the information which he got to be trustworthy. His flattering account of the Brazilian government, given, no one will doubt, in perfect good faith, bears a strong family-likeness to those which have lately been given in Parliament by Lord Malmesbury, Mr. Fitzgerald, and Mr. Osborne. Your lordship said at the time to Mr. Roebuck that he evidently spoke "from information not gathered by himself, but furnished to him by interested parties."

Later, Mr. Roebuck became interested in Brazil as a Director of an Anglo-Luso-Brazilian Navigation Company, which for a time ran monthly screw-steamers to Rio. I remember, when passing through Lisbon at the end of 1859, on my way to Brazil, hearing that Mr. Roebuck was then in Lisbon on the affairs of that Company, in the management of which he took an active part. If the member for Sheffield, without personal knowledge of Brazil, could fall into error, who is acute enough to be proof against that dangerous thing, a little learning? No one would for one moment suspect Mr. Roebuck of knowledge of an act for which, as a Director of that Company, he was responsible-the conveyance of slaves from the northern ports of Brazil to Rio Janeiro by the Anglo-Luso-Brazilian steamers. This was brought to the knowledge of Lord Clarendon by Mr. Westwood, the Consul at Rio, on October 22d, 1860, in the following terms:

"I think it my duty to report to your lordship, that the steamship Milford Haven' which arrived here on the 3rd instant from Liverpool, vid Lisbon, St. Vincent, Pernambuco, and Bahia, brought from the two last-mentioned ports

44 slaves, as shown by the enclosed extracts from the daily report of the harbour-visit. The 'Milford Haven' is one of the vessels belonging to the Anglo-Luso-Brazilian Company, which established, about the end of last year, a line of steamers between Milford Haven and Brazil; but the Company has since altered the port of departure from Milford Haven to Liverpool. The vessels belonging to this Company are navigated under the Portuguese flag; but I believe that the enterprise is an English one, or, at any rate, that most of the shareholders are British, and residents in Great Britain. The steamers are officered and manned chiefly by Englishmen, having merely a flagcaptain and a small portion of the crew Portuguese, so as to enable the ships to use the Portuguese flag. I understand that the undertaking has not turned out a successful speculation, and I believe that the Company is about to give up the line."

These slaves were carried to Rio Janeiro, as part of a slave-trading system which has for years past been remonstrated against by British Secretaries of State, beginning with Lord Malmesbury, denounced in the Brazilian Legislature, and censured by Brazilian Ministers,-of which Brazilian statesmen have said that it is attended with all the cruelties of the African slave-trade, and that it is, in fact, a disguised slave-trade. The same Mr. Consul Westwood thus described the traffic in one of his official reports :-"Many of these unfortunate beings are brought from estates where they were born, and torn away from relatives and old associations in the most inhuman and cruel manner possible." Sir Henry Howard thus described the system, April 8th, 1854:

"All at once a slave-trader comes into the market from Rio de Janeiro, buys up from the needy or avaricious

masters all those slaves he can obtain, and in most cases is the cause of the separation of a father from his wife and children, and vice versa, the unfortunate African being, perhaps, sold at his ulterior destination to some harder master, or to some other unprincipled speculator."

It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Roebuck never imagined the possibility of the use of the steamers of his Company for the above purpose. There is none of our public men who would more abhor connexion with the sins of slavery. But is not this a striking example to prove how cautious should be those who are strangers to Brazil in accepting the information of persons connected with Brazilian enterprises, or of Brazilian agents? With the same honourable candour with which Mr. Roebuck not long since at Sheffield spoke about other questions, he will probably admit that, on this question also of Brazil, on which he once differed from your lordship, he has found that you were wiser than himself.

It is very important to make known some of the means by which Brazilian agency in England poisons the fountains of knowledge, confounds truth, obstructs good relations between the two governments, and is the enemy to both countries.

66

I have already mentioned that the person to whom your lordship's description of a Brazilian agent" was generally understood by persons interested in Brazilian affairs to apply, is a member of the Reform Club, and that also he is notoriously the paid correspondent of the Rio Jornal do Commercio, and has been notoriously the inspirer of the Daily News, and informant of other English journals on Brazilian questions. It is easy for

those who are familiar with his operations, to trace his hand in different journals, under various signatures. He may have co-operators and sub-agents. I cannot and do not accuse him individually of every one of the acts which I proceed to recount as specimens of the operation of Brazilian agency. But he is the chief workman.

The Brazilian public chiefly, if not almost exclusively, learn what passes in England about Brazil from the long letters of the paid London correspondent, translated into Portuguese, in the Jornal do Commercio. In those letters reappear the articles which the "Brazilian agent” has inspired, or the letters which, under different pseudonyms, he has written in English newspapers; and they are always represented as independent public opinion. It is well known that during the last year he constantly supplied materials and addressed letters to the daily Conservative organs as well as to the Daily News. He has not expected his statements in the Jornal do Commercio to be scrutinized here. I give an instance of misrepresentation. The "London correspondent" described the debate of last year on Lord Malmesbury's motion in the House of Lords as if he had been present, as he doubtless was, and he naturally described it to the advantage in every way of the defenders of the Brazilian government. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe happened to put a question to Lord Russell about Russia and Poland, just before Lord Malmesbury began; and the faithful chronicler represented Lord Stratford as prefacing his question with words conveying disapproval of the conduct of Her Majesty's government about Brazil. The newspapers of the day following generally reported Lord Stratford's observations

at some length; not one of them reported the slightest allusion to the Brazilian question. Your lordship can judge whether it was likely that Lord Stratford, of all men, should have expressed incidentally an opinion on a foreign question which was immediately to be formally discussed. But it was important to make it believed by the Brazilian public, that the weighty opinion of the renowned diplomatist was in favour of Brazil; and the Brazilian public will probably never know the contradiction.

Completely contradictory statements on the same subject are made in the Jornal do Commercio, and in English newspapers. The Brazilian Legation has had part in the establishment and direction of three Brazilian railway companies organized in London, with a guarantee of 7 per cent. on the capitals from the Imperial and Provincial governments of Brazil; and the "Brazilian agent" actively assisted in the distribution of shares of these companies on their formation. One of these is the Bahia and San Francisco Company, the working of which has greatly disappointed the shareholders, who now find all or most of the guaranteed 7 per cent. swallowed up by excess of expenses over profits. A "communication" is made to the Brazil and River Plate Mail, a newspaper published in London, absolving the Brazilian government from all blame, and asserting that "the engagements of the Brazilian government have been fulfilled to the letter." * But the London correspondent of the Jornal do Commercio had shortly before, wishing to persuade the Brazilian

* Brazil and River Plate Mail, August 20th, 1864; "Communicated" article.