London, June 18, 1858 In the sitting of the House of Lords on June 17, the question of the slave-trade was introduced by the Bishop of Oxford, who presented a petition against that trade from the Parish of St. Mary in Jamaica. The impression these debates are sure to produce upon every mind not strongly prejudiced is that of great moderation on the part of the present British Government, and its firm purpose of avoiding any pretext of quarrel with the United States. Lord Malmesbury dropped altogether the right of visit, as far as ships under the American flag are concerned, by the following declaration: On the Opposition benches there was also no attempt made at vindicating the right of visit on the part of Great Britain against the United States, but, as Earl Grey remarked, The question then turns exclusively upon the point, and even this point seems abandoned by Lord Malmesbury, whether or not vessels suspected of usurping the American flag may not be called upon to produce their papers. Lord Aberdeen directly denied that any controversy could arise out of such a practice, since the instructions under which the British officers were to proceed on such an occurrence instructions drawn up by Dr. Lushington and Sir G. Cockburn had been communicated at the time to the American Government and acquiesced in by Mr. Webster, on the part of that Government. If, therefore, there had been no change in these instructions, and if the officers had acted within their limits, the American Government could have no ground of complaint. There seemed, indeed, a strong suspicion hovering in the minds of the hereditary wisdom, that Palmerston had played one of his usual tricks by effecting some arbitrary change in the orders issued to the British cruisers. It is known that Palmerston, while boasting of his zeal in the suppression of the slave-trade, had, during the eleven years of his administration of foreign affairs, ending in 1841, broken up all the existing slave-trade treaties, had ordered acts which the British law authorities pronounced criminal, and which actually subjected one of his instruments to legal procedure and placed a slave-dealer under the protection of the law of England against its own Government. He chose the slave-trade as his field of battle, and converted it into a mere instrument of provoking quarrels between England and other States. Before leaving office in 1841 he had given instructions which, according to the words of Sir Robert Peel, must have led, had they not been countermanded, to a collision with the United States. In his own words, he had enjoined the naval officers to have no very nice regard to the law of nations. Lord Malmesbury, although in very reserved language, intimated that by sending the British squadrons to the Cuban waters, instead of leaving them on the coast of Africa, Palmerston removed them from a station where, before the outbreak of the Russian war, they had almost succeeded in extinguishing the slave-trade, to a place where they could be good for little else than picking up a quarrel with the United States. Lord Woodhouse, Palmerston s own late Embassador to the Court of St. Petersburg, concurring, in this view of the case, remarked that, Yet, whatever may have been Palmerston s secret intentions, it is evident that they are baffled by the Tory Government in 1858, as they had been in 1842, and that the war cry so lustily raised in the Congress and in the press is doomed to result in much ado about nothing. As to the question of the slave-trade itself, Spain was denounced by the Bishop of Oxford, as well as Lord Brougham, as the main stay of that nefarious traffic. Both of them called upon the British Government to force, by every means in its power, that country into a course of policy consonant to existing treaties. As early as 1814 a general treaty was entered into between Great Britain and Spain, by which the latter passed an unequivocal condemnation of the slave-trade. In 1817 a specific treaty was concluded, by which Spain fixed the abolition of the slave-trade, on the part of her own subjects, for the year 1820, and, by way of compensation for the losses her subjects might suffer by carrying out the contract, received an indemnity of 400,000. The money was pocketed, but no equivalent was tendered for it. In 1835 a new treaty was entered into, by which Spain bound herself formally to bring in a sufficiently stringent penal law to make it impossible for her subjects to continue the traffic. The procrastinating Spanish proverb, A la ma ana, was again strictly adhered to. It was only ten years later that the penal law was carried; but, by a singular mischance, the principal clause contended for by England was left out, namely, that of making the slave-trade piracy. In one word, nothing was done, save that the Captain-General of Cuba, the Minister at home, the Camarilla, and, if rumor speaks truth, royal personages themselves, raised a private tax upon the slavers, selling the license of dealing in human flesh and blood at so many doubloons per head. Now what shall England do with Spain? Repeat her protests, multiply her dispatches, renew her negotiations? Lord Malmesbury himself states that they could cover all the waters from the Spanish coast to Cuba with the documents vainly exchanged between the two Governments. Or shall England enforce her claims, sanctioned by so many treaties? Here it is that the shoe pinches. In steps the sinister figure of the august ally, now the acknowledged guardian angel of the slave-trade. The third Bonaparte, the patron of Slavery in all its forms, forbids England to act up to her convictions and her treaties. Lord Malmesbury, it is known, is strongly suspected of an undue intimacy with the hero of Satory. Nevertheless, he denounced him in plain terms as the general slave-dealer of Europe as the man who had revived the infamous traffic in its worst features under the pretext of free emigration of the blacks to the French colonies. Earl Grey completed this denunciation by stating that wars had been undertaken in Africa for the purpose of making captives, who were to be sold to the agents of the French Government. The Earl of Clarendon added that both Spain and France were rivals in the African market, offering a certain sum per man; and there was not the least difference in the treatment of these negroes, whether they were conveyed to Cuba or to a French colony. Such, then, is the glorious position England finds herself in by having lent her help to that man in overthrowing the Republic. The second Republic, like the first one, had abolished Slavery. Bonaparte, who acquired his power solely by truckling to the meanest passions of men, is unable to prolong it save by buying day by day new accomplices. Thus he has not only restored Slavery, but has bought the planters by the renewal of the slave-trade. Everything degrading the conscience of the nation, is a new lease of power granted to him. To convert France into a slave-trading nation would be the surest means of enslaving France, who, when herself, had the boldness of proclaiming in the face of the world: Let the colonies perish, but let principles live! One thing at least has been accomplished by Bonaparte. The slave-trade has become a battle-cry between the Imperialist and the Republican camps. If the French Republic be restored to-day, to-morrow Spain will be forced to abandon the infamous traffic.
Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58