A CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY.
THE anti-slavery meeting held at Prince's Hall on Tues- day was noteworthy for more reasons than one. The principal speaker, on whose behalf, indeed, the meeting was got up, was a Prince-Bishop of the Roman Church. He was accompanied by another Cardinal, once a dignitary of the English Church, and ever since he left her an active propagandist against her. Yet these eminent Bishops of the Roman Church not only addressed a sympathetic audience which for the most part did not belong to their com- munion, but were, in addition, surrounded on the platform by Bishops and clergy of the Anglican Church, and by representatives of various Nonconforming bodies. It was a striking exhibition of Christian fellowship in a good cause on the part of men who differ widely on questions of religion ; and it was rendered all the more striking by the fact that the movement, of which Tuesday's meeting was the first public expression, owes its inspiration to no less a THE anti-slavery meeting held at Prince's Hall on Tues- day was noteworthy for more reasons than one. The principal speaker, on whose behalf, indeed, the meeting was got up, was a Prince-Bishop of the Roman Church. He was accompanied by another Cardinal, once a dignitary of the English Church, and ever since he left her an active propagandist against her. Yet these eminent Bishops of the Roman Church not only addressed a sympathetic audience which for the most part did not belong to their com- munion, but were, in addition, surrounded on the platform by Bishops and clergy of the Anglican Church, and by representatives of various Nonconforming bodies. It was a striking exhibition of Christian fellowship in a good cause on the part of men who differ widely on questions of religion ; and it was rendered all the more striking by the fact that the movement, of which Tuesday's meeting was the first public expression, owes its inspiration to no less a personage than the Pope of Rome. Such an unusual com- bination of circumstances would have been impossible thirty years ago, and even later. The apparition on a common platform of two Cardinals, specially commissioned by the Pope, with Anglican Bishops and Canons and representative Nonconformists, would have alarmed beyond all bounds the aggressive and obscurantist Protestantism .a which the Church Association is now the expiring champion. Another noteworthy feature of the meeting was the singular commentary which it offered on recent utterances as to the civilising and humanising influences of Islam on the pagan population of Africa. We have been assured that Islam is rapidly weaning them from the cruelties and abominations of idolatry, and a dignitary of the English Church has actually recommended Christians to abandon the field to the more successful propaganda of Islam. Tuesday's meeting was a striking refuta_Uon- of this shallow and ignorant dogmatism. _ Cardinal Lavigerie has had twenty-five years' experience of the practical working of Islam in Africa, and his thrilling narrative presents a very different picture from the rosy _fictions instilled by wily Muslims into the minds of English travellers who have never seriously studied Islam as a system, and have" no personal knowledge of it in practice. To see it merely by cursory visits to lands which have ceased to be under Mussulman rule is to see it in disguise. To know what Islam is as a practical working system, one must study it carefully either in its own dogmatic literature, or in countries where it has free play. It has a free hand, unfortunately, throughout the larger part of Africa, and the testimony of all dispassionate observers is that it is there an unmitigated curse. Let us pick out, by way of samples, a few of the facts related by Cardinal Lavigerie. " Slavery, in the proportions that it has now assumed, means the destruction" of the tribes of the interior of Africa. Commander Cameron has declared that half-a- million slaves at the least are torn from their homes in Central Africa every year, and sold into slavery. Cardinal Lavigerie assures us, on the testimony of his own mis- sionaries, that Cameron's estimate is under the mark.
