But in regard to goods and merchandise, should the Committee advise The House to make such dealing illegal? Now all the witnesses, even those who advocate this view most strongly, admit that legitimate trade, by which is meant the exchange of merchandise for produce, is most beneficial to Africa, and co-operates materially with the cruizer in his operations, whether directly by the assistance and information with which the British trader supplies him, or indirectly by diminishing the necessity of a trade in Slaves, as the means of procuring European or other goods; they admit that nothing therefore would be more injurious to the interests of Africa, than to interfere materially with the operations of lawful commerce. It appears, moreover, that in every place on the Coast North of the Line, (to which limits our inquiries have mainly been confined,) with the exception of perhaps two or three points, a lawful trade of more or less extent is or has been carried on contemporaneously with, and often, nay generally, by the same persons as, the Slave Trade: they have told us that the same goods, such as cottons, rum, tobacco, guns and gunpowder, are employed in both trades; and that, although those employed in the Slave Trade are often of an inferior description, yet that quality alone will not furnish the means of distinguishing between one and the other, and that, practically, there are no means of making such a distinction; they have told us that any restriction on traffic which they would recommend, must therefore be confined to places or persons _solely_ or _principally_ concerned in the Slave Trade, and that the law should not attempt to interfere with any other. The question still remains, how this is to be carried out? With regard to those places, where the Slave Trade has been extinguished, no difficulty will arise; but with regard to those places, not few in number nor of slight importance, where, as in Bissao now, and as it has been and may be again, in the Brass and Bonny Rivers, the most important marts for lawful trade upon the Coast of Africa, a trade in produce and slaves is carried on together and by the same persons; or where, as in Whydah and Popo, a trade in produce has been gradually growing up and gaining upon the Slave Trade in proportion as the enterprise of the British merchant pushes on the one and the vigilance of the British cruizer checks and cripples the other, how should the Legislature deal with them? Shall they be lawful or unlawful ports or persons? What is to legalise the traffic in such cases? What proportion, or what positive amount, of lawful traffic? But, indeed, how is the lawful traffic to spring up at all under such circumstances of exclusion?