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Some Principal Aspects of British Efforts to Crush The African Slave Trade, 1807-1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2017

Howard Hazen Wilson*
Affiliation:
American University

Extract

One function of the British Foreign Office has been to promote the universal abolition of slavery, the slave trade, and analogous forms of involuntary servitude. It has been said that “International co-operation for the suppression of the African slave trade was one of the most significant developments of the nineteenth century.” If this is so, it should not be a superfluous task to consider the legal aspects of the principal methods which the prime mover, Great Britain, employed to achieve this effect. The literature of international law contains excellent material on certain features of the problem, but little material on the most productive and decisive phases of the policy. The object of this article is to show what those phases were, without dealing with their political side any more than seems absolutely necessary for clarity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1950

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References

1 Sir John Harris, A Century of Emancipation (London, 1933), passim; Ellery C. Stowell, Intervention in International Law (Washington, 1922), passim.

2 zManley O. Hudson (ed.), “Suppression of the African Slave Trade,“ Cases and Other Materials on International Law (2d ed., 1936), p. 663.

3 Ibid.

4 The policy is studied as a whole in Howard Hazen Wilson, “Devices Employed by Great Britain to Suppress the African Slave Trade” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1941).

5 Listed in Hertslet's Commercial Treaties [hereafter cited as HCT] (London, 1827-1925), Vol. XXII, pp. 1024-1062. Under some treaties vessels were tried by mixed courts, but under other treaties by courts of their own states {ibid.). In early English and American decisions it had been assumed that the African slave trade, being repugnant to general principles of justice, so far offended against the universal law of society as to warrant the condemnation of all slavers found on the high sea, to whomsoever belonging, in all cases where such commerce wasnot permitted bythe state of the prize (The Amedie (1810), 1 Acton's Admiralty Beports 240; The Fortuna (1811), 1 Dodson's Admiralty Reports 81; The Diana (1813), 1 Dodson's Ad-miralty Eeports 95; the United States v. the Schooner La Jeune EugSnie (1822), First Circuit Court of the U. S., 2 Mason's Eeports 409). Cf. Preamble to Anglo-Portuguese convention ofJan. 21, 1815 (British and Foreign State Papers [hereafter cited as BFSP] [London, 1841—], Vol. I I , p. 345) with Art. 10 of Anglo-Portuguese alliance of Feb. 19, 1810 (Hid., Vol. I , pp. 555 ff.). Nineteenth-century positivism prevailed over the naturalistic principles of The Amedie. In restoring The Louis, a French slaver, Sir William Scott showed thatthe traffic was not illegal by the test of international custom; and he reaffirmed the principlethat all states meet upon a basis of entire equality and independence on the high sea in time of peace and apart from convention. Since there could be no general right of search under such conditions, unless against professed pirates, the slave trade of foreign nations could not lawfully be suppressed by Great Britain except under treaty rights or similar evidence of international consent (The Louis, Great Britain, High Court of Admiralty, 1817, 2 Dodson's Admiralty Eeports 210). From Justice Story's point of view the condemnation of a slaver of another abolitionist state retroactively justified an otherwise illegal act of search [La Jeune EugSnie, loe. cit., pp. 435, 443].) Sir William Scott formally reconciled the opposing philosophies of The Louis and The Amedie by distinguishing the cases on the ground that France had apparently not prohibited the trade. France promulgated such legislation in the following year after much British remonstrance (William Law Mathieson,Great Britain and the Slave Trade,1839-1867 [London, 1929], pp. 9-15). The United States had done so by 1808 (BFSP, Vol.LXIV, pp. 1363 ff.). The Amedie and The Fortuna were American ships. Cf. Madrazo v. Willes (1820), 3 Barnwell and Alderson's Eeports 353; Buron v. Denman, [1848] 2 Exchequer Eeports 167; The Antelope, U. S. Supreme Court, 1825, 10 Wheaton 66.

6 lbid.

