been room. They were measured as above when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck, to get air and water.... On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from air and light; they were lying nearly in a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death; and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand. After enjoying, for a short time, the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows could restrain them; they shrieked, and struggled and fought with one another, for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. There is nothing which slaves, in the mid-passage, suffer from so much as want of water. It is sometimes usual to take out casks filled with sea-water as ballast, and when the slaves are received on board, to start the casks and refill them with fresh. On one occasion, a ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of the casks, and on the mid-passage found, to their horror, that they were filled with nothing but salt-water. _All the slaves on board perished._” At the time of this seizure, Brazil was precluded from the slave-trade north of the equator; but the period had not arrived when, by treaty, the southern trade was to be extinguished. “The captain of this slaver was provided with papers, which exhibited an apparent conformity to the law, and which, false as they may have been, yet could in no way be absolutely disproved. The accounts of the slaves themselves, who stated they had _originally_ come from parts of Africa _north_ of the line--the course which the slaver was steering--her flight from the English cruiser--were circumstances raising suspicion the most violent; but the reader will be not a little disappointed to learn, that, with all this, the case was deemed too doubtful, in point of legal proof, to bear out a legal detention; and the slaver therefore, after nine hours of close investigation, was finally set at liberty, and suffered to proceed.... It was dark when we separated, and the last parting sounds we heard from the unhallowed ship, were the cries and shrieks of slaves, suffering under some bodily infliction.”--_Walsh_, vol. ii. pp. 474-484. The question arises, ought not humanity to have overcome all these considerations, and led to the deliverance of the victims? If one death in such circumstances had occurred, ought not a sense of justice to have led to the detention of the slaver, and the conveyance of the captain to his own government, to be tried for murder?