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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: position was invidious; on one side were the tradition of the
British flag and the state of public sentiment at home; on the
other, the certainty that if the slave were kept, the ROMNEY would
be ordered at once out of the harbour, and the object of the Mixed
Commission compromised. Without consultation with any other
officer, Captain Jenkin (then lieutenant) returned the man to shore
and took the Captain-General's receipt. Lord Palmerston approved
his course; but the zealots of the anti-slave trade movement (never
to be named without respect) were much dissatisfied; and thirty-
nine years later, the matter was again canvassed in Parliament, and
Lord Palmerston and Captain Jenkin defended by Admiral Erskine in a
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