7 Although the powers that might be exercised over a slave were extremely different in different countries (Lord Mansfield, in The Case of James Somersett, a Negro, on a habeas corpus (1772), Howell's State Trials, Vol. XX, col. 79), the right of ownership was the same; for in all civilized countries the slave was regarded as an article of property and secured as such by all the protection of the law (The Louis, loe. cit., p. 250). But see further developments infra, notes 105, 106. In England Somersett was a free man; for the status of slavery was “ s o odious” that nothing could be suffered to support it but the force of positive law (Somersett's Case, loe. cit.).

8 Infra, notes 34-38.

9 James Bandinel of the Foreign Office, Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa as Connected with Europe and America (London, 1842), p. 114.

10 Ibid., pp. 67, 70 ff.; Mathieson, op. cit., pp. 2-5 ff.; B. Coupland, The British Anti- Slavery Movement (London, 1933), pp. 87-111 et passim.

11 Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons Debates [hereafter cited as H.CDebates], Vol. LXXVI, 3d ser., col. 931, July 16, 1844. This figure was based upon British estimates that upwards of 100,000 negroes annually reached the New World alive (Hid., cols. 924, 930 ff.).

12 BFSP, Vol. V, p. 559; Mathieson, op. cit., pp. 2-5.

13 In 1842 James Bandinel estimated that more than 20,000 slaves were being annually exported from the African dominions of the Imaum of Muscat (op. cit., p. 302).

14 Lord Palmerston was confident that as the middle of the century approached, theBrazilian importations were at the rate of at least 70,000 a year (H. C. Debates, Vol.CLI, 3d ser., cols. 1334-1341, July 12, 1858). It is said that according to official Brazilian estimates 60,000 were imported in 1848 (Alan K. Manchester, British Pre-Eminence in Brazil, Its Eise and Decline [Chapel Hill, 1933], p. 256).

15 Henry Wheaton, Bistoire des Progre's du Droit des Gens (3rd ed., 1853), Vol. II, pp. 286 ff.

16 H. C. Debates, Vol. LXXVI, 3d ser., col. 944, July 16, 1844.

17 It was the long-established policy of the United States to resist any possible enlargement of the belligerent right of search. Henry Wheaton wrote in 1842 that “the conclusive objection” of the United States to an extension of the right of visitation and search, “ . . . by special compact, in peace or in war, or in any form, and under any restrictions, which have heretofore been proposed, is not merely that it may be liable to abuse, as experience has but too well proved; but that such express recognition might involve by implication the establishment of maxims relating to neutral navigation, the reverse of those which they have ever sought to incorporate into the internationalacode by the general concurrence of maritime states. . . . 'The encroaching character of the right, founded in its original nature as an irresponsible exercise of force,' with its tendency to grow and gather strength by exercise, renders it the more necessary, in their opinion, to be cautious in furnishing fresh precedents of its extension to new objects, and to a larger sphere of operation” (Henry Wheaton, Enquiry into the Validity of the British Claim to a Kight of Visitation and Search of American Vessels Suspected to be Engaged in the African Slave Trade [Philadelphia, 1842], p. 150). In 1824 the United States concluded a search convention with Great Britain,but when the Senate amended it so as to exclude the “coasts of America” from the zone of search, Foreign Secretary Canning refused to concur (ibid., p. 106),

18 A. B. Hart, Slavery and Abolition, Vol. XVI of The American Nation: A History (ed. by A. B. Hart, 28 vols., New York, 1914-1918), pp. 149-241, 256-275, 312.

19 Speaking generally, after 1830 the so-called “Slave Power of the South” simply put the British Government in a class with the Northern abolitionists, so far as its negrophile policies were concerned. John Caldwell Calhoun, the leading spokesman for that “Power,” professed some expectation of a British invasion to destroy slavery in the South (St. George Leakin Sioussat, “John Caldwell Calhoun,” The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy [New York, 1928], Vol. V, pp. 137 ff.). This was at or about the time that the British Minister at Washington was instructed (1843) to inform the Government of the United States that “Great Britain desires, and is const ntly exerting herself to procure, the general abolition of slavery throughout the world,” and would rejoice to see it abolished in Texas (Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States [New York, 1936], pp. 228 ff.). In 1833, as Great Britain was commencing to emancipate her slaves in the West Indies, the British Minister at Washington reported to Lord Palmerston that President Jackson appeared to shrink from bringing forward the question of a search treaty, “from an apprehension of alarming the Southern States"(W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the UnitedStates [New York, 1895], p. 142). In 1859 Jefferson Davis, later President of theConfederacy, repudiate “any coincidence of opinion with those who prate of the inhumanityand sinfulness of the trade” (quoted in Mathieson, op.cit., p. 139).

