“The employment, the dispatch of the vessel,” says the learned Judge, “is no conclusive proof of the guilt, till going further, and showing that the party doing so did it for the illegal purpose charged.” But then, for the purpose of beginning the inquiry, without which there would have been no beginning of it, the foundation must be laid in the employment of the vessel by the person accused. If slave trading is intended, and the vessel be sent for the purpose, the important consideration then is, whether the person employing the vessel is cognizant of the intention. We have seen the large meaning of the terms slave trading. It is not like wine trade--dealing in wine: it is not dealing in slaves, but dealing in Manchester and Birmingham goods, adapted and purposely manufactured for the African markets, so long as it is found that slave traders, that is, as heretofore the term has been understood, dealers in slaves--resort to the port for which they are shipped. Of course the crime having been committed by some one, that is, by the person who intended that slave traders should use them for slave purposes--and no other will be supposed as possible--the existence of the law punishing such an intention demands that an inquiry should be made. For this purpose the commission-agent in England, who employed the vessel, must be laid hold of--not that in that one act there is a conclusive proof of guilt, until it be further shown that he was cognizant of and intended the illegal object, but because an inquiry is imperative under the Act. With whom the right and duty of making it rests it matters not--any one that may be so disposed from a philanthropic and public-spirited motive. It is not enough that a Parliamentary inquiry has been made already--it is not enough that the law-officers of the Crown see no reason to institute a further inquiry--it matters not, if the case has been lying in all its details before the public, the ends of public justice are never satisfied until the so-called inquiry takes the shape of a bill before the Grand Jury--_the inquisition_ of the country. There certain depositions are secretly made upon oath, which you shall never see; and upon this _mild_ and _fair_ procedure you will have your very life, and the life of every one dear to you placed in jeopardy, for I believe that there is nothing in the mercantile profession which is likely to prepare a man, and a man’s family, for his being treated as a felon. It is indeed true, that in the evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons merchants are treated by some of the witnesses in a tone and manner becoming only those times in which merchants were tolerated for the sake of the money that might be extorted from them, but otherwise were considered as a caste whose instinct was money-making by all means, right or wrong, and against whom every crime might be presumed; but, whatever may be in the heart of some, and whatever may rise to their lips, against a profession