THE EAST AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.
IN Dr. Livingstone's first letter to Mr. James Gordon Bennett, his earliest utterance, after years of silence to the outer world, the illustrious traveller solicits the aid of the New York Herald towards the suppression of the Slave Trade on the East Coast of Africa. He might have chosen, perhaps, a more appropriate ally in his crusade against this horrible traffic, but during his long exile he has had time to forget, if indeed it ever fell in his way to know what has been, until lately, the relation of Mr. Bennett's powerful journal to Slavery, the Slave Trade, and the Slave Power. That Dr. Livingstone is in earnest, that his denunciation of the traffic which disgraces Zanzibar is no mere conventional expression of horror, may be judged from the fact that he sets its eradication higher even than the accomplishment of the inspiring purpose which has led him back to the perilous excitements of African travel. " If my disclosures," he writes to Mr. Bennett, " regarding the terrible Ujijian slaving should lead to the suppression of the East Coast Slave Trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together." In a later and longer letter he explains what the traffic which thus kindles his indignation really means. It is " a gross out- rage of the common law of mankind," an " open sore in the world," and the miseries which it inflicts upon its immediate victims are, after all, but a small part of the evil with which it is chargeable. Wherevery slave-dealing exists it degrades the population with whom it is brought into contact., phy- sically as well as morally, and its pernicious influence on the character of the trader is but little less marked than its effect on the nature of the slave. To this nefarious traffic Livingstone traces the deterioration from the true negro type, which he identifies with the ancient Egyptian, " with his large round black eyes, full luscious lips, and somewhat depressed nose," of the natives of the West African coast. There, and on the Zanzibar coast also, the slave trade S has produced a degraded class of negroes, with "low retreating foreheads and prognathous jaws and lark heels," no more to be taken as typical of the negro race in a state of freedom, and under favouring conditions, than " Bill Sykes " of Seven Dials is to be accepted as a type of English manhood. Dr. Livingstone has had unparalleled opportunities of observing the life of the negro in the interior, "under their own chiefs and laws, cultivating their own farms, catching the fish of their own rivers, or fighting bravely with the grand old deni- zens of the forest, which in more recent continents can only be reached in rocky *strata, or under perennial ice ; " and in these circumstances he draws a picture of negro nature that is in no respect repulsive ; the men brave, the women handsome, all kindly, hospitable, honourable, and distinguished by "entire reasonableness and good sense." These qualities, however, are of simple, spontaneous growth, having no deep root in moral principles or religious training ; they are but too easily transformed into cruelty, craft, suspicion, and treachery when they catch the contagion of the slave-traders' unscrupu- lous greed. Is the world so fruitful in kindliness, honour, and simplicitly that we who could put an end, almost by hold- ing out a hand, to the evil influence which is fatal to them, sanction the continuance of a traffic, mainly carried on by our own subjects, from the guilt of which we hoped we had long ago purified the national conscience ?
The testimony of Dr. Livingstone to the horrors and the
cumulatively destructive effect of the East-African slave trade, has come to light at a singularly opportune moment. On the 23rd ult., the subject was brought before the House of Peers by Lord Stratheden, who moved for an address to the Crown, praying for a more rigid enforcement of the restraints upon the traffic in question. The motion was seconded by the Bishop of Winchester, who felt, no doubt, that he had an hereditary claim to vindicate the rights of the people of Africa against the slaver. In the brief debate which ensued, refer- ence was made to the evidence collected before a Foreign- Office Committee appointed by Lord Clarendon just previous to his death, and a select Committee of the House of Com- mons which inquired into the subject last year. Lord Granville closed the discussion in the House of Lords by a statement that the Government, having obtained the adhesion of the principal civilised States concerned in the trade with Eastern Africa, were considering the most effective methods of dealing with evils which he admitted and deplored. A public meeting was subsequently held at the Mansion House, to sustain the demand which had been pressed upon the Foreign Office. Sir Bartle Frere, who, as Gover- nor of Bombay, had the amplest official opportunities of ascertaining the extent of the traffic in slaves, of which Zanibar is the great entrepdt, expressed himself not less strongly than Bishop Wilberforce upon the hateful incidence and ruinous effects of the trade. Sir Thomas Fowel Buxton and Mr. Russell Gurney, whose names, like that of the Bishop of Winchester, indicate an inherited zeal for human freedom, and the latter of whom was chairman of the select Committe of the House of Commons, drew from the facts recorded the fullest confirmation of all which had been asserted by Lord Stratheden and Sir Bartle Frere. The letters of Dr. Living- stone, which have been published at the commencement of the present week, have more fully explained the character of the detestable trade against which these protests have been levelled. It may appear indeed a waste of time to prove, as Dr. Livingstone does, that the slave trade is an outrage upon humanity, demoralising all who are subjected directly or indirectly to its influence. But surely, when more than a generation after the death of Wilberforce we are told of the existence of cruelties as abominable, though not perhaps as extensive as those which he denounced, and of which he witnessed as he believed the final eradication ; when we are authoritatively informed that this traffic receives a direct sanction from treaties which this country has concluded, no doubt with excellent intentions, but surely with a discouraging practical result, it is time that the people at large should know what are our actual relations to the slave trade of Zanzibar and the adjacent mainland. For Zanzibar is not a mere barbarous independent State with which we have no other concern