5237. _Chairman._] Who generally are purchasers of prize vessels?--The greater portion are purchased on speculation; the number sold now is not at all, in proportion to the number taken, what it was before the Spanish treaty, under which most of the vessels are condemned, require that the vessels should be cut up, but some are bought on speculation, and come into the fruit trade, and others go into the Mediterranean trade; others are bought by slavers. 5238. Mr. _Evans_.] Do you know any thing of the slave ship Almirante, for which vessel the sum of 600_l._ was offered by an officer of Government, to be used as a tender, which offer was not accepted, and the vessel was sold at 1,500_l._, and immediately went down to the Bonny and took away 600 slaves from that port?--The Almirante was captured before my time at Sierra Leone, but I think it is very likely, because such things were taking place continually. 5239. Mr. _W. Patten_.] When you were at Sierra Leone, you have stated in your evidence already, that the liberated Africans were carrying on the trade with much greater advantage than the white merchants, in consequence of the price at which they obtained goods at public auctions?--Not entirely in consequence of that, but that has been one great means to assist them. For many years past, before those prize goods were sold at Sierra Leone, the liberated Africans had gradually been working themselves into notoriety; most of them are very much addicted to trading, and the persons whom they have supplanted are a lazy, indolent, worthless set, who cannot compete with them at all, and having completely driven out of the market the Maroons and settlers, they are now gradually driving out the white merchants. 5240. There is then this additional disadvantage in those auctions at Sierra Leone, that they are destroying the trade of the white merchants of the place, by the other merchants being able to purchase goods at a price which is not remunerating to the British merchant?--I consider it a great advantage. 5241. Is it not a great disadvantage in one respect, that it is discouraging the trade between England and the coast of Africa at that particular point?--No, I think quite the reverse; the supply of goods will be the same whoever are the receivers, and the extent of our export to Sierra Leone will not be diminished by altering the colour of the merchants there. 5242. But if it should be desirable to establish a general trade with that part of the coast in a legitimate way, does not the sale of goods at those public auctions, at materially reduced prices, offer a great impediment to English merchants conducting trade upon that part of the coast?--I think its first effect might be that; but its ultimate effect, I think, would be far different. I think the great point is to encourage the use of such articles, and to increase the desire for them; and the British goods will always, in competition, beat out the foreign goods from the market.