Slavery is a subject hardly less delicate and exciting than religion for international discussion. I suppose it is the same Mr. Chamerozow who has lately been foiled by the Foreign-office and the Liverpool African Association in an attempt to purchase, with two others, from Pepple, King of the Bonny, exclusive rights of navigation and trading in the Bonny river.*

*Slave-trade Correspondence, Class B, presented 1864. (Africa, Bight of Biafra.) The members of the Society of Friends object to the use of armed force, even for the suppression of slave-trade. This is one thing, but it is another to be the eager advocate of a government which upholds slavery. In the Anti-Slavery Reporter of July 1st, notice is taken of a statement of mine in a despatch to Lord Russell, February 26, 1863, that "there is no sign of effort or preparation for the abolition of slavery," and the Editor says, "We are in a position to affirm that Mr. Christie is in error, and hope in our next to furnish authentic information on this point. Four monthly numbers have since appeared, without any of this hoped-for authentic information. Obviously, there might be a new state of things by July, 1864, which would not prove me to have been in error in February, 1863. But I am not aware of anything having been done to the last moment in Brazil towards the extinction of slavery. I have exposed, in Chapter VI., the misstatements of Senhors Andrada and Almeida Portugal; the former, Secretary of the late Brazilian Legation, addressing a deputation of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society; the latter, strangely enough, an orator at the last annual meeting of the Society. Since that chapter was printed, a painful trial, reported in the morning newspapers of November 12th, has completed the exposure of the Chevalier de Almeida Portugal, who attended the Annual Meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, as a friend of Christianity, and the "esteemed friend" of Mr. Chamerozow, to urge an agitation for the repeal of the "Aberdeen Act." See the report of the meeting in the AntiSlavery Reporter of June 1, 1864.

CHAPTER XII.

BRITISH CLAIMS ON BRAZIL.

LAIMS CONVENTION OF JUNE 2, 1858-BRITISH CLAIMS-BRAZILIAN CLAIMS AGAINST FINAL JUDGMENTS OF SLAVE-TRADE MIXED COMMISSIONS AND AGAINST ABERDEEN ACT-SUSPENSION OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMIS. SION MY REMONSTRANCES AGAINST SUSPENSION-LAPSE OF COMMIS

SION-MY NOTE OF SEPTEMBER 11, 1860, NOT ANSWERED TILL NOVEMBER 1861-THE BRAZILIAN REPLY EXAMINED-MY NOTES OF APRIL 14, 1862, NOT ANSWERED BEFORE THE SUSPENSION OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONSLORD RUSSELL'S COMPLAINT THEREOF, JUNE 6, 1863.

PRESSING representations made by Mr. Scarlett to the Brazilian government in 1857, under Lord Clarendon's instructions, on the subject of an accumulation of claims of British subjects, many of them of long standing, to none of which previous Secretaries of State and Ministers at Rio had been able to obtain the proper attention of the Brazilian government, led to the negotiation of a Convention for a Mixed Commission for the settlement of claims of the subjects of either government on the other. The Convention was signed on June 2, 1858. Lord Malmesbury succeeded Lord Clarendon as Foreign Secretary in February of that year, but I believe it is notorious that the Convention was virtually Lord Clarendon's, and not Lord Malmesbury's. The Commission, under this Convention, was for the settlement of all claims on both sides, "which may have been presented to either government for its interposition with the other, since the date of the

declaration of independence of the Brazilian empire, and which yet remain unsettled, or are considered to be still unsettled by either of the two governments." One Commissioner was appointed on each side, and the two held their first sitting at Rio, on March 10, 1859. Fifty-one British, and one hundred and eight Brazilian, claims were sent in to the Commissioners. The total sum claimed by British subjects may be roughly stated at about 300,000l., and the total of the Brazilian claims exceeded a million and a half sterling. Lists of claims had not been exchanged and agreed upon before the conclusion of the Convention. The British claims were of various sorts : claims arising out of losses during the rebellion of Pernambuco in 1824, of Pará in 1835, of Bahia in 1837, and of Alagoas in 1844; claims to a large amount for overcharged customs-duties during the existence of the Treaty of Commerce of 1827, which was denounced by Brazil in 1844, and in which it was stipulated that the import duties on English goods should not exceed 15 per ent.; claims for other undue exactions of Custom-house authorities; claims arising out of non-fulfilment of contracts of the Brazilian government; claims for illegal fines and imprisonments, &c.* The Brazilian claims had origin almost exclusively in captures by British cruisers of Brazilian vessels suspected of carrying on the slavetrade.

It was only when the Commission had met in March, 1859, and the Brazilian claims had been sent in, that Her Majesty's government became aware of their nature, and

*

A list of the British claims sent in to the Commission is printed in the Appendix.

that a very large portion of the Brazilian claims sent in were claims impugning decisions of the Mixed Commission Courts, which sat till 1845, under the Slave-trade Convention of 1826, and claims impugning the British act of Parliament of 1845, so well known under the name of the "Aberdeen Act."

As to the first of these two classes of claims, claims impugning the decisions of the Mixed Commission Courts, it had been expressly stated, both in the body of the Convention with Portugal of 1817 and in the regulations appended to it, all adopted in the Convention with Brazil of 1826, that the Mixed Commissions were to "judge without appeal." How, then, could it be conceived that the Brazilian government would think of appealing from the judgment of the Slave-Trade Mixed Commission Courts, declared by treaty to be "without appeal," to the new Mixed Claims Commission?

The two Commissioners at first agreed that such claims could not be entertained by them. Such a claim was rejected by them on June 7, 1859, in these words: "As to this vessel, the 'Santo Antonio Victorioso,' it was condemned by the Mixed Commission of Sierra Leone, May 21, 1840, and therefore this Commission cannot take cognisance of the case, since it was finally judged.” *

But this decision did not please the Brazilian government; they were at hand to influence their Commissioner, who soon after informed his British colleague that he

All the documents quoted and details given on this subject of claims have been made known in the Annual Reports of the Brazilian Ministers for Foreign Affairs; and the extracts which I have given are translated from the Portuguese. No correspondence on this subject has been yet laid before the English Parliament.

had changed his opinion as to the inadmissibility of such claims, and he unfortunately persuaded the British Commissioner to change his also; and accordingly a decision was come to in the case of a vessel called the " Principe de Guiné," on January 24, 1860, in which the two Commissioners, rejecting the claim on its merits, affirmed indirectly their right to review judgments of the old Slavetrade Mixed Commissions.

In the meantime Her Majesty's government had consulted the law-advisers of the Crown as to the Brazilian claims for capture or detention of vessels suspected of being slavers; and on February 21, 1860, acting by order of Lord Russell, I instructed the British Commissioner not to deal with such claims until he received further instructions. The British Commissioner having informed his Brazilian colleague of this instruction, the latter, with the approval of the Brazilian government, declined to continue work, and the sittings of the Commission were suspended on February 28, 1860.

The Convention under which the Commission was appointed contained the two following provisions :

:

"The Commissioners shall be bound, under this Convention, to hold for the consideration of the claims at least eight sittings in each month, from the date of their first sitting until the completion of their labours.

"The Commissioners shall be bound to examine and decide upon every claim within two years from the day of their first meeting, unless, on account of some unforeseen and unavoidable suspension of the sittings, the two governments may mutually agree to extend the time."

I begged and entreated the Brazilian Minister for