Consider what a drain that single fact represents on the population of the interior of Africa ! For it must be remembered that the number actually sold into slavery is not an exact equivalent of the depopulation that is going on. Many perish in the slave-hunts, and more on the horrible march to the coast ; and Cameron's estimate applies only to those who reach the coast. The aged, the cripples, the weak—all, in fact, who cannot walk to the coast, or who would fetch no price there—are ruthlessly slain in the slave-hunts. Yet their fate is more enviable than that of those whose lives are spared for the slave-market. The Cardinal gives a harrowing description of the march to the coast. To prevent escape, the strongest and most vigorous " have their hands tied, and sometimes their feet, iu such fashion that walking becomes a torture to them ; and on their necks are placed yokes which attach several of them together." In this way they are made to walk all day, bearing heavy loads, and at night a few handfuls of raw rice are thrown to them. That is their only meal for the day. A few days of these hardships begin to tell even on the strongest. The weakest soon succumb, and the weakest are naturally among the women. But terror sometimes nerves even a weak frame to almost superhuman efforts ; and the Arab slave-driver adopts a summary method of striking terror into the hearts of the laggards. " In order to strike terror into this miserable mass of human beings, their conductors, armed with a wooden bar, to economise powder, approach those who appear to be the most exhausted, and deal them a terrible blow on the nape of the neck. The unfortunate victims utter a cry, and fall to the ground in the convulsions of death. The terrified troop immediately resumes its march. Terror has imbued even the weakest with new strength. Each time any one breaks down, the same horrible scene is repeated." This butchery goes on even in the case of those who manage to struggle on, as soon as the experienced eye of the slave-drivers sees that their strength will not carry them to the coast. To save food, they receive a smashing blow from the mallet, and are left behind to a linuering death. The march some- times extends over months, and such is the awful carnage, " that if a traveller lost the way leading from Equatorial Africa to the towns where slaves are sold, he could easily find it again by the skeletons of the Negroes with which it is strewn." This prodigal waste of human life has in some districts so thinned the population, that the slave- hunters are obliged to use stratagem to catch their prey. Their bands prowl in the forests, and pounce upon the hapless women and children who go by. Things have reached such a pass near the great lakes, that now, in the words of one of the Cardinal's missionaries, " every woman, every child that strays ten minutes away from their village, has no certainty of ever returning." And the people who are the victims of this cruel oppression are, according to the Cardinal, kind, industrious, amiable, and might be made, under happier influences, the means of making those parts of Africa one of the most prosperous regions of the globe. The country is very fertile, and abounds in natural resources. It possesses three zones,— first, the lowlands along the seaboard of the Mediterranean, -Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. Towards the interior are two plateaus, one above the other, rising to 2,000 ft. and 4,000 ft. respectively. These table-lands attract the rains which feed the great lakes out of which flow the four great African rivers with their affluents. Under civilising influences, the country might be made one of the richest in the world, and it is large enough to offer room for some time to come to the surplus population of Europe. But the first condition is the extinction of that power which some sciolists would persuade us is the predestined missionary and civiliser of the population of Africa,—the power of Islam. The testimony of Cardinal Lavigerie cn this point is decisive. " It is this population—numerous, and happy, and peaceable—which Islam is exterminating at this moment by means of her slave-hunters, and by virtue of her doctrine that the blacks are an inferior and cursed race, whom they are at liberty to treat worse than we treat our animals May God preserve me from accusing, without compulsion, any man, and especially any people ! But I cannot resist saying to-day that of the errors so fatal to Africa, the saddest is that which teaches, as Islam does, that humanity is made up of two distinct species : one, that of believers, destined to com- mand ; the other, that of the cursed, as they style them, destined to serve ; and in the latter they think that the Negroes constitute the lowest grade, and are on a par with cattle." " Having readied by their conquests the heart of a continent peopled by Negroes, the Muslims have there- fore betaken themselves to the work which is justified by their doctrines."
So much for the boasted benefits which Islam has bestowed on Africa. From every point of view it has been a curse, and nothing else. " It is a highly debateable ques- tion," the Times thinks, " whether Mahommedanism is responsible to the degree which the eloquent Cardinal main- tains." The Times rests its scepticism on some passages in the Koran which recommend kindness to slaves. It is irrelevant to quote the Koran in this controversy, for that book, so full of contradictions, is not the guide of life for Muslims. The vast majority of them cannot read it, and know little about its teaching. Their rule of conduct is the traditional teaching of Islam in every Muslim school and village, and that is perfectly consistent with all the horrors of slavery. Besides, the Koranic precepts quoted in the Times refer to Muslim slaves, and have no bearing whatever on non-Muslim, still less on Negro slavery. Cardinal Lavigerie insists—and Cardinal Man- ning agrees with him—that the progress of Islam in Africa cannot be effectually resisted except by force. Force is its own conquering weapon, and by force it must be opposed. We see no reason to question the Cardinal's judgment in that matter. But how and by whom is the force to be applied ? His Eminence does not suggest any specific policy. Like the Crusader that he claims to be, he leaves to the secular Governments of Christendom the responsibility of devising a scheme. It is plain that cruisers along the coast do very little to stop the nefarious traffic. Our hope must lie in establishing centres of civilisation here and there in the interior of Africa, and thus organising the natives, so that, with modern weapons in their hands, they may be able not only to hold their own against the armed emissaries of Islam, but in course of time to drive them out of the country.
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