Page:The slave trade of east Africa.djvu/35

31 the slaving propensities of the pirates and kidnappers, who annually infest his island and seas, has been thus forcibly, though hypothetically expressed. Should the Sultan attempt the abolition of the Slave Trade in his dominions, so ultimately linked is that traffic with the whole system of slavery in which he is placed, the proclamation would ensure a revolution, his own expulsion, or even death.

"In judging of the weight due to these and similar assertions, it must be never left out of view for a moment that Syed Majid is the creature of English power alone. &hellip; He resembles one of the Indian protected princes, but destitute of any organized force by land or sea, which his political Resident might wield for his or his subjects' benefit.

"Our treaty with the Sultan's father furnishes a more important consideration than anything else. This treaty allowed the Slave Trade to be carried on within certain specified limits, and for the avowed object of permitting supplies of labour to be carried to the more southerly territories of the late Imaum. This concession of a limited use of the Slave Trade was no doubt made in the hope that, at some no very distant date the way would be paved for the complete cessation of the trade in slaves. It certainly never was contemplated by either of the contracting parties that a special stipulation for a small and well-defined remission of the traffic should be made, as now it is made, the means of erecting the Island of Zanzibar into a great slave emporium, and extending the ocean Slave Trade to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Still, though our object in the Treaty has been perverted, and we have been practically over-reached, Treaty obligations ouhgtought [sic] to be respected till that alteration is made in the stipulations which the present aspect of the ocean Slave Trade throughout the world demands.

Extract from Letter of Dr. Livingstone to the Earl of Clarendon, dated Lake Nyassa, August 20, 1866.

"I would earnestly recommend that His Highness the Sultan be pressed so to alter the Treaty with his late father as to cancel our permission of a limited Slave Trade.

"This alteration cannot fairly be called injurious to the status of slavery in the Island of Zanzibar. It is a sheer absurdity to imagine that the reigning family imports 3000 slaves annually for domestic purposes, and that the inhabitants generally import 12,000 for similar purposes. They are all intended for exportation to the North; and the coast towns, Kilwa, Mombas, &c., receive far more slaves from the interior than they ever make use of for cultivation.

"To render the measure I have ventured to propose efficient, an