The year of trial granted by the Government to the colonial legislatures, suspended during that time all anti-slavery proceedings. This interval was not thrown away — Mr. Buxton at once turned his whole mind to a new, though kindred question.

A few months previously he had received a visit from a gentleman of the name of Byam, who had been Commissary General of the police at the Mauritius, and had come home full of indignation at the abuses he had there witnessed. He asserted that the slave-trade was still prevailing in that island to a frightful extent; that the inhabitants and the authorities were alike implicated, and that the labouring slaves were treated with atrocious cruelty; the greater, because their loss could be so easily supplied.

The Mauritius had not been ceded to England by France till 1810, which was three years after the abolition of the British slave-trade. It appeared that, partly owing to this circumstance, and partly to the facilities afforded by the proximity of the African coast, the traffic had never been put down in those quarters, except during one or two brief intervals.

To these startling assertions Mr. Buxton could not yield immediate belief; still less could he refuse to investigate them. From Mr. Byam, and other individuals, especially General Hall (who had been a governor of the Mauritius), he obtained a large mass of documents, and after a long and minute study of their contents, he came to the certain conviction that the charge was true.