Mr. Donald Mackenzie, speaking at the London Institution on Thursday,
dealt with the slavery which, to our shame be it spoken, exists in our British Protectorates in East Africa. He said that although by treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar the slave-trade was nominally abolished in Pemba, it still con- tinued in fall force without interference from this country. Almost all manual labour in Zanzibar was performed by slaves, very often by women slaves ; and they were the abso- lute property of their masters, by whom many of them were flogged to death. Communication from the African coast to the interior was carried out entirely by slave porterage. If any fell by the way, he was left to die or to be eaten by wild beasts. " The annual import and export of slaves at Zanzibar was seventeen thousand." England is, of course, responsible for all this misery and wrong, for the Sultan of Zanzibar is a mere fiction of the Foreign Office, and has no more power than the smallest of Indian Rajahs. It is utterly disgraceful that the nation which prides itself on setting free the slave wherever its power extends should be thus giving a last refuge to the slave-driver. Unless we stop this, and at once, we shall be rightly called a nation of hypocrites.
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