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missionaries of the various denominations, that I have thought i advisable to address you on this subject.

"I would most earnestly request your co-operation on the thre following points :

"1. That no slaves are allowed to remain within the limits o under the protection of your Mission unless each slave has either paper of freedom or a paper of permission to reside within suc limits.

"2. That a careful watch be kept, and, if possible, no runawa slaves be received in the native huts of the Mission except in case o severe and patent ill-treatment.

"3. That in case of any runaway slave being received within th settlement either on account of ill-treatment or through his havin entered without the knowledge of the Mission authorities, he shoul at once be sent back to the Wali of Mombasa in order that his cas may be inquired into in the presence of one of the Mission officials and justice be done. In case of apparent injustice, an appeal wil always lie to this Office.

"I believe that if these measures are carried out loyally an humanely the Arab and Swahili slave owners will soon relinquis their present fears as to the bona fides of the missionaries, and tha the domestic slaves themselves will, except in cases of real ill treatment, cease to attempt to find an asylum within the Missio stations. I have, &c.,

"C. B. EUAN-SMITH.

Mr. George Mackenzie on the 5th January, 1889, wrote as follow to the Rev. Mr. Carthew :

Dear Sir,

"As I am reporting fully to Her Majesty's Consul-General the steps taken with regard to the runaw ay slaves found at your stations, presume I am correct in informing him that, since you had timely notice of all the measures which I have adopted, the slaves produced when General Mathews and myself took a list of them early in November embraced all the runaways harboured throughout your entire stations, and that you have none under your protection now but those to whom papers have been issued by me.

"I have, on your behalf, given the most solemn and positive assurances to the Walis and people at the principal coast towns visited by me that for the future you had faithfully promised that on no account would you harbour any runaways. It is therefore necessary that measures should be taken so that this is rigorously enforced. While I am aware that you are not responsible for, and cannot prevent, the slaves running away from their masters, and

that it is not incumbent upon you to arrest the same, still I feel satisfied that if, in the first few instances now occurring of runaway daves entering your stations, you were to have them arrested and sent down to the Liwali here, it would have a very great effect on the minds of the people, and assure them that we were in earnest in our promises. I am confident it would be the most effective and implest means of letting the runaways see that there is no use eir attempting to enter your station, and only one or two examples Fould be necessary to show this. Did you do so, I feel sure we tould all be saved much subsequent trouble.

"I am quite resolved to take any amount of trouble to check the persistent breaking of the law, which I consider the action of the ast to have been; and as an inspection will probably shortly be made the stations, I would earnestly urge you to insist upon all the Laves not holding papers to quit at once, while they have the pportunity of sheltering themselves elsewhere. I continue to Eceive constant complaints of slaves still being taken in at the Mission stations. In each case I have invited the complainant to roceed in person to the station, and there to ascertain from the officer in charge whether the slave is free or not.

"I trust to your giving orders that all the coast people visiting your stations for this purpose will be properly received and assisted in their search. Should it be otherwise, doubt will be thrown in the Lative mind, which will be very prejudicial to your own and our I remain, &c.,

nterests.

"GEORGE S. MACKENZIE."

So much for my predecessors.

When I came to this country over four years ago the runawayave question was temporarily dormant, as a consequence of the ettlement effected by Mr. Mackenzie in 1889 and of the Circular above quoted of Sir Charles Euan-Smith. The right of the Company to compel the Missions-I will not say actively to restore, but what comes to the same thing-to acquiesce in the restoration to their asters by the Administration of runaway slaves who had fled to their stations was generally recognized, though Mr. Jenner had trouble on the subject with both Mr. Carthew and Mr. Ormerod. Then came the Mazrui rebellion, during which the question continued to slumber for other reasons; so it was not till I came back from leave early in 1897 that I had any experience myself of the attitude of the Missions with regard to it. I had heard, of course, from others-such as Sir Lloyd Mathews, Mr. Pigott, Mr. Berkeley, c.-that there had been trouble with them a few years previously, but I had not had, so far, any personal knowledge of the matter

When I returned from leave, the people of several coast towns,

such as Malindi, Takaungu, &c., complained to me that their slaves, many of whom had been unsettled by the war, were, and had been ever since the suppression of the rebellion, ruuning away to Raba: and Ribe, where they were allowed to occupy Mission land. It sc happened that, when in England, I had had an interview at the Foreign Office with Bishop Tucker in Mr. Curzon's presence, a which the Bishop complained of the old practice of sending askari: to take runaway slaves away by force. I therefore tried to settle the difficulty with which I found my self face to face in a pacific and conciliatory spirit. I went to Rabai myself and saw Mr. Jone (Mr. Smith was temporarily absent), and I sent Mr. Wilson to Rabai Ribe, Mazeras, &c., to ascertain what number of slaves were there and to endeavour to arrange some settlement which should, if possible be fair and acceptable to masters, slaves, and missionaries alike. quote the following passage from Mr. Wilson's Report to me:

"The principal slave owners, sooner than complain, allow thei slaves to do just as they like; consequently, many of them run awa to the Mission stations at Ganjoni, Rabai, and Ribe, where they ar offered an asylum and a life of comparative ease. During my ex perience when visiting these places, all I could make out was that a attendance at church was required of them, in return for which the received a plot of ground to build upon and do whatever cultivatio they liked."

Mr. Wilson found it very difficult to do anything at the Missions Mr. England and Mr. Howe seemed disinclined to help him, an Watoro continued to come in and to be given permission to squa in the stations without any inquiries by the local clergy in charge.