20 Foreign Secretary Palmerston in Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons,Select Committee on Slave Trade, First Eeport from the Select Committee on Slave Trade, 272 (Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, April 18, 1848), p. 17. For minor exceptions see statistics on condemnations in Wilson, cited above, note 4.

21 Additional Convention of July 28, 1817, to Anglo-Portuguese treaty of Jan.22, 1815 (BFSP, Vol. XI, p. 689).Foreign Secretary Canning made it an indispensable condition (Bandinel, op. cit.,p. 127) of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance of 1810 that Portugal should undertake to accomplish the “gradual abolition” of her slave trade (Art. 10 of Anglo-Portuguese treaty of Feb. 19, 1810 [BSFP, Vol. I, pp. 555 ff.], reaffirmed in thePreamble [BCT, Vol. II,pp. 77, 79] and Art. 4 of the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of Jan. 22, 1815 [BFSP, Vol. II, p. 353]). By Arts. 1-4 of the latter instrument Portugal would permit slave-trading tobe carried on by her own subjects, in her own ships, to her own Transatlantic possessions, and to those only; but it should not be lawful for any of her subjects tocarry slaves to any destination from any part of the coast of Africa lying to the northward of the Equator {ECT, Vol. II, pp. 75 ff.). By 1820 Portugal was the only maritime Power in the Christian world whose treaties with England permittedsuch traffic to continue.

22 In order to meet the “single and sole condition” of British recognition ofBrazilian statehood (Henry Arthur Smith [ed.], Great Britain and the Law of Nations [London, 1932], Vol. I, pp. 186 ff.), Brazil in 1826 assumed the duties and liabilities of the Anglo- Portuguese search convention of 1817 (Arts. 2, 3, Anglo-Brazilian convention of Nov. 23, 1826, BFSP, Vol. XIV, pp. 610 ff.) and declared that “ . . . at the expiration of three years, to be reckoned from the exchange of Ratifications of the present treaty, it shall not be lawful for the subjects of the Emperor of Brazil to be concerned in the carrying on of the African Slave Trade, under any pretext or in any manner whatever, and the carrying on of such Trade after that Period, by any person, subject of His Imperial Majesty, shall be deemed and treated as Piracy” (Art. 1, ibid., p. 610). Ratifications were exchanged on March 13, 1827 (ibid., p. 609).

23 Anglo-Spanish convention of Nov. 30, 1835 (BFSP, Vol. XXIII, pp. 343 ff.).

24 H. M. Commissioners at Sierra Leone, “Annual Report, 1836,” BFSP, Vol. XXV,pp. 15 ff.; H. M. Commissioner at Havana, “Annual Report, 1837,” BFSP, Vol. XXVI, p. 377; Bandinel, op. cit., p. 232.

25 Anglo-Spanish convention of Sept. 23, 1817 (BFSP, Vol. IV, p. 33). Such restrictions were not substantially modified by amendments permitting seizure and condemnation upon “clear and undeniable proof” that slaves had been on board before visitation (Explanatory Article of Dec. 10, 1822, to Anglo-Spanish convention of Sept. 23,1817, BFSP, Vol. X, pp. 87 ff.; Additional Article of March 15, 1823 to Anglo-Portuguese convention of July 28, 1817, BFSP, Vol. XI, p. 24; Anglo-Butch Explanatory Article of December 31, 1822, ibid., p. 722; infra, note 80).

26 Anglo-French convention of Nov. 30, 1831 (BFSP, Vol. XVIII, pp. 642 f f . ) ; Anglo- French supplementary convention of March 22, 1833 (BFSP, Vol. XX, pp. 286 ff.).

