P.S.-Since beginning this letter, I have seen a letter in the "Times" on this subject from Bishop Tucker, in which he accuses me of inconsistency for saying in the same breath that the Missions harboured and ceased to harbour fugitive slaves. The above quotations will show that what I meant to say, and what is the fact, was that they did both at different times. I do not think it necessary to discuss his Lordship's attacks on myself indidually, as these are personal matters which do not touch the question of principle. He seems to think it a brave thing to "dare to criticize the policy of the Consul-General," by which I suppose he means that of Her Majesty's Government (since in the nature of ings I can have no policy apart from theirs), as if this were not ione every day by every writer in the Opposition press. To declaim against British officials for tolerating slavery may have eded some courage in the time of Wilberforce and Clarkson; it is a cheap and hackneyed road to popularity to-day. He has dently misunderstood the Attorney-General's exposition of the ; it is given very fully in Lord Salisbury's despatch to me of the th June, which appears in the Blue Book under discussion. A. H. H. No. 24.—Sir A. Hardinge to the Marquess of Salisbury.—(Received April 5.) 1 LORD, Machakos, February 17, 1899. I TRANSMITTED copies of your Lordship's telegram of the th instant on the subject of the law of slavery to Her Majesty's b-Commissioners in the Provinces of Seyyidieh and Tanaland and the Judicial Officer for the Protectorate. The course therein indited is practically identical with that which has been followed in th these provinces ever since the instruction which your Lordship dme the honour to send me in, I think, June 1897,* after the pinion expressed in Parliament on this question by Her Majesty's Attorney-General. From the reference in your Lordship's telegram to the "Proamation of 1890," it is evident that Her Majesty's Government had mind, when they came to the decision therein mentioned, the nzibar portions of the Protectorate. The law of the Sultanate of Situ respecting domestic slavery, though very similar to that of zibar, is governed, not by the Proclamation of 1890, but by the Regulations for the Administration of the Witu Protectorate,"† ade in August 1893 by Mr. Rodd and Sir Lloyd Mathews, and • Parliamentary Paper "Africa No. 6 (1898)," No. 7. approved shortly afterwards by the Earl of Rosebery. Strict speaking, these Regulations extend to the whole territory-certain the whole coast-from the Tana to the Juba, except the strip betwee the Tana and Kipini and the 10-mile radius round Kismayu; b I have never enforced them, in so far as they relate to slavery, save Witu proper, as defined by the late Agreement, and in those imm diately adjacent portions of the Province of Tanaland in which the were actually promulgated, and made effective by the late Seyy Hamed-bin-Thwain, in his capacity as Administrator, under H Majesty's Government, of the Witu Protectorate. I have neve indeed, recognized the legal status of slavery beyond Kipini at a except within the limits above mentioned, which exclude the enti Province of Jubaland, my main reason being a feeling that t turbulent and lawless Somalis, who had never submitted to t Witu Protectorate, did not merit the indulgence from us, in a matt such as the toleration of slavery, which might properly be extend to loyal and peaceable Mahommedan populations; whilst in the ca of the Gosha people, who were fugitive slaves themselves, a Mahommedans only in name, the abolition of slavery could not considered a real hardship. The Marquess of Salisbury. I have, &c. ARTHUR H. HARDING No. 25.-Sir A. Hardinge to the Marquess of Salisbury.-(Receiv MY LORD, April 5.) Zanzibar, March 7, 18 I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Lo ship's despatch of the 22nd October last, calling for a Report on 1 proposed employment of destitute freed children on the sham belonging to the Zanzibar Government at Tundawa. I have not had an opportunity of personally visiting Pemba si this proposal took effect, but I learn from inquiries that have be made that there are now upwards of fifty native children settled the shamba: some of them are living with their parents, who h themselves been freed, and who are now earning their livelih by plantation work, while the remainder, having no relations to t care of them, have been adopted by men and women simila employed who have no families of their own. This arrangem appears to be quite satisfactory, and the children, I am told, are v happy in their new surroundings. Such of the children as are old and strong enough to do li work are employed for a few hours a-day on the plantations, a together with their younger companions, receive instruction dur their leisure hours at a small day-school which has been opened by the Universities' Mission. No children have yet been sent to Tundawa from the mainland. The Marquess of Salisbury. I have, &c., (In the absence of Sir A. Hardinge), BASIL S. CAVE. No. 26.-Sir A. Hardinge to the Marquess of Salisbury.—(Received MY LORD, April 15.) Mombasa, March 18, 1899. Mr attention has been called by the Rev. Douglas Hooper, riest-in-charge of the Church Missionary Society's station at Jilore Malindi district), to the fact that under the stress of the famine the atives of Giriama are selling their infant children, on the pretence But these sales are marriages or betrothals, in return for food, and ast the children so sold become virtual slaves of their purchasers. I had the honour to mention in my last Annual Report that Ir. MacDougall, Collector of the Malindi district, had prohibited This practice when the famine first began, and had punished some Wagiriama who were guilty of it; but it appears that the Mombasa Courts find it difficult to convict for Slave Trade in most of these cases, where it cannot be proved that any departure from the usual ribal marriage customs has taken place. I have consulted the Judicial Officer as to the framing of a Regulation which shall enable us to deal more effectually than we are at present able to do with this abuse; but he thinks that gislation on the subject will require a good deal of care, and I have therefore asked a Committee of three, consisting of Mr. Cator President), Mr. MacDougall, and the Rev. H. K. Binns, as repreeating the Church Missionary Society, to discuss the best means of meeting the difficulty, and to make recommendations to me, or, in my absence, to Mr. Craufurd, on the subject. The Marquess of Salisbury. I have, &c., ARTHUR H. HARDINGE. No. 27.