order and for account of a merchant residing abroad. It had before been laid down, that to ship the goods for slave trade purposes is an offence under the Act, if the shipper was cognizant of the intent: it is now said, that the port is an exclusively slave trading port, and it is not suggested that this was probably unknown, as it had before been said, to any but the dealer in slaves and the police employed against them, nor any account taken of the statement of the accused before the House of Commons, which had been read in Court, disclaiming the very possibility, as a mere shipping-agent, of any knowledge of what was to be done with the goods: the only answer suggested is one which may give a plain and simple account of what the merchant abroad intended to do with the goods at such a port. It seems to follow, therefore, that the mere shipping-agent in England is bound by the Act to be provided with such an account; and if he does not give it, the inference, to be drawn as to the object of the shipment from the character of the port, will not only attach to the adventure, but will cut deeper, since if you are bound to have and to produce a knowledge, and you do not produce it, it seems that the account is to be held not to be producible. The notion that the Act of Parliament must be understood, not only as punishing a proved guilty knowledge, but as demanding from the accused party proof of an innocent knowledge of the plans and objects of a foreign merchant residing abroad, in respect of a transaction, in which the former has had no other share than that of a simple shipping agency in England, by order and for account of the latter, pervades the whole of the proceedings, and shows itself more clearly in the remarks that follow. “It is possible,” continues the Judge, “that this might be an adventure, not slave trading; if so, nothing can be more simple than to prove it: Martinez & Co. might prove that it is an honest adventure. If it was a dishonest adventure, it could not be expected that Martinez & Co. should be called to give evidence at all; but if it were an innocent adventure, it would be very easy for them to be called. It is true that persons are to be convicted, not by evidence they did not produce, but by evidence produced against them--not on suspicion, but on conviction; but where such evidence is offered of the trade being slave trading, as is offered here, namely, that the vessel was loaded with goods” (in itself, as the learned Judge had formerly stated, not conclusive of guilt)--“that a cargo of goods was dispatched” (to which the same former observation applies) “to a place, where slave trading is the only known object for which vessels _ever_ go” (known to slave traders and the police employed against them, as was also aptly remarked by his Lordship; although one of these, Captain Denman, seems to have known of 800 tons, according to his evidence (see p. 329); and upwards of 1,000