27 Lord Palmerston in H. C. Debates, Vol. LXXVI, 3d ser., col. 943, July 16, 1844.

28 Cf. Bandinel, op. cit., pp. 280-283.

29 H. M. Commissioners at Sierra Leone, “Annual Eeport, 1838,” BFSP, Vol. XXVII, pp. 209, 214.

30 Cf. estimates in Du Bois, op. cit., pp. 142 ff.

31 Statistics in Bandinel, op. cit., pp. 232, 288, and H. M. Commissioner at Havana, “Annual Eeport, 1837,” BFSP, Vol. XXVI, p. 377.

32 H. M. Commissioners at Sierra Leone, “Annual Eeport, 1837,” BFSP, Vol. XXVI,p. 318.

33 Coupland, op. cit., p. 195.

34 Protocol of Sept. 10, 1822, between Great Britain and Muscat, ECT, Vol.I ll , pp.266 ff.; cf. ibid., p. 269; further agreement of May 31, 1839, BFSP, Vol. XXIX, p. 1109.

35 HCT, Vol. VIII, pp. 794 ff.

36 A treaty of Oct. 23, 1817, with King Badama I of Madagascar declared that slavetrading was a “system of piracy “ (HCT, Vol. I, pp. 354 ff.). In 1820 by Art. 9 of the General Treaty with theFriendly Arabs (of the Persian Gulf) the carrying off of slaves from Africa or elsewhere and the transporting of them invessels was “plunder and piracy.” Art. 1 denned pirates as “enemies of all mankind,” forfeiting both life and goods (ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 794). Henry Wheaton mentions unsuccessful efforts of the British Government at the post- Napoleonic conferences to promote the international recognition of the slave trade as piracy jure gentium, apart from convention (Histoire, Vol. I I , p. 284). Presumably the result would have been to subject all slavers to the laws of the captor's state and to excuse or even justify the search or seizure of an innocent vessel where there was probable cause of suspicion first shown, thus avoiding responsibility and indemnity for such an error (cf. on extension of jure belli doctrine of probable cause to cases of suspected piracy under international law in Quincy Wright, The Enforcement of International LawThrough Municipal Law in the United States [Urbana, 1916], p. 36). The ' ' doctrine'' of probable cause was considered necessarily applicable to international marine torts generally, since the award of damages would rest in the sound discretion of the court in an admiralty case (The Palmyra (1827), 12 Wheaton 1, 15-17; The Marianna Flora (1826), 11 Wheaton 54 ff.). Whereas the belligerent right of search imports a duty of non-resistance under penalty of confiscation of an otherwise innocent vessel (Green H. Hackworth, Digest of International Law, Vol. VII, pp. 201-205), on the high sea in timeof peace an innocent vessel suspected of piracy remains legally free to resist such intervention by force, in accordancewith the principle of equality explained in The Louis. The seizure of the Louis was upon probable cause, but resistance was not punishable because the captor had not exercised a “ r i g h t . “ On the other hand, the ' ' right of approach''described in The Marianna Flora involved no invasion of the national jurisdiction because there was no intention of interfering with the freedom of movement of the vessel approached. Although this vessel had offered armed resistance to the exercise of the right, leading to mutual suspicion of piracy with probable cause for the captors, the latter consented to its release (summarized in Wheaton, Histoire, Vol. II, pp. 315-318).

37 Agreement between Great Britain and King Badama I of Madagascar, May 31,1823 (HCT, Vol. I ll , pp. 242 ff.).

38 Treaty and Proclamation of King Badama of Madagascar, Oct. 23, 1817 (HCT,Vol. I, pp. 354 ff.); ibid., Vol. I l l , pp. 239 ff.

39 Coupland, op. cit., p. 203.

40 Preamble to Portuguese-Brazilian treaty of Aug. 29, 1825 (BFSP, Vol. XII, p. 674).

41 BFSF, Vol. XIV, p. 306; supra, note 21.

42 Decree of Dec. 10, 1836 (BFSP, Vol. XXIV, p. 782).

43 BFSP, Vol. XXVII, p. 568. This was almost twice as many known slavers as had entered Havana from Africa under the Portuguese flag in that year (ibid.); but see above, note 24.