-Sir A. Hardinge to the Marquess of Salisbury.-(Received MY LORD, April 15.) Zanzibar, March 24, 1899. I HAVE the honour to transmit herewith, in continuation of my espatch of the 23rd April last, a copy of a Report, with its closures, which I have received from Sir Lloyd Mathews on the • Parliamentary Paper "Africa No. 6 (1898)," No. 29. subject of the working during the past year of the Decree abolishi the legal status of slavery. Sir Lloyd incloses Reports from Mr. Last and Archdeac Farler, the two Commissioners appointed to supervise the executi of the Decree in the Islands of Zanzibar and Pemba respectivel and from Mr. Alexander, who, as Assistant Treasurer to t Sultan's Government, has most experience of its practical worki in the capital. Mr. Last's Report contains, in addition to his observations the operation of the Decree, some minute accounts of tours made him in his capacity of Slavery Commissioner throughout certain the remoter districts of this island, and although much of the info mation which he has collected and reproduced has no espec bearing on the question of slavery and emancipation, it is, I thin of interest, and not without a certain indirect value as throwi light on the general condition of the soil and people, as well as native customs and modes of thought. Your Lordship will observe from Mr. Farler's Report that has practically superseded the Pemba Walis, though they still formally with him, as District Magistrate in all matters affecti slavery, and there is, therefore, in Pemba at least, no longer a ground for the complaint made at first by critics of the Decree th its administration was left entirely in the hands of Arab Judges doubtful impartiality and good faith. If Mr. Last interferes somewhat less actively in this island, is (a) because the Zanzibar Walis are both younger and mo modern-minded men, and, therefore, need less guidance and supe vision; and (b) because the majority of cases in the three Zanzib districts, and all those in which the question of compensation aris are ultimately referred to Sir Lloyd Mathews and Mr. Alexander the capital. Many slaves in this island come, in fact, direct in town without troubling to go, as they should strictly do by law, the Wali of their district; and in order to simplify the work as mu as possible, in accordance with your Lordship's instructions, t English town officials take these cases at once. I have written so fully both in my last year's Report* and previous despatches on the whole question of the abolition of slave in these islands, and my views on the subject are so well known your Lordship, that I do not propose to supplement by a comments of my own the remarks contained in the inclosed paper I should merely wish to draw attention to one circumstance connection with the indifference displayed by the slave populati to the formal grant of freedom, on which stress has not, as yet, Report on the British East Africa Protectorate, 1898-99. Parliamenta Paper "Africa No. 3 (1899)." far as I can remember, been laid. A slave freed by his master, either as a reward for good service or as an act of piety, almost always receives from him, together with his freedom, a substantial present. If the Arab is a landowner, he will give the slave the freehold of an allotment on which to maintain himself and his family in his new condition; if not, he will bestow on him a sum of money with which to start as a freeman. I do not say that the practice is universal, but it is very general mong the better classes; and I have been often struck, when reading, in connection with legal cases which came before me, the vills of Arabs, by the minute care with which they make provision out of land or money for the future maintenance of the various slaves whom they direct their executors to manumit. The Courts, on the other hand, when they free a slave, give him only a certificate, which at one time, before the legal enforcement of davery was abolished, he could make a few rupees of by selling to a fellow slave, but which, now that any one who chooses to apply for can have it for the asking, has lost all market value. The slave, therefore, who has a fairly good master, and who knows that the moment he is dissatisfied with that master he can leave him with less warning than a servant would give in England, often prefers to wait the chance of being freed by him with some material advantage, such as that which I have described, rather than hasten to get a bare certificate—in his eyes, of no practical benefit to him—from a Magistrate. For this and other reasons given by the Commissioners, it may, I think, well be that for many years to come, and until native feeling has undergone a considerable change, persons for whom no compensation would be given-such as children born after 1890, and, therefore, free even before the late Decree-will continue, so long as they find it suits them to do so, to call themselves the "slaves" of the Arabs on whose lands or in whose houses they reside, and to live very much as they did under the old system. At the same time, it is probable that every year will witness a conderable increase in the number of slaves actually freed by the Courts as distinct from those who remain with their masters under only slightly modified conditions. Thus, the total number of slaves who actually received freedom papers from the Courts during the present year, reckoning from April to April, had already in February considerably exceeded that for last year, and amounted (deducting the ninety freed in the first. quarter of last year, which is given as if it belonged to this year in the Government Report, and the 795 freed by owners) to 2,800 for ten months of the year 1898-99, as compared with 1,392 during the entire twelve months of the previous year. The number of freedom |