Now it is hardly necessary to remind the House of The Resolution come to by a Committee which sat upon this subject in 1830, which distinctly condemned the location of the Mixed Commission Court at Sierra Leone as highly inconvenient for the purpose, on the ground of its situation, not only at so great a distance as 800 or 1,000 miles from the places where the Slaves to be adjudicated were then principally captured, but also so far to windward, that captured ships were sometimes eight or nine weeks, and on an average upwards of five weeks, on their passage from the place of capture to Sierra Leone, occasioning a loss of the captured Slaves amounting to from one-sixth to half of the whole number, whilst the survivors were generally landed in a miserable state of weakness and disease. Such undoubtedly was the case then, and had been the case then for many years, and has been still the case, though in a somewhat less degree, since the Report of that Committee. We regret that means should not have been taken earlier to remedy this crying evil. As the Slave Trade however now exists, that evil is no doubt much diminished. By the provision introduced into our more recent Slave Trade Treaties, the Cruizers of the contracting parties are authorised to seize Vessels merely on the evidence of their equipment, without making it necessary to wait till Slaves are actually on board, and thus a much smaller number of Slaves is brought for adjudication and exposed to this kind of middle passage. Moreover the exertions and improved quality and system of our Cruizers, the depressed condition of the sugar-planters of Cuba and Brazil, the extension of legitimate traffic, and other causes, have succeeded in diminishing altogether the amount of Slave Trade; and the scene of its greatest activity, North of the Line, lies now within a moderate distance of Sierra Leone, or to the windward of it. The reasons, therefore, for removing the Courts of Adjudication from that Colony are not what they were. If, however, one place of adjudication only is still to be assigned, and only one place of release, to the wretched victims of the Slave Dealer, we believe that Ascension, or one of the Portuguese Islands, would on the whole be best adapted for that purpose, as being more convenient than Sierra Leone to the Bights of Benin and Biafra, and to the Portuguese Settlements South of the Line, now the principal seats of the existing Slave Trade, and (owing to the set of winds and currents in that direction) as being easy of access even from the farthest extremities of the Windward Coast, where any Slave Trade is carried on. We are aware, however, that these are arrangements which can only be made in conjunction with Foreign Powers, and that they involve many considerations which have not been fully before us. They are, however, of high importance to the