But another instance happened only in August last.  Six British ships, the Thomas, Captain Phillips; the Wasp, Captain Hutchinson; the Recovery, Captain Kimber, of Bristol; and the Martha, Captain Houston; the Betsey, Captain Doyle; and the Amachree, (he believed,) Captain Lee, of Liverpool; were anchored off the town of Calabar.  This place was the scene of a dreadful massacre about twenty years before.  The captains of these vessels, thinking that the natives asked too much for their slaves, held a consultation, how they should proceed; and agreed to fire upon the town unless their own terms were complied with.  On a certain evening they notified their determination to the traders; and told them, that, if they continued obstinate, they would put it into execution the next morning.  In this they kept their word.  They brought sixty-six guns to bear upon the town; and fired on it for three hours.  Not a shot was returned.  A canoe then went off to offer terms of accommodation.  The parties however not agreeing, the firing recommenced; more damage was done; and the natives were forced into submission.  There were no certain accounts of their loss.  Report said that fifty were killed; but some were seen lying badly wounded, and others in the agonies of death, by those who went afterwards on shore.

He would now say a few words relative to the Middle Passage, principally to show, that regulation could not effect a cure of the evil there.  Mr. Isaac Wilson had stated in his evidence, that the ship, in which he sailed, only three years ago, was of three hundred and seventy tons; and that she carried six hundred and two slaves.  Of these she lost one hundred and fifty-five.  There were three or four other vessels in company with her, and which belonged to the same owners.  One of these carried four hundred and fifty, and buried two hundred; another carried four hundred and sixty-six, and buried seventy-three; another five hundred and forty-six, and buried one hundred and fifty-eight; and from the four together, after the landing of their cargoes, two hundred and twenty died.  He fell in with another vessel, which had lost three hundred and sixty-two; but the number, which had been bought, was not specified.  Now if to these actual deaths, during and immediately after the voyage, we were to add the subsequent loss in the seasoning, and to consider that this would be greater than ordinary in cargoes which were landed in such a sickly state, we should find a mortality, which, if it were only general for a few months, would entirely depopulate the globe.

But he would advert to what Mr. Wilson said, when examined, as a surgeon, as to the causes of these losses, and particularly on board his own ship, where he had the means of ascertaining them.  The substance of his reply was this—­That most of the slaves laboured under a fixed melancholy, which now and then broke out into lamentations and plaintive songs, expressive of the loss of their relations,