We may add that we have elsewhere put forward once
more our suggestion that the change in the system of government in Portugal ought to be seized by our Foreign Office to insist
that Portugal shall carry out her international obligations in regard to slavery and the slave trade, and that the new regime shall begin with abolishing in fact as well as in name these crimes against civilisation. We are bound to assume that the men who have founded the Republic are sincere in their protestations in regard to human liberty. It would be an outrageous insult to them to believe otherwise. That being so, it cannot be an unfriendly act to urge them to put themselves right with public opinion here and throughout the world by making their first aa the striking of the shackles from the unfortunate plantation slaves in the cocoa islands, and by putting an end to the horrors of the slave-raiding in Angola, some of which horrors are described in the letter by Mr. Harris, the organising secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, which we publish in our issue of to-day.
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