LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
SLAVERY IN PORTUGUESE WEST AFRICA.
[To THE EDITOR OF TRY " SPICT•TOIt."1
8113,—May I thank you very heartily for your admirable leading article on this subject in last Saturday's issue ? You are, of course, right in saying that the horror of slavery does not depend upon the treatment of the slaves. Even if the so-called sereipaes exported from Angola to the cocoa islands of San Thome and Principe were treated with every care and kindness, the abomination of the traffic would remain. Slavery consists in forced labour and the sale of human beings, and I have myself seen these servipaes torn from their homes on the mainland, brought in gangs to the port towns, and sold for the cocoa plantations at recognised prices The average prioe of a man or woman at the chief export depot in Benguela is £16; but the planters pay as much as 230 or 235 for a slave delivered in good condition on the islands.
I have just been shown a letter from a gentleman who was lately for some years a resident in Angola. In one passage, referring to the meeting at Caxton Hall, he writes :— " In to-day's speeches it was stated that the wretched native is valued at the price of an or. [I was referring to the price in Bike, some three weeks' journey from the coast.] That is quite
so, and I am sure you will be equally impressed to learn that in the invoices or sale-notes which pass between the merchants and labour agents, &c., these wretched articles of barter are described as so many horses, mares, colts, and fillies, according as to whether they are men, women, boys, or girls, and should they in any instance be deformed or suffering from the cruel effects of their journey from the interior, they are described as damaged,' and a corresponding rebate made in the price. The facts as given by Mr. Nevinson and Mr. Burtt are in their main details incontest- able, and the slave-traders could not, and, I am sure, would not, attempt to deny the truth of them. But I can assure you that Mr. Nevinson and Mr. Burtt have not half represented the full horror of the whole business."
I think it is obvious that the point to strike is the supply of the slaves from the mainland. Till the horrors of that traffic in human beings are abolished we must not be put off by benevolent regulations about the treatment of the slaves upon the islands. No one denies that it is to the interest of the planters to keep their purchases alive as long as possible. But I utterly deny the statement of certain Portuguese apologists that San Thome and Principe are a kind of "negroes' paradise." The death-rate, described by our Consul as "enormous," is caused partly by the unhealthiness of the steamy climate, and in Principe by sleeping sickness, but chiefly, as you say, by the misery and despair of the slaves at the knowledge that they will never return home. Their compounds are in some cases walled round to prevent their escape ; the slaves are watched by gangers with whips and
large dogs ; yet a few of them succeed in getting away, and either attempt to reach the mainland (some hundred
and eighty miles distant) in dug-out canoes, or live starving and naked in the forests, rather than continue their monotonous and hopeless toil. By the regulations of 1903, the planters may organise man-hunts when more than ten of the slaves have escaped. Any who are found escaping are brought back and pitilessly flogged.
But even if the treatment ordained by the regulations were the very best that could be imagined, no one can be safely entrusted with the absolute authority that the planters possess over the men and women whom they purchase. The results are exactly what might be expected, and I need not
describe them. I will only repeat that slavery is not a question of treatment, bad or good, but of compulsion and purchase, and from those two evils all the rest inevitably 4 Downside Crescent, Hampstead.
[We and Mr. Nevinson probably disagree on almost every public question, from India to female suffrage, except slavery.
With his refusal to make any compromise with the traffic in human beings—slave-owning, slave-raiding, slave-breeding,
and slave-trading--we are in absolute agreement. All who loathe slavery—and we trust that that means all the British people—must feel deeply grateful to Mr. Nevinson for the courage and persistence be has shown in bringing to light the crime of slavery in Portuguese West Africa.—En. Spectator.]
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