590 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



is carried to a great extent, but is much less common up 

 the country. When the master acknowledges the infant 

 of a female slave, he can no longer sell her out of his 

 house, and it is a becoming thing in him to liberate her 

 and make her his wife. But the law does not force him 

 to acknowledge his offspring, and cases have occurred 

 in Jeddah of late years where a man has exposed both 

 woman and child for sale. Some of the Bedouin tribes 

 regularly breed slaves, but in justice it must be said that 

 this is not a common custom. It is needless to trace all 

 the social disorders, all the disturbances of family re 

 lations, which flow from this system. They have been 

 often pointed out, and I simply say with every emphasis 

 that current apologies for polygamy are inconsistent 

 with fact, and that in the towns, where female slavery, 

 concubinage, and the hareem system are fully developed, 

 the results on the moral and physical condition of the 

 people are deplorable. Of the wastefulness of the slave 

 system, which necessarily encourages indolence both in 

 the master and his mamlook, I need not speak at large ; 

 but it is perhaps worth noting that persons who have 

 been wont to be served by slaves generally get on very 

 badly with hired servants. A master and his slave 

 have a quarrel, but unless the latter runs off, and claims 

 the protection of a British gunboat, the quarrel is soon 

 got over, and things settle down in their old course. 

 But a hired servant is off at once when he has a difficulty 

 with his employer, and the constant changes of servants 

 which take place under masters who do not understand 

 how to manage a free servant form a chief reason why 

 Arabs and Egyptians are so unwilling to see the abolition 

 of domestic slavery. 



Of the local slave trade as distinguished from contra 

 band importation, I have little to say. In Jeddah, 

 where the eyes of European Consuls are open to what 

 goes on, there is no public slave mart, though there was 

 one some four years ago. There are, however, various 