than to compel it as far as we may to keep the peace. The important and increasing trade of this island, the centre of such commerce as exists upon the Eastern Coast of Africa, has called into existence very peculiar relations of protection and dependency between the English Government and the Sultan. The trade of the Coast is, in fact, mainly in the hands of the Banians, natives of Western India and our subjects, who settle in Zanzibar, monopolise every branch of traffic, and amass large fortunes. The witnesses before the Select Committee were in complete agreement with Dr. Livingstone as to the fact that these Banians are the crafty and unscrupulous promoters of the slave trade at Zanzi- bar. " By their money, their muskets, their ammunition," says Dr. Livingstone, " the East African slave trade is mainly carried on ; the cunning East Indians secure most of the profits of the slave trade, and adroitly let the odium rest on their Arab agents. The Banians will not harm a fly or a mosquito, but my progress in geography has led me to discover that they are by far the worst cannibals in all Africa. They compass, by means of Arab agents, the destruction of more human lives for gain in one year than the Manyuema do for their flesh- pots in ten." When the attention of Lord Palmerston was called to the increasing horrors of the trade, the more striking because of the absolute extinction to which the vigi- lance of our cruisers and the stern pressure put upon the civilised Governments with which we have to deal, had reduced the West African traffic, the obviously simple and effective method of dealing with the evil was unaccountably missed. No attempt was made to compel the Banians to give up their participation in the trade, though, as our subjects, it would have been as easy to restrain them by law from engaging in the traffic as it is to prevent them from making a lucrative busi- ness from piracy. Unfortunately, the English Government was persuaded that it would have been useless to attempt to in-
duce the Sultan and people of Zanzibar to surrender all at once the profits of a traffic on which they had so long been accustomed to rely as a part of their legitimate trade. Trea- ties were concluded with a view of " paving the way " for an extinction of the trade, which recognised its legality within certain limits. The domestic slave trade of Zanzibar is not interfered with, and the exportation to Arabian ports and to the coast of Madagascar is also permitted. There can be little doubt that, under cover of the last-mentioned privi- leged exportation, the trade has assumed dimensions which were not counted upon when the treaties were concluded, and the vigilance of our cruisers is frequently evaded in directions where we never dreamed of permitting the export of slaves. There appears to be some difficulty in obtaining statistics of even a proximate exactness respecting the extent of the traffic, and the waste of human life which it entails. Dr. Livingstone, of course, cannot furnish figures upon the subject, and the estimate adduced in the House of Lords by the Bishop of Winchester is so large as to startle one into a doubt of its
admissibility as evidence. The Bishop asserted that the annual export of slaves from the mainland amounted to 90,000, which represented from five to ten times that number of negroes carried off by the Arab agents of the slave-trading Banians. A less astounding calculation, which represents, we may suppose, the conclusions of the Committee was made at the Mansion House meeting by the Recorder of London. The registered number of slaves exported from Kilwa during the five years ending with 1867 was 97,200, or a little under 20,000 a year. As the Sultan's tax upon slaves is levied at the Kilwa Custom House, it is probable that these returns fairly represent the annual export from which he derives an average income of about £20,000. Mr. Russell Gurney, however, endorses the most appalling part of the Bishop of Winchester's statement, affirming that four-fifths of the negroes taken in slavery perish before they reach the coast.
The effect of the trade has been to lay waste districts once populous and fertile in the neighbourhood of the coast, so that the man-hunters are now compelled to extend their forays ever more and more inland, till they have come to drag their prey from districts, not long since happy and peaceful, 500 miles from the sea. If the trade is permitted to continue on its present footing, if the Sultan of Zanzibar be allowed to derive a large revenue from it, art- fully managed for him by Banians, who make use of their position as subjects of the Queen to exact respect and autho- rity from the inhabitants of the coast, it is difficult to say when the miserable business will end. It must be remembered that we are not only making the task of African exploration more and more difficult by tolerating the state of things which tends to depopulate the best part of Central Africa, though this is a consideration worth noting,—we are not only creat- ing obstacles to the task of civilising and colonising the rich regions described by Livingstone, which one day our children, less reckless than we in throwing aside great responsibilities, may undertake—for such a forecast may be considered chimerical,—but we are doing what England has not yet learned to do without shame, we are neglecting duties solemnly accepted in the name of humanity. If no magnifi- cent visions of geographical discovery, of colonising and civilising enterprise, have any attraction now-a-days for Englishmen, we can fall back at least upon the deter- mination of this country to reduce the amount of human suffering, and to put an end to what Wesley called " that execrable sum of all human villanies," the slave trade. The means it will not be difficult to find. The Sultan of Zanzibar can scarcely be called an independent sovereign, and his acqui- escence in arrangements which would absolutely extinguish the export of slaves, and secure an early termination even of the domestic traffic, could be obtained, it is understood, for a moderate subsidy. If this course be objected to, though we see no real ground for so objecting, we shall have to fall back upon the ruder and more direct method by which we subdued the trade on the western coast ; but one way or other, we must grapple with the duty which has now been plainly set before us. We can plead ignorance no longer, and we cannot decline the practical duties of that championship of humanity of which we have been so proud.
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