Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/159

 SLAVERY 143 Brazil 2,100,000 slaves. It was estimated that at the beginning of 1875 there -were not more than 1,476,567. But in 1884 they are spoken of as 3, 000, 000 in number. A gradual separation has been for some time taking place between the parts of the country in which slave labour is used and the free-labour regions. Slavery is being concentrated in the districts between Maranhao and Sao Paulo. In 1880 the deputy Joachim Nabuco, leader of the anti- slavery movement, obtained leave to introduce a bill for a more rapid liberation of slaves than was attainable under the law of 1871, and for the final extinction of slavery in Brazil by 1st January 1890. The Government, however, refused to sanction the further progress of the bill ; but the question has since become again of pre- sent political interest, being the principal subject of discussion in the parliament which opened 1st March 1885. A bill has been passed, known as the Saraiva Law, on which we cannot yet form a definitive judgment, but which is understood to have disappointed the expectations of the abolitionists. It is said to provide exorbitant compensation for the slave-owners ; and, although slaves over 60 years of age are to obtain their freedom, it appears that all slaves, on being set free, as well as the indentured children of slaves, are to remain three years longer with their masters at very low wages, the planters thus practically receiving an additional indemnity. Di s. In the colonies of more than one European country, after the gnised prohibition of the slave trade, attempts were made to replace it slave by a system of importing labourers of the inferior races under trade. contracts for a somewhat lengthened term ; and this was in several instances found to degenerate into a sort of legalized slave traffic. About 1867 we began to hear of a system of this kind which was in operation between the South Sea Islands and New Caledonia and the white settlements in Fiji. It seems to have begun in really voluntary agreements ; but for these the unscrupu- lous greed of the traders soon substituted methods of fraud and violence. The natives were decoyed into the labour ships under false pretences, and then detained by force ; or they were seized on shore or in their canoes and carried on board. The nature of the engagements to go and work on the plantations was not fully explained to them, and they were hired for periods exceeding the legal term. The area of this trade was ere long further extended. In 1884 attention was drawn in a special degree to the Queensland traffic in Pacific Islanders by the " Hopeful " trials, and a Govern- ment commission was appointed to inquire into the methods followed by labour ships in recruiting the natives of New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, and the D'Entrecasteaux group of islands. The result of the investigations, during which nearly five hundred witnesses were examined, was the disclosure of a system which in treachery and atrocity was little inferior to the old African slave trade. These shameful deeds have made the islanders regard it as a duty to avenge their wrongs on any white men they can entice upon their shores. The noble-hearted bishop of Melanesia, John Coleridge Patteson, fell a victim to this retaliation on the island of Nukapu 20th September 1871. The tendency of the whole system is to create a war of races. It may be questioned whether this trade in labour can be safely continued at all ; if so, it must be under a constant and vigorous system of surveillance and regulation. "We have seen that the last vestiges of the monstrous anomaly of modern colonial slavery are disappearing from all civilized states and their foreign possessions. It nowremainsto consider the slavery of primitive origin which has existed within recent times, or con- tinues to exist, outside of the Western world. Russian In Russia, a country which had not the same historical ante- serfdom, cedents with the "Western nations, properly so called, and which is in fact more correctly classed as Eastern, whilst slavery had dis- appeared, serfdom was in force down to our own days. The rural population of that country, at the earliest period accessible to our inquiries, consisted of (1) slaves, (2) free agricultural labourers, and (3) peasants proper, who were small farmers or cottiers and members of a commune. The sources of slavery were there, as elsewhere, capture in war, voluntary sale by poor freemen of them- selves, sale of insolvent debtors, and the action of the law in certain criminal cases. In the 18th century we find the distinction between the three classes named above effaced, and all of them merged in the class of serfs, who were the property either of the landed proprietors or of the state. They were not even adscripti glebse, though forbidden to migrate ; an imperial ukase of 1721 says, " the proprietors sell their peasants and domestic servants, not even in families, but one by one, like cattle." This practice, at first tacitly sanctioned by the Government, which received dues on the sales, was at length formally recognized by several imperial ukases. Peter the Great imposed a poll-tax on all the members of the rural population, making the proprietors responsible for the tax charged on their serfs ; and the "free wandering people " who were not willing to enter the army were required to settle on the land either as members of a commune or as serfs of some pro- prietor. The system of serfdom attained its fullest development in the reign of Catherine II. The serfs were