ce to ourselves to say, that our Government
entered into the treaty with the view of checking, limiting, and
mitigating the evils of the slave-trade. We have erred in recognising
any form of slavery, no matter how humane our object was--one proof of
which is that we have, by our interference, unintentionally increased
the evils of slavery instead of abating them.

It is worth while remarking here, that slavery is also a domestic
institution in Arabia and Persia. If it be right that we should not
interfere with the Zanzibar institution, why should we interfere with
that of Arabia or Persia? Our treaty appears to have been founded on
the principle that we ought to respect domestic institutions. We
maintain a squadron on the east coast of Africa to stop the flow of
Africans to the latter countries, while we permit the flow by _treaty_,
as well as by practice, to the former. Is this consistent? The only
difference between the two cases is one of distance, not of principle.

But to return to our point--the legal traders. In consequence of the
Sultan's dominions lying partly on an island and partly on the mainland,
his domestic institution necessitates boats, and in order to distinguish
between his boats and the pirates, there is a particular season fixed in
which he may carry his slaves by sea from one part of his dominions to
another; and each boat is furnished with papers which prove it to be a
"legal trader." This is the point on which the grand fallacy of _our_
interference hinges. The "domestic institution" would be amply supplied
by about 4000 slaves a year. The so-called legal traders are simply
legalised deceivers, who transport not fewer than 30,000 slaves a year!
It must be borne in mind that these 30,000 represent only a portion--the
Zanzibar portion--of the great African slave-trade. From the Portuguese
settlements to the south, and from the north by way of Egypt, the export
of negroes as slaves is larger. It is estimated that the total number
of human beings enslaved on the east and north-east coast of Africa is
about 70,000 a year. As all authorities agree in the statement that, at
the _lowest_ estimate, only _one_ out of every five captured survives to
go into slavery, this number represents a loss to Africa of 350,000
human beings a year. They leave Zanzibar with full cargoes continually,
with far more than is required for what we may term home-consumption.
Nevertheless, correct papers are furni