“They commenced with Portugal, after nine years’ labour, concluding a treaty in 1810. In 1815 Great Britain paid £300,000 for seizing Portugal vessels engaged in the trade up to the 1st June, 1814; and the same year gave up to her £600,000, for another treaty putting an end to the Portuguese slave-trade,” except for the purpose of supplying the transatlantic possessions belonging to the crown of Portugal. “In 1817, a third treaty was made, under which the Mixed Commission Courts and Preventive Squadron were established. In 1823, another treaty was brought forth.” In the mean while the trade carried on by miscreants of all nations, under the fraudulent cover of the Portuguese flag, became a disgrace to Christendom. {12a} “In 1889, the British Parliament took the law into their own hands, and passed an act authorising British cruisers to seize Portuguese vessels engaged in the slave-trade, and constituting British Vice-Admiralty Courts to condemn them. In 1842, this law was repealed, and a fifth treaty has been made with Portugal. We are therefore about to recommence the same round again with this power; though the increase of the trade under our former treaties was from 25,000 slaves in 1807 to 56,000 in 1822; and in 1839, forty-eight vessels, under the Portuguese flag (out of a total of sixty-one slave-vessels) were condemned at Sierra Leone.” We next come to Spain. In 1814, we offered her a bribe of £800,000 if she would abolish the slave-trade at the end of five years. This she refused, but promised to prohibit the trade, except for Spanish possessions. In 1815 we got her to sign, with other powers, at the Congress of Vienna, a declaration “that the slave trade is repugnant to the principles of humanity and of universal morality.” In 1817, another treaty was got, on our paying £400,000 for it; and in 1822, a third; and “the sea swarmed with slave-ships, carrying on the slave-trade under the flag of Spain.” {12b} And so it continued until 1836, when the fourth, or Clarendon treaty was made; which Sir Fowell Buxton designates “an impudent fraud,” but which Mr. Bandinell thinks perfection, or as near perfection as a treaty can get. In it was embodied an equipment clause, by which a vessel with certain articles and fittings on board is liable to condemnation. This has had the effect of diminishing the trade carried on under the Spanish flag, but the number of slaves landed in Cuba does not appear to have been at all affected by it; forty-three vessels entering the port of Havanna, after landing their slaves on the coast of Cuba, in 1836; the annual average number in the next four years being forty-five.