The difference of levels does not appear to present any difficulty. Barometrical observations carried into the heart of a country are not much to be relied on for ascertaining the elevation of that country above the sea. But supposing, in the present case, the instruments to have been correct, (which rarely happens with travelling barometers,) the level of the Quorra at the ferry of Comie would appear to be something higher than the level of the Tsad, as given by Doctor Oudney. It may be observed, that the whole of the interior of northern Africa is a succession of elevated table-lands, the steep sides of the surrounding mountains being westerly and southerly, while, interiorly, they present little or no declivity. From the summit of those passed by Clapperton, there was no descent to the plains beyond them, and the mercury appears to have descended, rather than to have risen, as far as the ferry of the Quorra; but we have little doubt the whole question will now be speedily decided, as Major Rennell says, by firing a shot from Fernando Po. Any single person with a few scissors, needles, and brass ornaments for the wives of Badagry, Yourriba, Kiama, Boussa, and Youri, would make his way without interruption, and from the last mentioned place to Bornou, avoiding altogether the Fellatas of Bello. The pastoral Fellatas are a harmless people. It is by means of single travellers that we shall eventually be able to settle the geography of northern Africa.

But, gentle and docile as the natives are now known to be, the period of their arrival at any considerable degree of civilization is, we fear, very distant, and not likely to be accomplished while the Fellatas keep possession of the most fertile portions of Soudan; and

perton. This river, like an eel, seems to slip out of our fingers, when we think that we have got the fastest hold of him. It would appear now, as if we had him in a kind of trap; perhaps a shot from Fernando Po, northwards, may find him in the Sharee. As both Bello, and the sheik of Gadamis, describe the Quorra as proceeding very much southerly, from the quarter opposite Sackatoo, and then to turn to the left or eastward, one can only conceive that the Sharee agrees to this description. The sheik, moreover, told Laing, that it was turned out of its southerly course to the eastward, by the chain of mountains which answer to those granite ones of Clapperton. With respect to the general subject of the Niger, ancient as well as the supposed modern one, and that of the middle ages, (Edrissi, &c.) I have now little doubt that its supposed continuous course was made up of different parts of different rivers, running nearly in the same general parallel (i. e. E. and W.), but never paid much attention to by travellers, in respect of their courses.' Resuming the subject, he again writes thus

'I have gone over again the sketch of Mr. Hornemann, at p. 133 (African Association), as well as the intelligence contained in the pages following; and it there appears that the Mahrabot makes the Gaora (qu. Quorra?), p. 135, run into the river Zad, forming a continuation of the same river or water, under another name. Whether the informant meant to express a river, or Hornemann mistook a lake, intended by the other for a river (from the sameness of the word expressing both), I do not know. I should certainly suspect that a lake was intended, but not so understood; for in page 136, it is said, that," the Budumas, a very savage people, always keep in the middle of this stream" (the Zad); and as we know from Denham, &c., that these people inhabit the islands of the lake Zad, it can only apply to the lake, I think."'

while that greatest of curses, the slave-trade, is suffered to continue on the sea-coast. That pestiferous charnel-house of Sierra Leone, which the original speculators, under the specious name of philanthropists, pretended would effect so much for the civilization of the native Africans, has, in fact, been productive only of disease and death; the experiment of free negro labour and negro instruction has here wholly failed. This detestable spot has no one good quality to recommend it: as a naval station, it is perfectly useless; as a commercial depôt, utterly worthless; and to the poor negroes, it is more destructive than the slave-trade itself, about a third part of the many thousands captured and sent thither from that slave-dealing hive in the bight of Benin, to be adjudged and liberated, being indeed liberated from all their sufferings by death on the long passage, or after being landed.* It was to remedy those evils that an establishment has recently been formed on that most beautiful, fertile, and magnificent of islands, Fernando Po; it is the favourable prospect that these evils will be remedied, that has caused so much jealousy, and so many false reports as to its unhealthiness, from the free negro-dealers of Sierra Leone. Instead of listening to them, let us hear what Captain Owen says, after a residence of ten months. We have before us a letter of the 23d September last, in which he writes thus:

'The health of our settlement has been as good as it would have been in any part of the world. There has not been a single death for nearly four months, out of a population of six hundred and fifty souls; and I have only to add, that nothing can exceed the good order and good disposition of my little colony, and that no spot in Africa is so eminently suited for a naval and commercial station.'

