Niger, with which he was well acquainted. Had it not been for his seasonable aid, the few who now survive would have in all probability perished dismally, aground on those burning and pestilential sand-banks. On the 21st of October, after their arrival at Sierra Leone, Mr. Willie died, and, finally, Dr. McWilliam's health and spirits gave way, and he lay between life and death for three weeks. During that period Capt. Bird Allen, Lieut. Stenhouse, Mr. Woodhouse, assistant-surgeon, Mr. Willmot, clerk, and many other brave proxies for the ardent philanthropists at home, paid the debt of nature.-The scenes on board the Soudan, since she had left the model-farm with her dying freight, had been no less awful. When her gallant commander, Lieut. Fishbourne, brought her into Fernando Po, he was the only efficient man on board. The Wilberforce arrived there on the 1st of October in an equally distressed condition. As soon as the news of these horrors reached England, it was of course decided that both the diplomatic and agricultural branches of the scheme must be abandoned; but it then became necessary that one vessel should re-ascend the river, and rescue the survivors, if any, of the band who had been so strangely left on the wreck of the metropolis. Eight volunteers, six of whom had already proved the dangers of that fatal scene, readily undertook the humane task; and the Wilberforce, under the command of Lieut. Webb, re-entered the Nun on the 2nd of July, reached the confluence of the Niger and the Tchadda on the 18th, and succeeded in bringing out the people and the Amelia schooner on the 27th. During the twenty-five days they were thus employed, seven of this small party, although by this time somewhat inured to the climate, were again stricken down by fever-two died. Of the 145 Europeans who originally entered the river-steady, sober men, carefully selected for the duty, in the prime of life, mostly seasoned by previous tropical service, and provided with every comfort and palliative which medical art could suggest and the most lavish expenditure provide all save one suffered forty lie buried on the banks of the Niger. And thus ended Mr. Buxton's celebrated attempt to discharge what he and Mr. Stephen at that time were pleased to term 'the national debt due by England to Africa,'-a debt which the Whig ministry are now so eager to repudiate. Having not the least desire to deal hardly by these no doubt well-meaning gentlemen, we shall here insert the apology which at a meeting at Exeter Hall they themselves put forward in defence of their conduct in this business: 'It is very unjust to press more heavily on the misfortunes of pure unmixed M 2 unmixed benevolence than on those of mere gain. The merchants of Liverpool were allowed, not only without blame, but with commendation for the hardihood of their enterprise, to send forty-eight white men up the Niger, for the development of the commercial resources of the country, and to bring back eight of those men. Not only was no cry raised against them, for staying at home while they exposed others to danger, but on the contrary the loudest expressions of public approbation were bestowed on them for their enterprise.' From long observation and humiliating experience, we have unwillingly been driven to the cynical conclusion that pure, unmixed benevolence' is almost as dangerous an agent to tamper with as gun-cotton, unless it be freely diluted with the less transcendent qualities of practical knowledge and common sense. Macgregor Laird deservedly incurred the admiration of the public for himself heading an expedition which might, in his opinion, have led to great results both in a philanthropic and a commercial point of view-his merits were none the less because his object was defeated by the climate, the nature of which had been, until his visit, reported to be far healthier than that of the coast. Mr. Buxton and his friends, however, had no great right to be surprised that the same meed of praise was withheld from them, when, in defiance of Laird's experience and repeated warnings, they persisted in despatching others to succumb under dangers which were then known to be insuperable, for purposes in the history of which the horrible scarcely predominates over the ludicrous.* We now propose to accompany our readers on a short visit to the beautiful islands of the Caribbean sea, which, we have no doubt, the lawgivers of the Strand contemplate with far more satisfaction than the pestilential scenes of their incapacity which we very willingly quit. One of their Hymns for Public Worship' has this stanza : 6 'Hasten to some distant isle In the bosom of the deep, Where the skies for ever smile * In order that our readers may be enabled to estimate the market value which pure unmixed benevolence bore at that time in England, as compared with the same article when adulterated with sense and reflection, unselfish courage, and effective humanity, we may as well here state, that for the respective parts which they played in this tragedy, Mr. Jamieson received no recompense whatever; Capt. Becroft, who saved the Albert at the risk of his life, was presented with 1007.; Mr. Buxton was made a Baronet; and Mr. Stephen is now a Privy Councillor. The naval officers and men, of whose conduct it is impossible to speak too highly, were, we suppose, promoted to the death vacancies. + Heard sung in full chorus by a congregation of the Church of England, in Dublin, August, 1843—so says Mr. Thackeray.—Irish Tour, vol. ii., p. 149. But, But, notwithstanding this melodious authority, every well-informed person is now agreed as to the actual condition some few years ago of the labouring population in these colonies. We will quote on that point a witness whose sagacity and motives no one can question, and then advert to it no more. The late Lord Metcalfe wrote thus to Lord John Russell from Jamaica on the 1st of November, 1841: With respect to the labouring population, formerly slaves, but now perfectly free, and more independent than the same class in other free countries, I venture to say that in no country in the world can they be more abundantly provided with the necessaries and comforts of life, more at their ease, or more secure from oppression, than in Jamaica; and I may add, that ministers of the Gospel for their religious instruction and schools for the education of their children are established in all parts of the island, with a tendency to constant increase.' We are willing to give the Friends of the African full credit for any good which they have really brought about, and we are moreover ready to admit that their motives have been generally pure -setting aside, perhaps, a little vanity and want of charity. We are quite prepared to allow that their efforts somewhat accelerated the extinction of slavery in the British dominions, and have since mainly tended to raise the negro to his present enviable position. But that slavery would have been abolished long ere this, throughout our colonies, without their interference, we are equally convinced; and we further believe, that