shape, looking at all like business, British capital could be lent for the purpose or on the security of a slave trade adventure. All this has contributed to maintain merchants in utter ignorance of the provisions of this Act of Parliament, or of the use which might be made of its legal phraseology: but now, when a merchant, not at all suspected by his fellows--for that is on record--has been, to the astonishment of every one, dragged from his office to the police-station, and to the Old Bailey dock (more especially when this is done in spite of the resolution of the House of Commons’ Committee, in spite of the opinion of the law officers of the Crown) by a London attorney, it is time to look at the exposition of the law and the practical application of its provisions, which so extraordinary a proceeding has elicited; the more so, as it has been stated that “higher game is in view,” and that the prosecutor is still occupied in analysing the evidence given before the Committee; and when the Anti-Slavery Committee adopt and publish a resolution, in which it is stated, in reference to the late prosecution, that by it “it may be hoped a salutary check will be given to the _notorious_ implication of British capital and commerce in that nefarious traffic, the slave trade.” At any other time the absolute folly of the assertion would have suffered it to remain unnoticed; experience has shown, however, that there is somewhere the means, and that the will does exist, of doing mischief to an appalling degree. As explaining the practical operation of the law, then, I shall look upon the summing up of the learned Judge, not with a critical eye, in order to decide whether the law has been well or ill administered--this is the province of a professional man, into which it would be preposterous for me to enter. Upon the propriety or impropriety of the Judge’s acts and opinions, or even of his exposition of the law and its requirements, I must be understood as maintaining a complete reserve. For the present purpose, and for every practical purpose that can affect others, the law must be taken as laid down by his Lordship. As to its meaning, the evidence which is required under the Act to bring an individual to trial, the degree of evidence which will send a case to the Jury, that upon which a case in answer shall be demanded of the accused--until it is otherwise declared by competent authority--until then, those who really wish to obey the law must look upon the late administration of it as that which is to be expected, and the extent and applicability of the Act of Parliament to be that which is exhibited in the late proceedings.