The deaths that occurred in the first five or six months were occasioned by ulcered legs got in clearing away the jungle, and, by the imprudent artificers, while in a state of fever, indulging to excess in ardent spirits; but the causes, and with them the melancholy effects, have ceased. The four months in which there were no deaths were those in the very midst of the rainy season, during which, it appears, the fall of rain did not average more than one hour in four and twenty, while, on the opposite shore of the continent, they were deluged with constant heavy rain. As a naval

Take, as a specimen of this mortiferous paradise, an abstract from the 'Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Colony of Sierra Leone,' ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, in May 1827. From that Report it appears that, from the original settlement, in 1787, to the 23d February 1826, the total number of different descriptions, arrived as settlers in the colony was 21,944.

Of these, in April, 1826, there were remaining of the several classes as follows:Nova Scotians

578 636

West Indians and Americans 141

station, this island has an excellent roadstead, and a convenient place for careening ships; plenty of wood, clear water, and refreshments. Fruits of various kinds are found in a wild state in the woods, as are also the two valuable spices, the nutmeg and the clove; its yams are the finest in the world, and a native potatoe is no bad substitute for the common one; its forests abound with several species of trees, that are admirably adapted for naval purposes, and, among others, two or three of such magnificent dimensions as to serve for lower masts of ships of war, from first-rates down to sloops. The North Star frigate came to Fernando Po with her main and fore-mast rotten; they were replaced in twelve days with two that were growing in the woods on her arrival. A transport had also been supplied with a lower mast, and several merchants trading to the coast had touched for refreshments. In fact, Sierra Leone has already been abandoned as a naval station ; and our cruisers on the coast would not look at it, if the commissioners for the liberated Africans were removed, as we trust they speedily will be, to Fernando Po, where it appears houses are ready for their reception.

As a commercial station, its advantages are already felt. Our trade to the bight of Benin is at all times subject to the caprice and extortions of the native black chiefs, at whose mercy the ships and their crews are placed, from the moment they enter any of the large rivers which discharge themselves into this gulf. By making Fernando Po the rendezvous for their ships, and a depôt for their goods, and visiting the rivers in small craft, or decked boats, their commerce may be carried on, not only without risk, but with great advantage, both as to profit and the preservation of life. When a road, now in progress, has been opened to the summit of the peaked mountain, which is ten thousand feet high, and every where clothed with verdure, any kind of climate may be had, from the equatorial to the temperate range of the thermometer, and every kind of fruit and vegetables raised, whether tropical or European.

Nor is this all. If it be considered as a matter which really interests the government and the people of England, (and who can doubt this?) that an efficient check should be put to the slavetrade in the very focus of that infamous traffic, (for stopping it altogether is out of the question,) the possession of Fernando Po, we do not hesitate to affirm, will do it more effectually than the whole squadron of men of war now employed on the station, and at a third part of the expense. We entirely concur with Captain Owen in opinion, that a couple of small steamers, armed with a few swivels, to run up the rivers and disperse any slaves that may be collected for embarkation, would soon drive away, also, the whole gang of negro-traffickers. In short, the whole line of coast

forming the bight of Benin can be so effectually watched from Fernando Po, that no slave-vessel could well escape. Captain Owen, with his boats, has captured no less than five vessels and eight hundred slaves within a twelvemonth. It will be said, perhaps, that this efficient interruption would only drive the trade to some other part of the coast; admitting it to be so, the atrocious system could only be re-established at an enormous expense, and under increased difficulties; while our cruizers, being freed from watching the bight of Benin, would be enabled so much the more effectually to annoy the ruffians in their new haunts.

