A Crusade against Slavery.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 866, 5 October 1888, Page 10

A Crusade against Slavery.

The Spectator, Aug. 4th. The anti-slavery meeting held at Prince’s Hall on Tuesday was notoworthy for more reasons than one. The principal speaker, on whose behalf, indeed, the meeting was got np, was a Prince-Bishop of the Roman Church. He was accompanied by another Cardinal, once a dignitary of the English Church, and ever since he left her an active propagandist against her. Yet these eminent Bishops of the Roman Church not only addressed a sympathetic audience which for the most part did not belong to their communion, but were, in addition, surrounded on the platform by Bishops and clergy of the Anglican Church, and by representatives of various Nonconforming bodies. It was _ a striking exhibition of Christian fellowship in a good cause on the part of men who. differ widely on questions of religion ; and it was rendered all the more striking by the fact that the movement, of which Tuesday’s meeting was the first public expression, owes its inspiration to no less a personage than the Pope of Rome. Such an unusual combination of oircumstances would have been impossible thirty years ago, and even later. The apparition on a oomlrion platform of two Cardinals, specially commissioned by the Pope, with Anglican Bishops and Canons and representative Nonconformists, would have alarmed beyond -all: bounds the aggressive and obscurantist Protestantism of which the Chursh Association'is now the expiring champion. Another noteworthy feature of the meeting was.the singular commentary which it offered on recent utterances as to the civilising and humanising influences of Islam on the pagan population of Africa. We have been assured that Islam Is rapidly weaning them from the cruelties and abominations of idolatry, and a dignitary of the English Church has actually recommended Christians, to abandon the field to the more successful- propaganda of Islam. Tuesday’s meeting was a striking refutation of this shallow and ignorant dog. matism. Cardinal Lavigerie has had twentyfive years’ experience of. , the practical working of Islam in Africa, and his thrilling narrative presents a very different picture from the rosy fictions instilled by wily Muslims into the minds of English travellers who have never seriously studied Islam as a system, and have no personal knowledge of it in practice. To see it merely by cursory visits to lands which have, ceased to be nnder Mussulman rule is to see it in disguise. To know what Islam is as a practical working system, one must study it carefully either in its own dogmatic literature, or in countries where it has free play. It has a tree hand, unfortunately, throughout the larger part of Africa, .and "the testimony of all dispassionate observers is that it is there an unmitigated curse. Let us pick out, by way of samples, a few of the facts related by Cardinal Lavigerie, ‘Slavery, in the proportions that it has now assumed, means the destruction’ of the tribes of the iutsrior of Africa. Commander Cameron has declared that half-a million slaves at the least are torn from their homes in Central Africa every year, and sold into slavery. Cardinal Lavigerie assures us, on the testimony of his own missionaries, that Cameron’s estimate is under the mark. Consider what a drain that single fact represents on the population of the interior of Africa ! For it must be remembered that the number actually sold Into slavery is not au exact equivalent of the depopulation that is goiDg on. Many perish in the slave hunts, and more on the horrible march to the coast; and Cameron’s estimate applies only to those who reach the coast. The aged, the cripples, the weak—all, in fact, who cannot walk to the coast, or who would fetch no price there—are ruthlessly slain in. the slavehunts. Yet their fate is more enviable than that of those whose lives are spared for the Blave-market. The Cardinal gives a harrowing description of'the march to the ejast. To prevent escape, the strongest and most vigorous ‘have their hands tied, and sometimes their feet, in such fashion that walking becomes a torture to them ; and on their necks are placed yokes which attaoh several of them together.’ In this way they are made to walk all day, bearing heavy loads, and at night a few handfuls of raw rice are thrown to them. That is their only meal for the day. A few days of these hardships begin to tell even on the strongest. The weakest soon succumb, and the weakest are naturally among the women. But terror sometimes nerves even a weak frame to almost superhuman efforts ; and the Arab slave-driver adopts a summary method of striking terror into the hearts of the laggards. ‘ In order to strike terror into this miserable mass of human beings, their conducters, armed with a wooden bar, to economise powder, approach those who appear to be the most exhausted, and deal them a terrible blow on the nape of theneok. The unfortunate victims utter a cry, and fall to the ground in the convulsions of death. The terrified troop immediately resumes its march. Terror has imbned even the! weakest with new strength. Each time anyone breaks down, the horrible scene is repeated.’ This butchery goes' on even in the case of those who manage to struggle on, as soon as the experienced eye of the slave-drivers sees that their strength will not carry them to the coast. To save food, they receive a smashing blow from the mallet, and are left behind to a lingering do-ith. The march sometimes extends over mouths, and suoh is the awful carnage, ‘ that if a traveller lost the way rom Equatorial Africa to the towns where slaves ar6 sold, he oould easily find it again by the skeletons of the Negroes with which it is strewn.’ This prodigal waste of human life has in some districts so thinned the population, that the slave-hunters are obliged to use stratagem to

