certain control is requisite to prevent their" (the liberated Africans) "return to their former habits. This control is, in fact, at PRESENT EXERCISED; and, although tending eventually to their good, must be quite AT VARIANCE with the spirit of the English law," &c. Thus the Sierra Leone bubble is burst, and thus the truth concerning it comes, piecemeal, as it were, to light!

That such a place could ever do any good, even to degraded Africa, is a dream; and that it has been a fatal one to the interests of Africa we learn from one decided and incontrovertible fact mentioned by the Commissioners, p. 19, namely, that though their territory almost lines with the gardens of Freetown, still "no instance could be traced of a Timmance having been CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY. This, however, cannot be attributed to any invincible attachment to their present superstitions, as many are said to have become converts to the Mahommedan

faith, which is supposed to be making considerable progress among them.' These poor people are to this day the most ignorant and rude of all the tribes of Western Africa, although they have been near 40 years in sight of the light established in Sierra Leone! The ignorance of the liberated African is extreme. "His age, the length of time he has resided in the colony or the village, the quantity of land he has in cultivation, of seed which he sows, of produce which he reaps, or the number of months and weeks which he is employed in its cultivation," are all, say the Commissioners, equally unknown to him. Time he only computes by accidents or particular events, such as when he built his house, or hegan the cultivation of a certain piece of land, by stating who was his superintendent at the time. Few of them, says Mr Gerber, page 43,"will labour upon their farins, unless they were by some means FORCED TO DO so!" To reclaim them, we send a set of men about as ignorant of human nature, and as deficient in common sense, as themselves; in consequence of which we have laboured, and still labour, in vain.

Were it possible to bring together the enormous sums of money which Sierra Leone and its miserable dependencies, together with those which liberated Africans, in various places, and in various ways, have cost this country, the sum total would fill it with astonishment and indignation. But this can only be done by those who have access to all the details of every public account which has been liquidated by the British Treasury during the last thirty-five years:-nay, so numerous are the charges for these purposes, and so much are they interwoven with the accounts of every department, in every year during the period mentioned, that I doubt if all the clerks in the employ of Government could now draw them forth. Special funds have even been created for this and similar purposes, where the amount, without the details, are only given. Referring to my first letter for a general view of this expenditure, I shall bring before you and the public, from a more narrow research into public records; first, the expenditure of Sierra Leone and its dependencies for the last seven years;

and, secondly, the sums of money which have been paid for the value, for the bounty, and for the maintenance of captured negroes. It is necessary, however, to remark, that the sums paid for the maintenance of these idlers in the West Indies, cannot be accurately ascertained from any returns which have yet been produced; and therefore the undivided estimates, or sums drawn, are taken as the data to bring out the total amount. Moreover, the details under the heads, the Army, the Ordnance, and the Barrack Department, do not particularize Sierra Leone; consequently under these heads, the expenditure is incomplete. What are produced, however, with official and particular references, will, I doubt not, astonish you and the country in general.

The forts on the Gold Coast were, by the advice of the Sierra Leone advocates, made dependencies upon that fatal place in 1821. From that year, therefore, let us trace the expenditure, civil, military, and naval, of the princely place. The Quarterly Review (good authority) states the expenditure under the naval head to be HALF A MILLION annually! The whole of this expenditure is properly charged against Sierra Leone, because the navy stationed on the coast of Africa is altogether employed in capturing slave ships, and bringing these into that settlement, in order to people and to enrich it. But for this, it is clear that Sierra Leone had long since been abandoned, as the few whites, Maroons, and Kroomen, who remain there, remain only to make money by their dealings with and for the captured negroes. Besides the expensive Slave Commissions in different places, we have had Commissions of Inquiry, such as that to the West Indies, to inquire into the state of the Africans liberated there. Each of these commissions cost this country many thousands annually the latter above L.3000, and the former upwards of L.18,000. With these observations I proceed to the details of the expenditure, &c., for the period alluded to; remarking, that brevity compels me to omit the full particulars of the first four years; but they are drawn up from the same careful reference to the Parliamentary Papers for each year, as is done with the three last years :