We fully admit the merits of that Administration, whether we look to the Officer employed, Captain Maclean, or to the Committee under whom he has acted, which, with the miserable pittance of between 3,500_l._ and 4,000_l._ a year, has exercised, from the four ill-provided Forts of Dixcove, Cape Coast, Annamaboe, and British Accra, manned by a few ill-paid black soldiers, a very wholesome influence over a Coast not much less than 150 miles in extent, and to a considerable distance inland; preventing within that range external Slave Trade, maintaining Peace and Security, and exercising a useful though irregular Jurisdiction, among the neighbouring Tribes, and much mitigating and in some cases extinguishing some of the most atrocious practices which had prevailed among them unchecked before. We would give full weight to the doubts which Captain Maclean entertained as to his authority, until specifically so instructed, to prevent vessels, suspected of being intended for the Slave Trade, but not having Slaves on board, from trafficking in lawful goods within his jurisdiction; and we do not infer from that circumstance, that the Government of these Forts had any partiality for an abominable Traffic, which, on the contrary, they have done much to check; but we think it desirable, for the sake of enlarging the sphere of usefulness of these Settlements, and of giving greater confidence in the character and impartiality of their Government, that it should be rendered completely independent of all connexion with Commerce, by a direct emanation of authority from the Crown, and that it should be placed, with increased resources, in direct and immediate communication with the general Government of the Empire. We recommend, further, the reoccupation of several of the Forts, such as Apollonia, Winnebah, and Whydah, abandoned in 1828, when the Government was handed over to the Committee of Merchants, and the reconstruction of others, on however small a scale, on other similar points. In some cases the climate will be found to be not worse, in others better, than on other parts of the coast of Africa; but this evil may be very much mitigated, if not entirely removed, by the employment of such Europeans only as are already inured to a tropical climate, and of British Subjects of African descent, who, we believe, may now be found, either within our African Settlements or our West India Colonies, fitted for almost every branch and grade of service[4]; and we look upon such Establishments as of high importance, not for the extension of Territory, but of that control over the Slave Trade, and wholesome moral influence over the neighbouring Chiefs, which we have described as having been exercised by the existing Forts, and which is much needed at those places to which we have particularly alluded, as well as others.