THE NEW SLAVE-TRADE TREATY.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 17, 2 July 1842, Page 68

THE NEW SLAVE-TRADE TREATY.

[From the Colonial Gazette.'] An important historical event recently occurred in London, when the representatives of France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, signed a treaty with Great Britain, in which the four foreign powers agreed •to adopt the English laws against the slave trade. Those laws de- i clare the actual engagement in the trade to be piracy, and the embarking of capital in it to be felony. All the powers mutually grant to each | other the right of search into vessels bearing their flag. It has been objected that Austria, Prussia, and Russia, who have no direct interest in the slave trade, or in the employment of negro slaves — two of them having no ports, and none of them having tropical colonies — exercise small magnanimity in declaring against j it. That, however, iff not the just point of j view : they have given the example of the highest nations of the world in conceding a very important privilege, the right of search, aa a proof that a great principle is to be preferred in international morals to mere national punctilio; and the voice of all was wanted ; in pronouncing the concentaneouß judgment of Europe against a traffic which but a little while ago was universally tolerated, Europe has for ever repudiated that traffic as a barbarism unworthy of the civilized world. r J he temper of the United States may be difficult to count upon, and it may depend upon other things than the treaty itself; but Brazil, the other great American state which connives at the trade, seems half disposed to abolish it, if she receive the friendly help which her economical condition needs ; while Spain and Portugal, the helpless and the treacherous pander to others' misdoings, will not venture to defy the collective powers of Europe. A vast stride has been made in the diplomacy touching the slave-trade. Has any progress been made towards the actual extinction of the trade ? Yes, so far as ' the progress of opinion goes ; but no further. The treaties do not touch it. The trade depends upon these facts. A large tract of middle* America is unpeopled, or has but recently begun to be peopled ; Europe has supplied capital and intelligence to open up the resources of the rich and extensive territories ; Africa supplies the only race that can labour effectively in the region : a migration, therefore, from Western Africa to the opposite continent, it is beyond any power to arrest. To multiply penalties for the slave trade is only to make its concealment more necessary, and to aggravate its hidden horrors ; whereof not the least is the new wholesale traffic in negro infants, which is superseding that in adults, because the infants are [ more portable and more easily conveyed out of sight. The true way to extinguish the slave trade is to turn the migration, which cannot be stopped, through another channel — to supersede the forced migration of alaves by a free migration of volunteers, similar to the migration from Europe to the temperate zone of America. Unlimited license for a free migration, properly regulated by good laws, like our Passenger Acts, would annihilate the slave trade; which treaties with all the Governments of the globe could not do. '

Thk Poor Man's Church.— At MarketLavington two infanta were taken to the church for interment ; the younger one had been baptised, the elder one only " named ;" the minister refused to admit the body of the latter within the walls, because it had been named only and not fully baptized.