460 



THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 



that lively horror of the institution which dis- 

 tinguishes the home-bred Englishman, and which 

 has arisen partly from his crass ignorance of 

 negro nature and from the misrepresentations of 

 very earnest but also deluded anti-slavers. The 

 Anglo-Indian has seen many a chattel happy and 

 contented, enjoying an enviable lot compared 

 with the poor at home free to starve or to die in 

 the workhouse : possibly he has dined with some 

 emancipated slave : certainly he has heard of 

 Mamluk Beys and purchased Pashas ; and, whilst 

 he owns in the abstract that one man has no 

 right to buy another, in practice he is lenient to 

 the ' patriarchal system.' 



The apathy of the Anglo-Indian Govern- 

 ment gave the cue to its executive. When it was 

 proposed that the Cutch 'Nakhodas' (skippers) 

 should be compelled to keep crew -lists for in- 

 spection, some 6 collector 9 objected that such 

 men cannot write — surely he must have known 

 that every vessel carries its own c Kirani,' or ac- 

 countant. That imperium in imperio the Supreme 

 Court, was enough to paralyze the energies of a 

 fleet ; the captured slave-dau was carried to 

 Bombay, whence, after a year's detention by the 

 claws of the law, it was probably restored to its 

 owner. The officers of the Indian Navy would 