bought, sold, and given in presents, sometimes with the land, sometimes without it, some- times in families and sometimes individually, sale by public auction being alone forbidden, as " unbecoming in a European state." The proprietors could transport without trial their unruly serfs to Siberia or send them to the mines for life, and those who presented complaints against their masters were punished with the knout and condemned to the mines. The first symptoms of a reaction appear in the reign of Paul (1796-1801). He issued art ukase that the serfs should not be forced to work for their masters more than three days in each week. There were several feeble attempts at further reform, and even abortive projects of emancipation, from the commencement of the present century. But no decisive measures were taken before the accession of Alexander II. (1855). That emperor, after the Crimean War, created a secret committee com- posed of the great officers of state, called the chief committee for peasant affairs, to study the subject of serf-emancipation. Of this body the grand-duke Constantine was an energetic member. To accelerate the proceedings of the committee advantage was taken of the following incident. In the Lithuanian provinces the relations of the masters and serfs were regulated in the time of Nicholas by what were called inventories. The nobles, dissatisfied with these, now sought to have them revised. The Government interpreted the application as implying a wish for the abolition of serfdom, and issued a rescript authorizing the formation of committees to pre- pare definite proposals for a gradual emancipation. A circular was soon after sent to the governors and marshals of the nobility all over Russia proper, informing them of this desire of the Lithuanian nobles, and setting out the fundamental principles which should be observed "if the nobles of the provinces should express a similar desire." Public opinion strongly favoured the projected reform ; and even the masters who were opposed to it saw that, if the operation became necessary, it would be more safely for their interests intrusted to the nobles than to the bureaucracy. Accord- ingly during the year 1858 a committee was created in nearly every province in which serfdom existed. From the schemes prepared by these committees, a general plan had to be elaborated, and the Government appointed a special imperial commission for this purpose. The plan was formed, and, in spite of some opposition from the nobles, which was suppressed, it became law, and serf- dom was abolished (19th February = 3d March 1861). Its nature and results have been indicated in RUSSIA, vol. xxi. p. 82. The total number of serfs belonging to proprietors at the time of the emancipation was 21,625,609, of whom 20,158,231 were peasant serfs and 1,467,378 domestic serfs. This number does not include the state serfs, who formed about one-half of the rural population. Their position had been better, as a rule, than that of the serfs on private estates ; it might indeed, Mr Wallace says, be regarded as " an intermediate position between serfage and freedom. " Amongst them were the serfs on the lands formerly belonging to the church, which had been secularized and transformed into state demesnes by Catherine II. There were also serfs on the apanages affected to the use of the imperial family; these amounted to nearly three and a half millions. Thus by the law of 1861 more than forty millions of serfs were emancipated. The slavery of the Mohammedan East is usually not the slavery Moham- of the field but of the household. The slave is a member of the medan family, and is treated with tenderness and affection. The Koran slavery, breathes a considerate and kindly spirit towards the class, and encourages manumission. The child of a slave girl by her master is born free, and the mother is usually raised to be a free wife But behind this slavery, however mild in itself, stands the slave trade, with its systematic man-hunting, which has been, and still is, the curse of Africa. The traffic in slaves has been repeatedly declared by the Ottoman Porte to be illegal throughout its dominions, and there have been several conventions between Great Britain and the khedive for its suppression in Egypt ; but it is still largely car- ried on both in the latter country and in Turkey, owing to the laxity and too often the complicity of the Government officials. In the days of the colonial slave trade its African centre was the Africa, region about the mouths of the rivers Calabar and Bonny, whither the captive negroes were brought from great distances in the interior. As many slaves, Clarkson tells us, came annually from this part of the coast as from all the rest of Africa besides. At present, it is commonly said, though Cameron in 1875 was other- wise informed, no slaves are exported from the western side of the continent. The principal centres from which the supply is noAv furnished to Egypt, Turkey, Arabia, and Persia are three in number. (1) The Soudan, south of the Great Sahara, appears to be one vast hunting-ground. Captives are brought thence to the slave market of Kuka in Bornu, where, after being bought by dealers, they are, to the number of about 10,000 annually, marched over arid desert tracks under a burning sun to Murzuk in Fezzan, from which place they are distributed to the northern and eastern Mediterranean coasts. Their sufferings on the route are dreadful ; many succumb and are abandoned. Rohlfs informs us that "any one Vho did not know the way" by which the caravans pass "would only have to follow the bones which lie right and left of