FRENCH SLAVE TRADE IN  1820.                  23
duals were imprisoned on bare suspicion ;—what lengthened
and laborious examinations, public and private, were had in
order to discover the guilty individuals ?   But here, murders
have been committed by wholesale. Hundredsand thousands
of innocent individuals have been robbed of what is more
valuable than property, or even life—their liberty—and have
been subjected to the most cruel and ignominious bondage
for ever.  Crimes have been perpetrated which cause huma-
nity to shudder ; and the ministry of the Marine is found
not merely not lending itself heartily to their detection and
punishment, but frowning on those who have the boldness
to stand forward to denounce such crimes, and covering
with the broad shield of its patronage and panegyric the
persons accused of being implicated in them.    The case is
altogether monstrous.
And who, after all, is this Colonel Schmaltz, so distin-
guished by the eulogy of the Minister of the Marine, of
M. Courvoisier, and of M. Mackau ? Is he not the same
individual who is found depicted by Messieurs Correard
and Savigny, in their uncontradicted work, entitled, ' Nau-
frage de la Frégate Méduse,' as having acted so merciless-
ly and unfeelingly towards his own countrymen, in the cir-
cumstances of unparalleled distress in which that unhappy
shipwreck plunged them ? And of him can it be seriously
believed that he would feel for Jaloffs or Bambarans the
commiseration which his own countrymen in vain endea-
voured to excite in his bosom : or that his principles would
have led him to make any extraordinary efforts to save them
from the slave chain ?
It is a further proof of the feeling of the ministry of the
Marine on this subject, that not only has it been found im-
possible to obtain any notice of the contents of M. Giudi-
celly's pamphlet in the French journals, but that even the
attempt to procure the insertion of an advertisement an-
nouncing its publication has been frustrated by the censors
of the press. The pamphlet has indeed been widely cir-
culated, and has produced a strong impression on the public
mind : but this has been in defiance of the means employed
to prevent its being known.
But the question recurs, What is now the state of
the French Slave Trade ? The Minister of the Marine
affirms, that it has been suppressed. The statements, how-
ever, of M. Morenas and M. Giudicelly, amply confirmed as
they have been by numerous independent authorities, prove
that, so recently as the month of October 1019, this trade
w»s still extensively carried on by the inhabitants of Senegal