38o FUTURE PROSPECTS OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA part iii 



{Servitus est obedientia fracti animi et abjecti et arbitrio suo 

 carentis). It is vain to search in an ordinary East African 

 plantation for a broken, abject spirit in the slaves. The system 

 is simply a serfdom, and it has been as necessary in the 

 development of East Africa as feudalism was in Europe. 

 Under the laws now in force the slaves will gradually die out 

 and be replaced by freemen, and the change had far better 

 come slowly than by a sudden revolution. It is objected that 

 these laws have been in existence for years, and if they had 

 been enforced slavery would now be extinct, and therefore all 

 existing slaves should be freed at once. But the fact that the 

 laws have not been enforced in the past, under native rule, is 

 no proof that they will not be so, now that the country is under 

 direct British administration. 



Reference need only be made to the recent report of Mr. 

 D. Mackenzie, the Special Commissioner sent to East Africa by 

 the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, to show that the 

 practical grievances to be redressed have become both com- 

 paratively and actually small. The Commissioner has no 

 sensational stories of diabolical wickedness to relate. Instead 

 of finding that the slave-owners are Legrees, he describes them 

 as benevolent-looking old gentlemen, who are good friends with 

 the naval officers engaged in the suppression of the slave-trade ; 

 they received him with open hospitality, and their only act 

 of unkindness was occasionally asking awkward questions. 

 The only case quoted, except on rumour, of cruel treatment of 

 slaves, is one of imprisonment for trivial offences ; and the 

 Commissioner tells us that his evidence as to the nature of the 

 offences was the statement of the prisoners themselves. If a 

 slave-owner of Zanzibar asked the inmates of Newgate why 

 they were there, he would probably conclude from the answers 

 that justice in England is blind indeed. The Commissioner 

 appears to have been aided most ungrudgingly by the local 

 authorities, both by the British officials, " whose kindness and 

 attention during my stay in Zanzibar surpassed anything I 

 could have expected," and the officers of the Sultan of Zanzibar, 

 who "furthered my plans in every possible way." It was 

 apparently only the missionaries who did not help, and the 

 Commissioner's account of their attitude is one of the most 

 significant things in his report, A few years ago some of the 



