e letter of Mr. Wise (whose judicious
and zealous efforts in the matter can not be too highly commended),
addressed to Mr. Hamilton, the British envoy, as to the best mode of
suppressing the evil, deserve your most deliberate consideration, as
they will receive, I doubt not, that of the British Government.

It is also worthy of consideration whether any other measures than those
now existing are necessary to give greater efficacy to the just and
humane policy of our laws, which already provide for the restoration to
Africa of slaves captured at sea by American cruisers. From time to time
provision has been made by this Government for their comfortable support
and maintenance during a limited period after their restoration, and it
is much to be regretted that this liberal policy has not been adopted by
Great Britain. As it is, it seems to me that the policy it has adopted
is calculated rather to perpetuate than to suppress the trade by
enlisting very large interests in its favor. Merchants and capitalists
furnish the means of carrying it on; manufactures, for which the negroes
are exchanged, are the products of her workshops; the slaves, when
captured, instead of being returned back to their homes are transferred
to her colonial possessions in the West Indies and made the means of
swelling the amount of their products by a system of apprenticeship for
a term of years; and the officers and crews who capture the vessels
receive on the whole number of slaves so many pounds sterling _per
capita_ by way of bounty.

It must be obvious that while these large interests are enlisted in
favor of its continuance it will be difficult, if not impossible, to
suppress the nefarious traffic, and that its results would be in effect
but a continuance of the slave trade in another and more cruel form; for
it can be but a matter of little difference to the African whether he is
torn from his country and transported to the West Indies as a slave in
the regular course of the trade, or captured by a cruiser, transferred
to the same place, and made to perform the same labor under the name of
an apprentice, which is at present the practical operation of the policy
adopted.

It is to be hoped that Her Britannic Majesty's Government will, upon a
review of all the circumstances stated in these dispatches, adopt more
efficient measures for the suppression of the trade, which she has so
long attempted to put down, with, as yet, so little success, a