'The Slave Trade of East Africa.' [‎14] (23/108)

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warfare, and that the slaves sold are merely the prisoners taken
in war; and he endeavours to show that, this being so, and there
being no prospect of those wars discontinuing, it is better that
the system of free engages should be permitted as a legitimate
outlet for the results of those wars. Bat the travels of Dr.
Livingstone dispel this theory, and show that war and kidnapping
are pursued for the ultimate purpose of trade.
Colonel Playfair^ the Resident at Zanzibar, writing to Lord
Russell in 1865, says :~
U ?^ 1 . e w l 10 l e fabric of Arab society is so interwoven with slavery
that it is hopeless to expect that it will ever permanently abandon
their pursuit of slaves. Their fathers have possessed them ever since
Arabia was peopled, and they have no idea of a state of thing's in
which slaves do not occupy a prominent place. The institution is one
sanctioned by their religion. Such a thing- as civil law, or any other
not contained in the Koran^ is unknown to them; and I fear that no
efforts of ours can induce them to regard slavery with the horror which
its name excites in a Christian mind.
" Ihere is one thing 1 to be said in palliation of slavery amongst
Arabs, and that is, that no class of the community is so happy, so free
from care, and so well treated, as the Mohammedan slave ; nine out of
ten of them would hardly regard freedom as a boon; and but for our
intervention, which compels slavers to resort to all kinds of expedients
to procure cargoes, the sufferings of the slaves 6 after' their arrival
on the coast would be hardly appreciable.
^ But it is that word f after ' which says so much. We shall never
know the amount of suffering, the severance of family ties, and the
misery resulting* from the depopulation of large tracks of country,
which is caused by the pursuit of slaves in the interior of Africa.' ,
Dr. Livingstone also says
i. • y^i been careful to mention in the text the different ways in
which the Slave Trade is carried on, because we believe, that though
tms odious traffic baffled many of our efforts to ameliorate the condition
of the natives, our expedition is the first that ever saw'slavery at its
fountain-head, and in all its phases. The assertion has been risked
because no one was in a condition to deny it, that the Slave Trade was!
like any other branch of commerce, subject to the law of supply and
demand, and therefore it ought to be free. From what we have seen
it involves so much of murder in it as an essential element, that it can
scarcely be allowed to remain in the catalogue of commerce, any more
tlian garottmg, thuggee, or piracy/'