7056. _Chairman._] Have you considered the subject of the removal of the Mixed Commission Court from Sierra Leone?--I have. I have heard that the places named as preferable are Fernando Po, Accra, and Ascension. The first is a foreign possession, and not to be purchased, therefore utterly out of the question. The second has dangerous anchorage; no harbour or place for breaking up ships, no territory for location, no market for goods, and no community of which liberated Africans could become a part. The third is a desert, the 150 persons now living there being victualled, as at sea, on salt provisions. Since 1839, at the latter end of which we were for the first time enabled really to attack the slave trade, the number of Africans liberated by the Mixed Commission Court has been extremely small; and this diminution may be regarded as a test of success, the grand object being to guard the coast and prevent the embarkation of slaves. In 1840 the number emancipated at Sierra Leone amounted to but 732, and in the first half of 1841 to but 291, and of these not one-sixth died between capture and emancipation. Sierra Leone is far preferable to any other place for the location of liberated Africans, there being already a large and prosperous community, comprising natives of every African race, who receive among them their newly-emancipated countrymen, and regard them with the utmost sympathy, assisting them in every way, and instructing them in the language and customs of the colony. It frequently happens that near relations are again united, and the transports of joy on such occasions well vindicate the African from the charge so often repeated. The marked inferiority of the liberated Africans who have been sent to the Gambia is owing to their small numbers, in a community having no sympathies with them, and from whom they are as much separated as from the white inhabitants; and I would ask whether intercourse with the Fantees of the Gold Coast would civilize or improve them to a greater extent?