6781. Mr. _Forster_.] Are you of opinion that there is nothing questionable in the proceedings of our navy in destroying the property of foreigners in a foreign country, and encouraging the native chiefs in those proceedings, with reference to the moral effect of it upon the minds of the chiefs and the natives?--It depends entirely upon circumstances. If aggressions have been committed against persons belonging to Sierra Leone (and I can conceive no aggressions or injuries so great as that of making British subjects slaves), I consider that those people are in every respect entitled to the same protection as white people. Indeed I consider that the liberated Africans of Sierra Leone have peculiar claims to the regard and protection and favour of England. I see no distinction whatever between them and British subjects. Supposing three British subjects had been held in this way, I conceive it would have been highly improper to have allowed such a proceeding to pass unnoticed. 6782. _Chairman._] You rest your proceeding at the Gallinas, not upon the general ground of using means for putting down the slave trade, but upon the specific offences committed by the chiefs of the Gallinas against British subjects settled at Sierra Leone, and their inhospitality to your crews upon the coast?--Precisely so. 6783. Therefore you do not consider that you are making a precedent for indiscriminate descents upon the coast, wherever a slave barracoon is established, for the purpose of destroying it as a means of putting down the slave trade?--In the proceeding adopted by me at the Gallinas, the grounds were exactly those stated in the preceding question. At the same time I conceive that the destruction of barracoons and slave places not in settlements belonging to European powers, would be justifiable all over the coast. Nothing of the sort had been done before, and therefore I did it under very heavy responsibility. I could not have struck out a new line without some special grounds to go upon. 6784. Should you consider yourself entitled, without any of those peculiar grounds for the interposition which the proceedings at the Gallinas gave you, to make a descent upon any point of the coast under the jurisdiction of a native chief, where slaves were collected for the purpose of exportation, and destroying those barracoons, and insisting upon the slave trade being given up?--I should think myself perfectly justified in doing so whoever the slave factor might be. Whether it would be borne out by my instructions from the Admiralty would depend upon what those instructions were. 6785. You would conceive yourself, if you were an officer on that station now, entitled to pursue that as a general method of putting down the slave trade?--I should certainly have pursued it had I remained.