The destruction of the trade in this quarter could not fail to have the best possible effect in promoting the civilization of the most populous and fertile portion of northern Africa, to which the access, as we have now seen, is most easy. It is clear that foreign slavery would cease were there no longer a demand for its victims; and about as certain that the people would then turn their attention to the pursuit of agriculture, for which the country is so well adapted. Trade would extend itself to the coast, a constant intercourse would be established with the natives, and civilization go hand in hand, as it always has done, with commerce. The discovery of new countries and peoples would follow, and we should not much longer be ignorant of those regions of Africa, which are watered by so many immense rivers, whose streams are discharged into the bight of Biafra, immediately opposite to, and overlooked by, Fernando Po; such as the old and new Calabar, the Bonny, the Cameroons, and the Rio del Rey, whose sources are most undoubtedly not in Soudan, whatever may be the case with regard to the Formosa of Benin.

ART. VI.-1. Observations upon the Power exercised by the Court of Chancery of depriving a Father of the Custody of his Children. London. Miller. 1828.

2. Observations on the Natural Right of a Father to the Custody of his Children, and to direct their Education. By James Ram, Esq., Barrister at Law. Maxwell. 1828.

THE

HE late decision in the Wellesley case, by the House of Lords, has finally settled a question in jurisprudence of the most interesting and important character, whether regarded in a legal or in a moral point of view. In both these respects we think its principles well worthy of being brought distinctly before our readers. In the Court of Chancery, and in the House of Lords, the important principles involved in it were necessarily much overlaid by the complicated details of evidence which formed the groundwork of the case, while-the case once proved in point VOL. XXXIX, No. 77.—Q.R.

24

of

of fact-the analogy of previous precedents was too close to leave much room for the discussion of the first principles of the jurisdiction, and still less of the great moral considerations with which it is connected. A few pages may, we conceive, be well occupied in presenting to the public, stripped of barren details, and, as far as possible, of technical learning, a view of the origin, principles, and tendency of a jurisdiction coming so home to the bosoms of men, and pressing so closely on the affections of nature, and the nearest ties of social life.

The legality of the jurisdiction exercised by the Court of Chancery as to guardianship over infants to any extent, and still more to the extent of depriving, for any cause, a living father of the custody of his children, having been impugned, we shall first lay before our readers a short view of the legal question; and we shall then offer some observations on the policy and wisdom of such a jurisdiction, supposing it to be, as it now unquestionably is, fully sanctioned by the existing law of the land.

The earliest notice of any jurisdiction of the kind is to be found in some legal authors, who speak of the power and the duty of the crown, as parens patriæ, to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves,-infants, idiots, and lunatics. Staundford (a Judge of the Common Pleas, in the reign of Elizabeth, whom Lord Bacon calls the best expositor of a statute that hath been in our law,') says, 'the king has the protection of all his subjects, and of all their lands, goods, and tenements: and so of such as cannot govern themselves, nor order their lands and tenements, his grace, as a father, must take upon him to provide for them, that they themselves, and their things, may be preserved.* Fitzherbert (a learned Judge of the Common Pleas, in the reign of Henry VIII., who is quoted by Staundford) says, 'the king is bound, of right, to defend his subjects, their goods and chattels, lands and tenements; and that every one is in protection of the king, who has not forfeited it by some offence.' This jurisdiction, it is to be observed, could not fall within the province of either of the three great courts of common law, established in separate jurisdictions, since the reign of Edward I.; the King's Bench, in its original constitution, being confined to criminal matters the Common Pleas to suits between subject and subject, and the Court of Exchequer to suits between the king and his debtors and accountants, and between one crown debtor and another. That this species of protective authority should not, in early, or in any times, be frequently put in requisition, is not surprising, when we consider the various other modes afforded by the law of providing guardians, in ordinary cases, for chilStaundford's Exposition of the King's Prerogative, c. x., fo. 37.

+ Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, fo. 232.

dren,