44 Act, 2 & 3 Vict., c. 73, Aug. 24, 1839 (BFSP, Vol. XXVII, p. 849).

45 Amendment of Aug. 12, 1842 (ibid., Yol. XXXI, p. 355).

46 Convention of July 3, 1842 (SCT, Vol. VI, p. 626). Art. 1 recognized that the traffic was “piratical,” and Portugal agreed to prohibit it forever. In Art. 15 Portugal declared that it was “piracy” and promised to inflict the most severe secondary punishments upon any of her subjects who might engage in it.

47 Known Brazilian importations declined by 75% (reports of H. M. Commissioners and H. M. Consul at Eio, July 17, 1843, BFSP, Vol. XXXII, p. 157).

48 Mathieson, op. cit., p. 23.

49 “Beport of H. M. Commissioners at Sierra Leone for the Year 1845” (BFSP,Vol. XXXV, p. 313).

50 BFSP, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 566 ff., 686.

51 BFSP, Vol. XXVII, pp. 565, 570 ff. The Separate Article of Sept. 11, 1817, to the Additional Convention of July 28, 1817, to the treaty of Jan. 22, 1815, provided that “As soon as the total abolition of the Slave Trade, for the subjects of the Crown of Portugal, shall have taken place, the two High Contracting Parties agree, by common consent, to adopt, to that state of circumstances, the stipulations of the Additional Convention concluded at London, the 28th of July last; but in default of such alterations, the Additional Convention of that dateshall remain in force until the expiration of fifteen years from the day on which the general abolition of the Slave Trade shall so take place, on the part of the Portuguese Government” (HCT, Vol. II, p. 121).

52 BFSP, Vol. XXVII, p. 567.

53 Art. 2 of the treaty of Jan. 22, 1815, between Great Britain and Portugal stipulated that the Portuguese Sovereign “binds himself to adopt, in concert with His Britannic, Majesty, such Measures as may best conduce to the effectual execution of the preceding,engagement [to prohibit slave trading from the coast of Africa north of the Equator] according to its true intent and meaning; and His Britannic Majesty engages, in concert with His Royal Highness, to give such Orders as may effectually prevent any interruption being given to Portuguese ships resorting to the actual dominions of the Crown of Portugal, or to the Territories which are claimed in the said Treaty of Alliance, as belonging to the said Crown of Portugal, to the Southward of the Line, for the purposeof trading in slaves, as aforesaid, during such further Period as the same may be permitted to be carried on by the Lawsof Portugal, and under the Treaties subsisting between the two Crowns” (BFSP, Vol. XI, pp. 687 ff.; or ibid., Vol. II, p. 352).

54 Viscount Palmerston contended that the phrase in Art. 2, “during such further Period,” showed that Portugal had recognized some “prior right” of interruption, and that Great Britain had engaged to suspend the exercise of it in return for the engagement of the Sovereign of Portugal to adopt the most effectual measures of prohibiting the trade north of the Equator. Hence the Foreign Secretary concluded that (1) evenif Portugal had faithfully fulfilled her treaty duties, Great Britain was now authorized by treaty to seize Portuguese slavers south of the Equator, because the Decree of 1836 [supra, note 42] had brought the “further Period” to an end; and (2) even if the Decree of 1836 had not brought the “further Period” to an end, Great Britain was justified in claiming to be released from her engagement to abstain from exercising her “prior right,” because Portugal, along with her other broken engagements, had failed to fulfill the consideration promised therefor (BFSP, Vol. XXVII, pp. 566-571).

55 Buron v. Denman, [1848] 2 Exchequer Reports 167; Hudson, op. cit., pp. 699-701.

56 Cf. correspondence quoted in Buron v. Denman, loc. cit.

57 Mathieson, op. cit., p. 61.

58 “British Notification of the Blockade of the Gallinas . . . London, March 19,1849,” BFSP, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 552; Commodore Fanshawe to the Governor of Sierra Leone, Nov. 26, 1849, BFSP, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 395.

59 Captain Joseph Denman in Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Select Committee on Slave Trade, op. eit., p. 29.

60 Treaty with the King and Chiefs of Bonny, Bonny River, June 6, 1844, BFSP, Vol. LVII, p. 335. Cf. agreements cited infra, note 61, or those listed in HCT, Vol. XXII, pp. 209-237.

