THE “ARRIÈRE PENSÉE”
The Brussels Conference of 1890 foresaw this danger and made provision for it in Articles 52 and 63. The latter stipulated that:—
“Slaves liberated under the provisions of the preceding Article shall, if circumstances permit, be sent back to the country from whence they came. In all cases they shall receive letters of freedom from the competent authorities and shall be entitled to their protection and assistance for the purpose of obtaining means of subsistence.”
Portugal was signatory with other European Powers to the Brussels Act.
Further evidence of the inhuman manner in which the slaves are repatriated appeared in the Portuguese journal, A Capital, of June last. The writer, Hermano Neves, reported that an officer on a Portuguese ship informed him that in one trip there were 269 liberated serviçaes, that of these unfortunate beings landed at Benguella only one was given any money; the remainder, unable to obtain employment and without money to buy food, were left to starve. “A few days later, there lay in the outskirts of Benguella, out in the open, no less than fifty corpses; those who did not or cared not to resort to theft in order to live had simply died of starvation.”
How comes it that in spite of endless “regulations,” almost every line of which boasts humane sentiments, and of a Government in Portugal which blazes upon the housetops its devotion to the cause of human freedom, these deplorable conditions prevail in the West African colonies? The reason has been advanced without any equivocation for years, namely:—the Portuguese colonies are out of control. Portugal may send a shipload of regulations out of the Tagus every week and the planters will welcome them—as waste paper. Some of us have said this for years and have suffered the inevitable abuse, but with the publication of the recent White Book, we actually find this contention corroborated by the Portuguese Government. Senhor Vasconcellos, replying to Sir Arthur Hardinge’s representations upon the abuses, admitted that:—
“The Governors whom he had sent out to give effect to its (the Government’s) instructions had been to a great extent paralysed by the power of vested interests.”
This is, of course, obvious to all those who realize the inner meaning of the fact that within ten years the cocoa islands have had something like twenty-five Governors. An admission of this nature by the responsible Portuguese Minister goes quite as far, if not farther, than the most extreme critic of Portuguese colonial administration.
The existence of slavery and the slave-trade now corroborated by officials of the first rank in London and Lisbon, supported by Consuls, and now by the Portuguese themselves, leaves no longer any need for unofficial persons to spend further efforts in an endeavour to establish the fact. Sir Edward Grey’s “beyond doubt” is in itself sufficient for the great mass of sane men. With the breakdown of the Portuguese regulations and the violation of international treaties, coupled with the Portuguese admission that their colonies are out of hand, what can be done to set free the slave in San Thomé and Angola?
BRITISH SUBJECTS ENSLAVED