bodies, the doctor who examined them did not say that they had all been drowned. He said of two of the four bodies that drowning was the "probable" cause of death, and that he saw no external sign of violence. In the other two cases he said he could give no opinion at all, the bodies were in so bad a state. It was seventeen days after the wreck, which was on the 7th. The Sub-delegate of Police had arrived on the spot, according to his own. account, on the 12th, but he made no attempt to see the bodies then found or hold an inquest.

As to the story of the disappearance of six bodies said to have been buried through the shifting of the sands, few will dispute Admiral Warren's remark, or, if the word is preferred, "surmise: "

"Even admitting that the winds and waves had drifted the sand over the graves, they could not have obliterated from the memory of those who buried them the place of their interment. It is also to be remarked that nothing whatever has been produced that was found on the bodies; and it is most improbable that they would have left the ship without some of their valuables about their persons."

How the writer came to know that the vessel was laden with iron and soda I cannot imagine. Mr. Vereker reported it "a general cargo." The Municipal Judge saw many empty crockery crates and barrels. The President of the Province says that the cargo consisted of coal, barrels of beer, crockery, &c. Mr. Vereker also speaks of merchandise, crockery, and coal, also tin cases of threads, handkerchiefs, and fringes.

Is there need to proceed? One might reasonably hope, in an organ of such high character as the Quarterly

Review, to find an international question, involving protection of British life and British commerce, calmly and carefully treated. The writer has not had, for an article written after a twelvemonth's interval, the excuse of haste or excitement, which might have served him for a speech made in the House of Commons in March, 1863, when the subject was new and thought promising for party polemics. Lord Russell is accused in this article of having fulminated his demands in the two cases of the "Prince of Wales' and the "Forte" only two days after he had received, on October 6, 1862, the full details of the latter question. The commonest care would have informed the writer that what Lord Russell received on October 6th was a communication from the Admiralty containing nothing but duplicates of what had reached him from me on the 22d of September, and that he had already received the main part of the story on the 2d of September, and was waiting for the supplement. The sharp and clever pen of the writer of this article is known, and his treatment of the Brazilian question much resembles the speech made on Mr. Bramley-Moore's luckless motion of March 6, 1863, by Lord Robert Cecil. The treatment in this article of the question of the officers of the "Forte" is not less unhappy than that of the question of the "Prince of Wales." It is not pleasing to see an Englishman of distinguished position, writing in a distinguished Review, discrediting the declarations of three English naval officers and gentlemen, one of them a chaplain, on the single opposing authority of a mulatto sentry, one of the lowest of the low, and taking pleasure in retailing the calumny— for calumny it is-circulated for obvious reasons, that the

chaplain and two midshipmen were intoxicated. I have not the honour of knowing Lord Robert Cecil; but I have long known the Editor of the Quarterly Review, and I know him incapable of giving currency to what he might reasonably suspect to be incorrect. There are misstatements in this article on the Brazilian question which could not have been expected from a writer, however eager his temperament, of great ability and not less industry, having political responsibilities and of high political mark, and, moreover, of a noble, ancient, and historic lineage, which should have filled his blood with patriotism and gentleness.

The story of the questions of the "Prince of Wales" and the officers of the "Forte,” and of the reprisals, yet remains to be told.

APPENDIX.

I.

Extracts from "Correspondence with British Ministers and Agents in Foreign Countries and with Foreign Ministers in England, relating to the Slave-trade. Class B." Fresented to Parliament.

THE following despatches have been selected from an immense mass to illustrate some of the questions treated in the preceding Chapters; and they throw light on the great difficulties which have always attended English Ministers with the Brazilian government, and furnish examples of tone and language certainly not less severe than any to be found in recent correspondence, whether as to the questions which led to the reprisals or as to the question of the Free Africans. A succinct and consecutive account of Sir James Hudson's Mission in Brazil may be read in an article in the Victoria Magazine for May, entitled "Sir James Hudson in Brazil."

No. I.

Mr. Hudson to Viscount Palmerston. (Extract.)

[GENERAL CORRUPTION OF CUSTOM-HOUSE OFFICERS AND LOSS OF REVENUE ASCRIBED TO THE SLAVE-TRADE-EFFECTS OF SLAVERY.]

Rio de Janeiro, August 5th, 1848.

Senhor Ferraz,* on the 21st ultimo, when debating the peculations which have recently taken place in some of the Customhouses of this country, took occasion to point out how fertile in * President of the Council, and Minister of Finance, 1859-61.