had they been less impatient and impracticable, or had the Government of that day been less susceptible to pressure from without,' a most wanton sacrifice of life and property might have been spared, and far more permanently advantageous results in favour of the negro and of our colonies might have been insured. But to proceed:-these gentlemen, elated with their triumphs over justice and common sense, had not the discernment to perceive that in every country the interests of the employer and the employed must be co-identical. They settled that it was for the good of the newly-emancipated negroes that a monopoly of labour should be secured to them, and therefore resisted all attempts at introducing additional immigrants, especially from Africa, as a revival of the slave-trade under another name. In short, they assumed it as their rule of action, that whatever was advantageous to the white landowner must be prejudicial to their protégés.. The planters, possessing a vast capital invested in the soil, in machinery drainage, cultivation, and cattle, were thus compelled to submit to pay an extortionate rate of wages. They indulged the hope that, ere long, reason would resume her sway, and that they would be permitted to employ the 20,000,0007. granted to them as compensation in procuring sufficient hands from abroad to cultivate cultivate their estates; for the difficulty of inducing the creole negroes to work, of course increased in proportion to the high wages paid to them. Their demands were based upon too just a principle to be directly refused;-but for several years they were evaded, and when at last some slight concessions were made, they were of a complicated and limited nature which rendered them valueless. Without entering more fully into this branch of the subject, we shall content ourselves with stating that, five years after evidence had been given before a Committee of the House of Commons, whereof Lord John Russell was a member, which must have satisfied the most prejudiced that the labouring population of the West India colonies were generally in the state of social and moral prosperity described by Sir C. Metcalfe, Sir H. M⚫Leod, and Governor Light-that the condition of the African at Sierra Leone was miserable and useless*-that additional labour was urgently required in the three great colonies of Guiana, Trinidad, and Jamaica-that the activity or languor of the slave-trade depended entirely on the high or low price of slave-sugar, and not at all on the presence of the combined squadron on the coast -and that the only efficient weapon by which that traffic could be successfully combated was cheap free-grown produce-five years after all this, we say, we find, that during the last four months of 1847 upwards of 4000 slaves have been captured by our cruisers; -and that of these, in spite of the remarkable report of the Committee of 1842 and the promises subsequently made by Lord John Russell to the West Indians in 1846, 2000 are known to have been,. as heretofore, apprenticed to idleness, vice, and want in Sierra Leone, and but 300 have reached our West Indian colonies. Meantime the planters have been forced in despair to accept Coolie immigration, which, from the physical debility and peculiar habits of that people, and from the expense of bringing them from such a distant point, has proved a total failure. Every one interested in the welfare of the old sugar colonies foresaw that a time was not very remote when capital would cease to flow in that direction, if the course of policy we have here described was persisted in, and when the 20,000,000l. of compensation money would be absorbed in paying extravagant wages for unremunerative and dishonest work. That time has come. The Mr. Macgregor Laird, in 1836, made the following computation:-Population of Sierra Leone, 50,000; Trinidad, 54,000.-Value of exportable produce grown in the Model-Colony, 3,500%; Trinidad, 560,0001.-Imports to the Model-Colony, 100,000%; Trinidad, 327,000. A negro, therefore, at Sierra Leone, produced annually, 1s. 6d., and consumed 27. worth of English goods; remove him to Trinidad, he would consume 77. 5s. 4d., and produce 121. 8s. 10d. The wages paid by the Demerara Railway Company up to October last were seven dollars and a half per week to labourers working nine hours per day, and at that price labour was scarce. high high price of sugar rather induced speculators to make large investments in India and the Mauritius-the increased distance from Exeter Hall and the abundance of labour in those countries more than counterbalancing the disadvantages of heavier freight and inferior soil; and there is little doubt that if all further supply of African immigrants had been steadfastly withheld from the West Indians, and if the free-traders had not interfered, the former would have ultimately thriven upon the decay of the latter. The revolution of last year has, however, involved all our freelabour sugar colonies in one common ruin; and, it is needless to add, the chiefest brawlers in the present Parliament for the cheap slave-grown sugars of Cuba and Brazil are the very statesmen who fifteen years ago raised themselves to power and popularity by their uncontrollable hostility to the existence of slavery in the British dominions. We ourselves are not astonished at this. The Whigs have long been notorious for their propensity to scud before the popular breeze, and it is quite in character that the very minister who despatched the Soudan, Albert, and Wilberforce to found a city on the confluence of the Niger and the Tchadda, which by its subsequent influence was to annihilate slavery all over the world, and who did not hesitate to offer up human sacrifices —we can use no milder expression with regard to the Niger expedition-for the sake of entering into anti-slavery treaties with the fuddled cannibals rejoicing in the titles of the Almanez of Footah-Jallow and the Sultan of Woolli, should, now that that mania is worn threadbare and the free-trade mania has succeeded it, sententiously declare that justice and consistency have had their day, and that the only rule of his future commercial policy must be the interest of the consumer.' It is amusing to compare Lord John's keen sense of justice on this question towards the free-traders of England-the strong-with his contemptuous disregard of the same virtue towards the West Indians -the weak. We believe, however, that both the Friends of the African and the friends of slave-grown sugar will discover-and that at no very distant period-by the withdrawal of capital and the diminution of produce, and, consequently, of social improvement in our own colonies, and by the consequent increased price of that produce in Cuba and Brazil, that the interests of the employed can no more be permanently furthered at the expense of the employer than can those of the consumer at the expense of the producer. The impediments which Buxtonism has during the last ten years thrown in the way of the West Indian planters have effectually prevented any possible competition on their part with the foreign |