61 For the years 1841-1843, see agreements in BFSP, Vol. XL, pp. 896-925; for 1846, BFSP, Vol. XXXV, pp. 317-322; for 1847-1848, BFSP, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 836-874.

62 Mathieson, op. cit., p. 124.

63 Cf. data in St. George Leakin Sioussat, “ James Buchanan,” The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 316 ft. The Vice Admiralty courts were concerned with stateless vessels (supra, note 44). Cuban importations fell from 10,000 in 1844 to 419 in 1846 (Mathieson, op. cit., p. 66). Between 1810 and 1846 about 117,000 slaves were rescued at sea (Coupland, op. cit., p. 179). If the average vessel carried 443 slaves (Lord Palmerston in BFSP, Vol. XXVII, p. 568), the equipment provisions had forestalled the embarkation of as many more.

64 John Bassett Moore, A Digest of International Law, Vol. II, pp. 928-943; Hugh G. Soulsby, The Eight of Search and the Slave Trade in Anglo-American Relations, 1814-1862 (Baltimore, 1933), pp. 64, 87, et passim; A. P. Newton, “The United States and Colonial Developments,” The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783- 1919, ed. by Sir A. W. Ward, and G. P. Gooch (New York, 1922-1924), Vol. II, pp. 247, 251; Art. 8 of Webster-Ashburton treaty of Aug. 9, 1842, between the United States and Great Britain, ECT, Vol. VI, p. 859.

65 Arts. 8, 11, and Appendices to Anglo-French slave trade convention of 1845, BFSP, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 4, 11, 13 ff.; M. G. Bolin-Jaequemyns, “Quelques Mots sur I’Acte GSnSral de la Conference de Bruxelles et la Repression de la Traite,” Bevue de Droit International et de Legislation Comparie, Vol. XXIII (1891), pp. 572 ff

66 Du Bois, op. cit., pp. 163, 174, 178; BFSP, Vol. XXXV, pp. 342, 532

67 Cf. data in report of H. M. Commissioners at Sierra Leone, Dec. 31, 1845, BFSP, Vol. XXXV, pp. 312 ff., and other annual reports by the same officers, especially in BFSP, Vol. XXX, p. 700.

68 Wheaton, Histoire, Vol. II, pp. 331-342, quoting a Brazilian protest of Oct. 22, 1845.

69 Supra, notes 51, 22.

70 Wheaton, Histoire, Vol. II, pp. 331-343.

71 The fifteen-year period beyond the date of “general abolition,” stipulated by the Separate Article, had not yet expired; for, according to Lord Aberdeen (BFSP, Vol. XXXIV, p. 697), Brazil had not enacted any prohibitory laws until November, 1831 (ibid., Vol. XX, p. 165) and April, 1832 (ibid., p. 178).

72 Ibid., Vol. XXXIV, p. 697. Art. 1 (supra, note 22) remained in force because theconvention contained no provisions respecting its own duration and because Art. 1 was not concerned with the right of search, but only provided the basis for calculating when the right of search, granted elsewhere in the convention, should expire in accordance with the provisions of the Separate Article of Sept. 11, 1817.

74 Act, 8 & 9 Vict., c. 122, HCT, Vol. VII, pp. 51 ff.

75 Mathieson, op. cit., p. 131; Manchester, op. cit., p. 256.

76 Ibid., pp. 130-135.

77 Viscount Palmerston in H. C. Debates, Vol. CLI, 3d ser., cols. 1334-1341, July 12, 1858. The Brazil Slave Trade Repeal Act of April 19, 1869 (32 Vict., cap. 2, BFSP, Vol. LIX, p. 400) stated that “the circumstances which led to the passing of the said Act no longer exist, by reason of the cessation of the importation of slaves into Brazil from Africa” (ibid.). Following certain preliminary legislation in 1871, Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 (J. Fred Rippy, The Historical Evolution of Hispanic America [New York, 1933], pp. 36 ff.).

78 H. C. Debates, Vol. CLI, 3d ser., cols. 1334-1341, July 12, 1858. The figure was based upon the conservative assumption that two Africans died on land or sea for each one who reached the new world alive, and that Brazil had been importing about 70,000 a year.

