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, and more consonant with the original policy of restoring the captured African to his home.

JOHN TYLER.

WASHINGTON, February 21, 1845.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to ratification, a treaty of peace, friendship, navigation, and commerce between the United States and the Republic of New Granada, signed at Bogota on the 20th of December last.  A copy of the papers on file in the Department of State relating to the treaty is also herewith communicated, for the information of the Senate.

JOHN TYLER.

WASHINGTON, February 21, 1845.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I herewith transmit to the Senate, in answer to their resolution of the 14th instant, a report of the Secretary of State, with the accompanying papers.[145]

JOHN TYLER.

[Footnote 145:  Instructions to Hon. Caleb Cushing, commissioner to China and envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the Court of China, etc.]

WASHINGTON, February 21, 1845.

To the House of Representatives of the United States: