A general debate on foreign and Colonial questions was raised
in the House of Commons on Wednesday on the Foreign Office vote. The most interesting points raised were connected with East Africa. Sir Charles Dilke pointed out the inconvenience of governing Zanzibar, Mombassa, and Uganda through the Foreign Office instead of through the Colonial Office. "When a protectorate means that the State becomes a portion of the British Empire, as Zanzibar practi- cally was, then the Colonial Office was the proper department to have charge." This is a contention supported by reason as well as convenience, and as our readers may remember, has been already advocated in these columns. Sir Charles Dilke illustrated the ineptitude of the Foreign Office in the work of administering Colonial dependencies, by alluding to the way in which the problem of the Slave-trade has been mismanaged in the so-called Sultanate of Zanzibar. Foreign Office rule not only makes us maintain the phantom Sultanate, but has involved us in the virtual recognition of slavery of the worst type. The Colonial Office has plenty of experience in dealing with slavery, and might be depended upon to put it down in Zanzibar as easily as it did in the Malay Peninsula. Mr. H. M. Stanley, in a maiden speech which was well received, opposed Sir Charles Dilke on this point. "The right hon. baronet, he supposed, wanted them to suppress slavery in Zanzibar." We cannot, of course, answer for Sir Charles Dilke, but this is by no means what we want. We do not wish to suppress slavery with pedantic rigour. All we desire is to abolish the legal status of slavery,—to give no sort of recognition to the status in the Courts. That is how we abolished slavery in India, and it is the way best suited to Eastern dependencies.
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