79 The first clause in Art. 1 (supra, note 22), that “it shall not be lawful . . . ”imposed a subsisting obligation upon Brazil not merely to forbid the trade, but also toabolish it; and Great Britain had a right to enforce that obligation (Foreign SecretaryAberdeen, BFSP, Vol. XXXIV, p. 709). “The Government of Brazil,”said ForeignSecretary Palmerston, “cannot but be aware of the nature of the extreme rights whichby the law of nations the violation of a treaty engagement gives to the State towardswhich the engagement is violated; and the BrazilianGovernment ought to do justiceto the moderation which has been displayed by Great Britain in perseveringly forbearing from the exercise of that right” (BFSP, Vol. XL, pp. 342 ff.). As Foreign SecretaryPalmerston pointed out in February, 1850, the failure of Brazil to deem and treat herslave-trading subjects as pirates was itself a violation of Art. 1, since Brazil had not yet promulgated such a law (BFSP, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 471).

80 BFSP, Vol. XXXIV, p. 708 et seq. Lord Aberdeen said that if Great Britain had chosen to hold that right in reserve so long as the search provisions had remained in effect, she was not debarred from exercising it now (ibid.).

81 The Earl of Aberdeen to M. Lisboa, Aug. 6, 1845, BFSP, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 710 ft.Lord Pahnerston similarly declared in 1850 that “ The British Government has contenteditself with exerting an action distinctly authorized by the terms of the treaty of 1826,and falling within the scope of the functions which the Brazilian Government ought itself to have cooperated in performing” (BFSP, Vol. XL, pp. 342 ff.).

82 Brazilian protest of Oct. 22, 1845, quoted in “Wheaton, Histoire, Vol. I I , pp. 331- 343.

83 Francis Wharton, A Digest of the International Law of the United States, Vol. I ll , p. 145.

84 Du Bois, op. cit., pp. 178 ff.

85 George Grafton Wilson, International Law (9th ed., 1935), pp. 363 ff.

86 Bemis, op. cit., p. 333; SCT, Vol. XI, p. 621.

87 Mathieson, op. cit., p. 183.

88 Convention of Oct. 2, 1845, between Great Britain and Muscat, ECT, Vol. VII, pp. 818 ft.; Act of Sept. 5, 1848, to carry the treaty into effect, ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 753.

89 Six Arab treaties of 1847, ibid., pp. 798-802; Act of Aug. 1, 1849, to carry them into effect, ibid!., pp. 802-808.

90 Agreements of 1847 and 1850 with Portugal, BFSP, Vol. XXXVI, p. 589 and ibid., Vol. XL, p. 242; agreement of May 6, 1850, with Muscat, ECT, Vol. IX, p. 557.

91 Treaty of June 5, 1873, between Great Britain and Zanzibar, ECT, Vol. XIV, pp. 693 ff.; Supplementary Convention of July 14, 1873, ibid., pp. 695 ff. It was calculated at about this time that about 20,000 slaves were imported into Zanzibar each year from the interior; that about 16,000 of these were being re-exported; and that only about 1,000 of the latter number were being rescued by British cruisers (Coupland, op. tit., p. 212).

92 Convention of April 14, 1873, between Great Britain and Muscat, ECT, Vol. XIV, p. 414.

93 Proclamation of Jan. 25, 1876, by the Sultan of Zanzibar, ECT, Vol. XV, p. 493; Coupland, op. cit., pp. 215-218. After Zanzibar became a British Protectorate (1890) the Sultan abolished the legal status of slavery in 1897 with compensation for slaveowners (ECT, Vol. XXIV, pp. 1084 ft.) and decreed total emancipation on June 9, .1909 (ibid., Vol. XXVI, p. 1232).

94 laid., Vol. XIV, p. 324.

95 ibid., Vol. XV, p. 419.

