(From Chambers Journal.)

In the Times there has lately appeared some articles worthy of serious consideration on the subject of the slave trade - the substance of the whole being, that the maintenance of a British preventive squadron on the coast of Africa is little better than a farce; and that, both on the score of humanity and expense, it ought to be withdrawn. All who peruse the authorised statements on this much misunderstood question must, we think, arrive at the same conviction. The following statistics, taken from Foreign Office reports, are singularly instructive:

Thus the proportion of captures has seldom reached ten per cent.; and this at a cost to Great Britain of about £700,000 a year, and the loss of a large number of mariners. If any conclusive confirmation were wanted of the truth which has been so repeatedly laid down, that the fluctuations of the slave trade were wholly irrespective of our intervention, and depended solely on the demand for slave produce in the markets of Europe, it would be found in a second table quoted by the Times, which exhibits a comparative view of the extent of the trade at different periods, and of the prices, at such periods, of ordinary Havana sugar ;

The suppression of the African slave trade by armed cruisers is demonstrated to be an impossibility. John Bull must change his tactics : his costly philanthropy has done nothing but mischief !

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