right when it was not prohibited, probably do not think it so very bad if it be committed now, since it has been prohibited by law, only that it is to be avoided on account of the penalty to which it subjects the individuals engaged in it. This has some bearing on the question of how far considerations of character would have weight with respect to such an offence.” The opinion entertained by the individual in question against the slave trade may be as strong as the strongest for any thing that appears, who has stated without its having been contradicted, that neither himself nor his family have ever been suspected of having the smallest interest in slave dealing, or in slave property, about which he has stated how his fathers have proceeded: an individual, who may, perhaps, have a very strong opinion as to the moral and religious duty of obedience to positive enactments by competent authority, and who said something to that effect in the evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons, which had been read in Court. This as to the character of the party. As to the inducement, when it is alleged that the smallness of the agency commission charged shows that the transaction was considered to be one in the ordinary course of shipping business, that consideration is pressed down by the weight of the radical defect in not having given a plain and simple account of what was intended by the foreign merchant. “It is alleged,” says the Judge, “that the profit on this transaction would be extremely small. I do not think that the petty gain of this one transaction is the matter, for it appears that Pedro Martinez & Co. do a great deal of business, and it is possible that whenever persons have a large and valuable business to conduct, _there is some small portion that the correspondent and agent would willingly get rid of if he could_; but he is not allowed to pick and choose, but he must take the whole.” In short, a London merchant, of the character which has been described, is to be supposed as not at all unlikely to commit a felony, if the alternative be to lose a valuable connexion.