time and passed. On
the 9th of the same month Lord John Russell recommended the house to
acquiesce in the amendments of the lords, which was agreed to; and thus
the bill finally assumed the very shape which Sir Robert Peel at first
suggested should be adopted.

BILL FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE PORTUGUESE SLAVE-TRADE, ETC.

On the 8th of March Sir Robert Inglis took occasion to remind Lord
Palmerston of the address which had been carried on the subject of the
Portuguese slave-trade, and begged to be informed whether the government
had succeeded in obtaining a treaty with Portugal, or were prepared to
resort to the measures promised by the noble lord in the event of the
failure of such negociations. In reply, Lord Palmerston stated, that
after four years spent in negociation, a note, which had just been
received from Lord Howard de Walden, assured him that there was no
longer any hope of procuring the assent of the Portuguese cabinet to
a treaty for the suppression of the traffic. It was, therefore, the
intention of government to introduce a bill which should give to her
majesty's cruisers and commissioners the same right of search with
regard to slave-trading vessels met with below the line, which they
already possessed in the case of those which were found north of the
equator. This bill was introduced on the 10th of July, and it passed
through all its stages in silence until it arrived at the second reading
in the house of lords. On that occasion Lord Minto said, that he deemed
it necessary to state the present condition of the law relating to
the slave-trade, and the existing treaties between Great Britain and
Portugal. The most important of these treaties, his lordship said,
was that of 1815, by which the slave-trade was declared illegal; and
Portugal undertook to bring about its eventual abolition, consenting in
the meantime not to suffer her flag to be employed in that traffic
for any other purpose than to furnish slaves for her own transatlantic
dominions. For this concession England had agreed to pay, and had paid,
L600,000. In 1817, an additional convention was entered into, defining
still more precisely the limits within which the slave-trade to the
Brazils was to be exercised. By this treaty the Portuguese government
undertook, within two months from the date on which it was signed, to
pass a law declaring the commerce in question unlawful, and subjecting
persons implicated therein to punishment. It was