The treaty of 1845, which modified Capt. Moresby’s, of 1822, and Capt. Cogan’s, of 1839, forbade exportation from the Zanzibarian ports north of Lamu and its dependencies (S. lat. 1° 57′) and south of Kilwa (S. lat. 9° 2′): thus the upper markets were cut off, and the traffic was confined to the African dominions of the late Sayyid. The object of these provisions was, of course, to avoid interference with the status of domestic slavery, in the dominions of a foreign and friendly power. It actually, however, led to what it was intended to prevent. The vigilance and the summary measures of our Cape cruisers, especially when commanded by men like Admiral Christopher Wyvill, inflicted severe injuries upon, and in some places almost abolished, the contraband. I have said that the diminution of export has materially benefited the Island and its population. But at Zanzibar, as in the Guinea regions and the African interior, prædial slavery appears still an evil necessity: upon it hinges not only the prosperity but the very existence of the present race. An abolition act passed in this Island would soon restore it to the Iguana and the Turtle, its old inhabitants.
The slave, on the other hand, has lost by not being exported. It is the same in the Oil rivers of West Africa, where in 1838 Sir T. Fowell Buxton proposed to substitute for illegal and injurious, harmless and profitable trade leading to ‘Christianity, which would call forth the capabilities of the soul, and elevate the savage mind.’ It was expected that at Benin, for instance, man would become too valuable as a labourer to be sold as a chattel. Unhappily the reverse took place; man became so cheap, that to work and to starve him to death paid better than to feed him. A fresh gang could be purchased for a few shillings, and the price of provisions was of far more importance than the value of life. The Buxtonian idea was founded upon simple ignorance of Africa, and upon the ill-judged assertion that slavery was caused by foreigners. The internal wars, whose main object is capturing serviles, are the normal state of Blackland society; they continued and they will continue, whether slavers touch the coast or not. Briefly, the results to the captive are now not sale, but slaughter or sacrifice in the interior, and death by starvation upon the coast.
When I visited Zanzibar, in 1857, the English public, periodically stimulated by the Liberal press, had split up, on the subject of the African slave trade, into two sets of opinions, both honestly believed in, both diametrically opposed to each other, and both somewhat in extremes. The one sanguinely represented it as crushed, and congratulated the nation upon having dealt its death-blow to a system which was rotting the roots of prosperity and progress. The others despondently declared that, although in some places the snake was scotched, yet that it was nowhere killed; they proved that whilst slavery had increased in horrors, the result of our interference, yet the average quantity of the wretched merchandise had not been diminished; they opined that nothing save the special interposition of Providence could end that which had so long baffled many best efforts; and being well acquainted with details, they maintained that the average opinion was a mere pandering to popularity at the expense of truth. And, when weary of the self-glorifying theme whose novelty had engrossed the attention of their fathers, the public readily attributed selfish motives to those who would enliven their zeal.
Fact, as usual, lay between the two assertions, but the inner working of the slave-abolition measures was known only to few, and those few hardly cared to speak out. England, ripe for free labour, had resolved to throw off the African; she kicked away, to use a popular phrase, the ladder by which she had risen, and she made slavery, for which she had shed her best blood in the days of Queen Anne, the sum of all villanies in the reign of King George. This was natural. The steps by which nations attain to the summit of civilization appear, as they are beheld from above, gradations of mere barbarism: to revert to them would be as possible as to enjoy the nursery tales which enlivened our childhood.
Other European peoples were not in the condition of England to dispense with slave labour, but the termination of a long continental war was made the inducement to sign abolition treaties. All were so much waste-paper, not being based upon public opinion. As long as Cuba and the slave-importers of the Western world required (A.D. 1830-57) an annual supply of 100,000 men, their demands were supplied. Neither the word piracy, nor the prospect of hanging from the yard-arm—a remedy more virulent than the disease—could deter adventurers from engaging in a trade where a ‘pretty girl’ was to be ‘bought for a few rolls of tobacco, fathoms of flannel, and pieces of calico,’ and whose profits were estimated at 200 per cent. As long as sugar, tobacco, and dollars increase, so long will the desire for more support the means by which the supply may be increased. Of old one cargo run home out of three paid: presently one in four was found sufficient. The losses, however, added greatly to the misery of the slave; ships were built with 18 inches between decks, one pint of water ahead was served out per diem, and five wretches were stowed away instead of two. With curious contradiction and ‘wrong-headedness,’ these evils, caused by an abolitionary squadron, were quoted against the slaver, as if the diabolical malignity of the latter could be gratified only by destroying his own property.
It was soon discovered that the slaves, being often condemned criminals,[[121]] could not be returned under pain of death to their homes. The natural result was to disembark them free upon English ground, and thus certain British colonies were amply supplied with the hands of which their government was depriving foreign powers. This proceeding added jealousy to the ill-will with which our ‘meddling and muddling’ philanthropy was regarded. But both those chiefly concerned—the slaver and anti-slaver—gained; for the former the price of his wares was kept up, whilst the latter made not a little political capital out of his position. Slave exportation might at once have been crushed at head-quarters: Madrid could have ended it in Cuba; Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro, in Africa and in the Brazil; it was, however, judged best to let it die quietly, and to make as much use as possible of its dying throes. Some five years ago, after defying for a generation the squadrons of civilized Europe and the United States, it perished of itself, and to-morrow it would revive if the old conditions of its existence could be restored.