Meanwhile, the question of slavery on the mainland had engage the attention of Parliament, owing to the pledge given by He Majesty's Government to abolish it in Zanzibar, and, in consequenc of a statement made by the Attorney-General in the course of debate, I received orders from home to cease from arresting an restoring slaves even within the Sultan's territory on the sole groun that they were fugitives. The Attorney-General's opinion that suc årrest and restoration were illegal, which was the original ground c this instruction, was, as you will see by the latest Blue Book considerably modified on an examination by the Law Officers of th peculiar local laws of this country; but the old practice was no reverted to, and Mr. Hollis, Assistant District Officer in Raba informs me that slaves who do not care to work, or who are ba characters or vagrants, have been steadily pouring into Rabai an Ribe at the rate of twenty or thirty a-month, and are usually allowe to squat on the land claimed by the Missions, which at Rabai is, fancy, rather more extensive than your letter would lead me t suppose, and includes a large part of the town. As the master

have practically given up all hope of getting them back, Mr. Hollis is scarcely ever called upon to settle these cases by endeavouring to effect, which is what we now try to do, a voluntary arrangement between masters and slaves by which the latter shall agree to buy their freedom; but he informs me that, in an instance in which a slave woman was summoned by one of the Courts to Mombasa, he was told by Mr. Smith that the latter had orders from Bishop Tucker to resist the Courts and to go to prison, if necessary, rather than allow her to be sent down. How the matter ended I do not know; I suppose it was compromised somehow.

2. You say that I imply that the rebellion of 1895 was in some vay connected with the runaway-slave question, whereas it really rose out of a dispute about the Governorship of Takaungu. What I wished to convey, in reply to a despatch asking for a full analysis of all the causes of the rising, was that the dispute about Takaunga merely the pretext and occasion for the revolt.

A feeling of discontent with European rule and general restlesses had for some time past prevailed among several Arab Chiefs ong the coast, and one among the causes of their discontent was the anti-slavery policy with which all Englishmen in the country, whether officials or missionaries, were in a greater or lesser degree identified. I believe that if there had been no succession question at Takaungu we should have come to blows sooner or later with Mbarak, and that the slave question added fuel to the rising, althongh it did not actually provoke it. The adhesion of Hamis-binKombo, which carried with it the revolt of the whole of the northern part of Mombasa district, was, I think every one will tell you, largely due to the resentment with which he in particular had for many years past regarded the harbouring of "watoro" by the Missions. the days of the Company it was constantly reported that he was meditating an attack on Freretown; and I have been assured on good uthority that he attempted to induce Salim and Mbarak to join him with this object at the time of the revolt on the German coast. Irritation at our anti-slavery policy, which found its strongest exponents in the Missions, was to my mind an important factor in the rising, and I think this opinion is very generally shared by other Europeans. 3. You go on to observe that the funds of the Church Misonary Society are not employed in competing with native owners the labour market. I did not say that they were. What I did, and o, say is that Watoro who go to Rabai are allowed to squat on and claimed by the Missions without paying rent, and to maintain hemselves by doing as much or as little work as they please and keeping all they can produce, so long as they conform to certain ission rules, e.g., sending their children to school, &c. But a ative land-owner cannot give allotments gratis. He expects his [1899-1900. XCII.]

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slaves, if they occupy and cultivate his land, to give him a quid p quo in work, or to pay him at least some portion of their produc He has not, like the Church Missionary Society or other Mission thousands of pounds every year from the charity and piety of t faithful, and therefore he looks to his land to support his family a himself. If his slaves find that by going to a Mission station th can get a plot of land without having to pay rent, either in work kind, can keep whatever they earn, and are protected against bei sent back, the Mission, as a land-owner rather than as an employ will draw to itself, by the more advantageous conditions obtainab on its land, the industry, such as it is, of the adjoining plantatio and coast towns.

Meanwhile the State, by the high wages it offers on the Ugan Railway-wages which no native agriculturist can possibly pay-h made it practically impossible for the Swahili shamba-owner in t Mombasa district to obtain free labour if he wished to, whi Government and the Missions combine in different ways to render difficult for him to retain his inherited or purchased slave labo He is therefore in a very bad way indeed, and I think that the acti of the Missions, particularly within the last two years, is large though not of course entirely, the cause of it. I do not "lay the trouble at the missionaries' door." I have never shrunk fr admitting our own responsibility as an Administration; but I beli that if the Missions were to refuse to give "watoro" permiss to settle on their land and stations-save in exceptional cases, su as bad treatment by their masters, or having no home of their own the influx which Mr. Hollis says is constantly going on WO diminish, and these people would have less temptation to le their own villages, where, whatever may be said about slavery in abstract, they generally in practice have a very easy and comforta time. Makongeni and Uganda are not cases in point. The Ar quite understand that outside the Sultan's border they can recover their slaves; but what they complain of is that we will enforce their legal rights, which we have pledged ourselves to do places like Rabai, &c., which are in the Zanzibar territory. And unwillingness of the Government to allow us to enforce these rig is the result, in some degree at least, of the influence of the Missi and of the efforts of their representatives at home.

I hope the above explanation will make my meaning clea to you than it appears from your letter to be. I shall send hom copy of my reply, as well as of your letter; but as to whethert Foreign Office will think it necessary or desirable to publish correspondence is a matter on which I can give no opinion.

Yours sincerely,

Rev. H. Binns.

ARTHUR H. HARDIN

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