[3] See Compilation of Reports of Committee on Foreign Relations. United States Senate. Recognition of Congo Free State. March 26, 1884, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1902. Vol. vi., p. 221. The appendices include, among other documents, the notes of Sir Travers Twiss and Mr. Arntz.
[4] Protocoles et Acte Général de la Conférence de Berlin (1884-85), p. 23 ss.
[5] F. Cattier, Droit et Administration de l’État Indépendant du Congo, 1898, p. 17.
[6] For a full report of the Committee on Foreign Relations to the Senate of the United States, March 26, 1884, together with the Treaties of Vivi, Leopoldville, Manyanga, and Stephanieville, see Appendix.
CHAPTER VII
HORRORS OF THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE
Slavery Defined.
Slavery: the absolute, irresponsible ownership of one class of human beings by another class; a contract in which the only factors are might on the one side and helplessness on the other; servitude exacted by force.
Slavery has existed in all countries from the earliest recorded periods. The most enlightened philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were unable to conceive a community of which a section was not enslaved by the rest.
As a system, slavery, by its long-continued, universal practice, and the simple solution it affords of what in our modern world is referred to as the labour difficulty, appeals to two powerful human instincts: conservatism and cupidity. The ethical unfairness of one man’s being made wholly subservient to the will of another; forced to labour for him without reward; his chattel to retain, sell, or slay, as though he were a horse or a dog, was perceived from the earliest times. But those most interested in the overthrow of the system, the slaves themselves, being ignorant, and purposely kept in that condition by their taskmasters, suffered on, century after century, finding no champion for their cause until the advent of the Redeemer of Mankind, preaching universal brotherhood and equal rights for all men.
But the greater the wrong the longer it takes to right it, and Christ’s words were but the seed from which has sprung our great harvest of freedom. It has been a harvest of slow growth. For ages after the divine words were spoken on behalf of the slave by the first and greatest of his advocates, slavery was still regarded by many nations as indispensable to their existence. Indeed, eighteen centuries elapsed before there was any appreciable awakening to the deep infamy of slavery. It occurred in England, and was the result of the unwearied efforts of a small band of enthusiasts, whose labours, like those of all reformers, were at first derided.