96 Hid., p. 278.

97 Chap. I I , Arts. 4, 6, 9, General Act of Berlin, Feb. 26, 1885, ECT, Vol. XVII, pp. 66 ff.

98 Art. 3 of Ch. I of the General Act of Brussels, ibid., Vol. XIX, p. 282 et passim.

99 Ed. Englehardt, “La Conference de Bruxelles de 1890, et la Traite Maritime,''Bevue de Droit International et de Legislation ComparSe, Vol. XXII (1890), p. 607; Thomas N. Barclay, “Le Droit de Visite, Le Trafic des Esclaves, et la ConfSrence Antiesclavagiste de Bruxelles,” ibid., pp. 460-465.

100 Arts. 42, 45, ECT, Vol. XIX, pp. 291 ff. France struck out Arts. 42-61 (A. Merignhac, TraitS de Droit International [Paris, 1907], Vol. I I , p. 521). As amended, the Naval Instructions appended to the Anglo-French slave trade convention of 1845 were still in force (Rolin-Jaequemyns, op. cit., pp. 572 ff.) but they were less comprehensive in that they did not accord the so-called “right, ”and did not apply upon reasonable suspicion of slave-trading, but only of statelessness (supra, note 65). Eng

101 “Award of the Arbitration Tribunal appointed to decide on the grant of the French Flag to Muscat Dhows, the Hague, August 8, 1905,” ECT, Vol. XXIV, pp. 774- 781; John Westlake, “The Muscat Dhows,” The Collected Papers of John Westlake on Public International Law (Cambridge, 1914), pp. 523-530; Ellery C. Stowell and Henry F. Munro, International Cases (Boston, 1916), Vol. I, pp. 350-357. In Art. 32 of the Brussels Act France had promised not to grant her flag to vessels owned or fitted out by persons other than her subjects or protigSs (HCT, Vol. XIX, p. 289).

102 Supra, note 1.

103 Foreign Secretary Grey in H. C. Debates, Vol. XIX, 5th ser., col. 1589, July 21, 1910; Wilson, loc. cit. This conformed to the limitations of the British slave trade laws. E. v. Casaca (1880, Privy Council, 5 A. C. 548, 566; Mew's Digest of English Case Law, Vol. XIII, p. 1375) involved such a Portuguese vessel, seized wrongly under those laws in the harbor of Sierra Leone. Cf. The Bicardo Schmidt, ibid., Vol. XIX, p. 27.

104 League of Nations, Question of Slavery, Report Presented to the Sixth Assembly by the Sixth Committee, A.130.1925.VI.Geneva, 1925, p. 1.

105 League of Nations Treaty Series, Vol. LX (1927), p. 263. On Sept. 1, 1939, this convention was in force between more than forty parties (International Labor Office, The International Labor Code 1939 [Montreal, 1941], p. 857). During the negotiations Sir Frederick Lugard proposed that slave-trading vessels on the high sea be “recognized” in international law as engaged in piracy and liable to penalties as pirate ships (League of Nations, Temporary Slavery Commission, Minutes of the Second Session Held at Geneva, 1925 [C.426.M.157.1925.VI.Geneva, Sept. 1, 1925]). Sir John Harris states that it is the governments of France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal which obstruct, “to this day” (1933), the British effort (supra, note 36) to have the slave trade declared piracy under general international law (Harris, op. cit., p. 218).

106 League of Nations, Slavery: Eeport of the Advisory Committee of Experts Provided by the Assembly Eesolution of September 25, 1931 (C.618.1932.VI.), p. 7. See ibid., passim, on the status of the African inland slave trade and of virtual as well as legally recognized slavery and slave-trading in many parts of the world at that time. In 1933 there were believed to be about five million “legally-owned” slaves in the world, and attention was then drawn especially to China, Abyssinia, Arabia, and Liberia (Harris, op. cit., pp. 237 ff.). Art. 11 of the Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye (Sept. 10, 1919) adopted the de facto point of view in its reference to “the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms” (quoted in Hackworth, op. cit., “Vol. I I , p. 667). By Art. 13 the Parties abrogated the General Act of Brussels inter se (ibid.).

107 IT. S. Secretary of State Stimson to Minister Francis at Monrovia, June 7, 1929, quoted ibid., p. 671.

108 Quoted ibid., p. 670. Reference was made, however, to the large traffic in children which was being carried on by pilgrims to Mecca (ibid.). Cf. further on these and similar practices and institutions, Harris, op. cit., pp. 236-262 et passim.