The Brazilians continued to engage in the Transatlantic Slave Trade until the late 1880s despite the efforts of the British Royal Navy to stop the transportation of enslaved people out of Africa. Brazil was one of the chief commercial rivals of Jamaica and the other sugar-producing colonies in the British Caribbean.

In 1848 the House of Commons appointed a select committee to investigate the conditions and prospects of sugar and coffee planting in Britain's possessions in the East and West Indies and Mauritius, and to consider what measures could be adopted to relieve the hardship then being suffered.

Among those who gave evidence was a Brazilian mine owner, Senor Jose Stephen Cliffe MD, who was questioned on 17 February 1848. The following extracts are from the minutes of his testimony published in the select committee's first report (24 February 1848). He is replying to questions raised by the committee's chairman about the condition of the Africans on arrival in Brazil after their voyage across the Atlantic.

1416. What is the largest mortality you ever knew occur? - I knew a case in which only 10 escaped out of 160; that was a vessel that belonged to a friend of mine...

1418. You know that to be a fact? - I do; and some Englishmen know it to be a fact, but they will not give evidence about it. But that is an extraordinary case, which is perhaps unparalleled. They were taking in water in the evening; the next morning they were to take on board 50 or 60 men; a British cruiser was seen in the offing; they immediately went to sea with what they had got. It was said, both by the captain and the owner of those slaves, that there was only water sufficient for a drink once in three days; consequently, upon their arrival, when he went in the evening to look at them he saw only those 10, and he said, "They look so miserable that I am ashamed to have anything to do with them; if anybody will give me 300 milreas," which would be about £37, "I will sell them." A young man who was present, without seeing them, bought them. Whether they lived or not I do not know. One, perhaps, might have an iron constitution and live; but I would not vouch for that fact.

1419. Do you ascribe all those horrors to the British-African blockade fleet? - People that are in the habit of reading do not ascribe it to that; we ascribe it to a popular outbreak of feeling, which carried the Government away to act in a manner that they would not otherwise have done; but those that do not read the newspapers consider that it is an act of Her Majesty's Government, wishing to crush our advance to prosperity.

1420. You in Brazil do not consider yourselves responsible for the cruelties that take place on the passage? - Not a bit of it; that we charge altogether to this side of the water; that we lay to the thorough-bred white men that began slavery.

1421. The fact is this, that a great portion of the cruelties and deaths arising in the course of the slave trade are caused by want of water? - Perhaps more from that than from anything else, because in the tropics very little food will sustain the system; when the system is in a state of torpidity, and when the air is exceedingly foul, the functions of life become very considerably diminished; absorption takes place of any portion of fat they have, and they can resist the want of food for some time; but the want of water is a thing not to be resisted in the tropics...

1423. It is order to evade the activity of the British cruisers that your people, who are engaged in the slave trade, are obliged to stint the slaves in water? - Of course.

1424. And that they are obliged to crowd them into such small spaces? - It arises probably from that; I do not know whom to blame for that, whether it is the captains, or the agents, or the owners, or whom, but certainly they do bring an immense number in a very small space; I have known 350 brought in a 90 tons schooner.

1425. Will you describe how they are packed? - It has been described to me (I have never seen it done) that they are laid upon their sides parallel to each other. They are generally boys from 10 to 12 years of age; they are put upon their side, and if they do not lie parallel upon their side a plank is put upon them, and a sailor will get upon it and jam them down, so as to make them fit compact. I have never seen that done, but I have heard slaves speak of it; and I have heard captains state it, who I know would have no object in stating it if it were not true.

Later during the testimony the chairman asks Cliffe about the increase in sugar production in Brazil.

1516. You are not a sugar planter? - No. I was inclined to buy, for a son I have, a sugar plantation. Since you have crushed the West India islands, sugar plantations in Brazil have risen up to a large extent; because if a man has a shilling a day in pay, he cannot compete with men who pay nothing; and the government of Brazil are now making very extensive establishments on the river M_____, between Bahia and J___; they have offered land to anybody who will go and take it; they offered some to me.

1517. To what extent has the cultivation of sugar in Brazil been increased? - I am told by those who are conversant with it, that it is rapidly increasing, and no doubt from the means they have of disposing of their sugar, it will increase much more because slaves are getting cheaper.

1518. The sugar is grown so cheaply, that you fed your cattle and your pigs upon sugar? - I did. I am not a regular sugar planter. I live in a part where there are barren lands; the diamonds are found upon the ridges where the land is bad; but I planted sugar in the valley for those purposes.

1519. And you could grow sugar cheap enough to permit you to feed your cattle and pigs upon it? - We could grow it to any extent. Within 10 leagues of the part where I lived, there is an extent of 60 leagues, and 10 or 12 in breadth; that is the finest land I ever saw in my life, and there is abundance of timber, from 20 to 25 feet in diameter, such timber as I hardly ever saw in any part of the world. In this wood district the cane becomes ripe in 10 or 12 months.

1520. Sir E Buxton] You think that the slave trade has increased in the last few years? - Yes, of course it has, or we should have paid 800 milreas for slaves instead of 400.

1521. What is the reason for that increase? - A greater number of vessels being sent to the coast of Africa.

1522. But what has induced the merchants of Brazil to import a larger number of slaves than they formerly imported? - Because one cargo of slaves is worth 10 cargoes of dry goods.

1523. Is it not a fact, that the increase in the import of slaves has been occasioned by the increased cultivation of sugar? - I rather think that the increase of sugar planting at the present time arises from the circumstance of the slaves becoming cheaper; if they were at 800 milreas each, they would not have carried the sugar cultivation on, because then they could not have bought slaves on credit.

This account of Cliffe's evidence to the select committee is taken from Bath Library Service's original edition of the first report. You can read further testimony in the sections on The 1848 Select Committee and The Morant Bay Rebellion.