The slave-dealing case at Cairo has ended in an odd
way. The two Pashas accused were, it will be remembered, acquitted, but the third and greater Pasha, Ali Pasha Shereef, lately President of the Legislative Council, has confessed, attributing his illegal conduct to neglect. As he might nevertheless be acquitted, owing to the doubt whether the law was intended to reach purchasers as well as dealers, as he is morally innocent, being a llahommedan, and as he is seventy years old, it has been resolved not to prosecute him, and "the incident is closed." It should not have occurred. In punishing slave-dealers, the English have the support of public opinion, the dealers being the allies of stealers, as they also would have if they refused to recognise the status of slavery, the Egyptians quite seeing that each religion must obey its own laws ; but to prosecute Mussul- mans for buying slaves strikes the accused as unjust. We are quite as strongly abolitionist as any anti- slavery society, but we would move to the end by a slightly different method. A slave-catcher is a pirate, and a slave-dealer an accessory to piracy; but a slave-buyer, if a Mussulman, is only an injurious person whose aim should be frustrated by declaring all slaves legally free.
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