The Zanzibar slave-depôt is so situated that its market was limited only by the extent of Western Asia. From Ra’as Hafun to the Kilima-ni river was gathered the supply for the Red Sea, for the Persian Gulf, for the Peninsula of Hindostan, and for the extensive regions to the East. A spirited trade was carried on, and few obstacles were placed in its way. The Anglo-India Government did not in this matter rival the zeal of the Home Authorities. It lacked earnestness, judging slavery leniently, and finding the practice conducive to the well-being of its subjects. A squadron of at least four steamers was required: the work was left to a sloop and a corvette stationed in the Persian Gulf, with orders, amongst other things, to arrest slavers. The Cape squadron, whose beat extended to the Equator, rarely visited these seas, and the French ships of war were popularly said to do more harm than good. Even in after years, when a considerable impulse was given to our cruisers, they could capture only 6.6 per cent.: thus, from Zanzibar and Kilwa, in 1867-9 were taken 116 daus carrying 2645 slaves, leaving 37,000 to escape. There were neither special agents nor approvers; steam-launches and crews sufficiently numerous for arduous boat-service were wanting. An infinite deal of nothing in the shape of bescribbled foolscap was collected, by way of sop for the Court of Directors and for Exeter Hall; but the counsels of such authorities as Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton and Capt. Felix Jones, I. N., were passed over with the scant attention of a compliment. The fact is, in British India, as to a certain extent in France, no political capital could be made out of Abolition. Few men retain, after long residence in the East, that lively horror of the institution which distinguishes the home-bred Englishman, and which has arisen partly from his crass ignorance of negro nature and from the misrepresentations of very earnest but also deluded anti-slavers. The Anglo-Indian has seen many a chattel happy and contented, enjoying an enviable lot compared with the poor at home free to starve or to die in the workhouse: possibly he has dined with some emancipated slave: certainly he has heard of Mamluk Beys and purchased Pashas; and, whilst he owns in the abstract that one man has no right to buy another, in practice he is lenient to the ‘patriarchal system.’
The apathy of the Anglo-Indian Government gave the cue to its executive. When it was proposed that the Cutch ‘Nakhodas’ (skippers) should be compelled to keep crew-lists for inspection, some ‘collector’ objected that such men cannot write—surely he must have known that every vessel carries its own ‘Kirani,’ or accountant. That imperium in imperio the Supreme Court, was enough to paralyze the energies of a fleet; the captured slave-dau was carried to Bombay, whence, after a year’s detention by the claws of the law, it was probably restored to its owner. The officers of the Indian Navy would not exercise increased vigilance, necessitating exposure of their men and neglect of other more important duties, when their labours were so likely to be made futile. And as very little prize money was followed by a very large amount of correspondence, slaver-hunting appeared as undesirable to them as to the officers of the French squadron on the West Coast of Africa.
At Zanzibar, where the French Consul, or in his absence the first ‘Drogman’ (like all consuls here, their office is rather political than commercial), could fine and imprison an offender, and even ship off a merchant skipper to the nearest port, the English functionary was a magistrate absolutely without magisterial or criminal jurisdiction. He could not deport an Indian convicted of slave-dealing. Whilst the Arab Courts were not allowed jurisdiction over British subjects, the latter, unless merchant seamen ashore, were not liable to be arrested for felony. All this might easily have been remedied by extending eastward the British Order in Council for the exercise of power and jurisdiction by English functionaries (e.g. Consuls for the Levant), in the Ottoman Dominions (June 19, 1844), and by adding power ashore to Article 124 of Consular Instructions, making offences on the high seas cognizable by the Consul.
Thus, despite Order upon Ordinance, Asia was supplied by the whole slave-coast of Eastern Africa, without hardly the decency of concealment. Boys and girls might be seen on board every native craft freshly trapped in the inner wilds, unable to speak a word of any language but the Zangian, and bearing upon their heads the trade-marks of the Hindu Banyan. The commerce was openly carried on by aliens sailing under British protection. Kidnapping was common and daring, as about Lagos and Badagry. Scarcely a vessel manned by crews from Súr or Ra’as el Khaymah, the greatest ruffians of these pirate seas, left Zanzibar city or mainland without stealing a few negros or negrets. By the temptations of a bottle of rum or of some decoy girl, they were enticed into the house or on board, and they suddenly found themselves safe under hatches: even Arabs, men and women, have been carried off in mistake by these inveterate thieves. A child here worth from £1 5s. to £3 would fetch in Persia £14 to £20; hence the practice. And the anti-slave exportation treaties became exactly worth their weight in words, because the sword was known to be sheathed.