catch their prey, Their bands prowl in the forests, and pounce upon the hapless women and children who go by. Things have reached such a pass near the great lakes, that now, in the words of one of the Cardinal’s missionaries, * every womaß, every child that strays ten minutes away from their village, has no certainty of ever returning.’ And the people who are the victims of this cruel oppression are, according to the Cardinal, kind, industrious, amiable, and might ba made, under happier influences, the means of making those parts of Africa one of the most prosperous rsgions of the globe. The oountry is very fertile, and abounds in natural resources, It possesses three zones —first, the lowlands along the seaboard of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. Towards the interior are two plateaus, one above the other, rising to 2,000 ft and..4,oooft respectively. These table-lands attract the rains which feed the great lakes out of which flow the four great African rivers with their affluents. Under civilising influences, the country might be made one of the richest in the world, and it ia large enough to offer room for some time to come to the surplus population of Europe. But the first condition is the extinction of that power which some sciolists would persuade us is the predestined missionary and oiviliser of the population of Africa — the power of Islam. The testimony, of Cardinal Lavigerie on this point is decisive. ‘ It is this population—numerous, and happy, and peaceable —which Islam is exterminating at this moment by means of her slavehunters, and by virtue of lierdootrine that the blacks are an inferior and cursed race, whom they are at liberty to treat worse than we treat our animals. ..... May God preserve me from accusing, without compulsion, any man, and especially any people ! But I cannot resist saying to-day that, of the errors bo fatal to Africa, the saddest is that which teaches, as Islam does, that humanity is made up of two distinct species : one, that of believers, destined to command ; the other, that of the cursed, as they style them, destined to serve ; and in the latter they think that the Negroes constitute the lowest grade, and are on a par with cattle.’ ‘Having reached by their conquests the heart of a continent peopled by Negroes, the Muslims have therefore betaken themselves to the work which is justified by their doctrines.’

So much for the boasted benefits which Islam has bestowed on Africa. From every point of view it has been a curse, and nothing else. ‘ltis a highly debatable question,’ the Times thinks, ‘ whether Mahom* medanism is responsible to the degree which the eloquent Cardinal maintains.’ The Times rests its scepticism on some passages in the Koran which recommend kindness to slaves. It ia irrelevant to quote the Koran in this controversy, for that book, so full of contradictions, ia not the guide of life for Muslims. The vast majority of them cannot read it, and know little about its teaching. Their rule of conduct is the traditional teaching of Islam in every Muslim school and village, and that is perfectly consistent with all the horrors of slavery. Besides, the Koranic precepts quoted in the Times refer to Muslim slaves, and have no bearing whatever on non-Muslim, still less on Negro slavery. Cardinal Lavigerie insists—and Cardinal Manning agrees with him—that the progress of Islam in Africa cannot be effectually resisted except by force. Force is its own conquering weapon, and by force it must be opposed. We see no reason to question the Cardinal’s judgment in that matter. But how and by whom is the force to be applied ? His Emineroe does not suggest any specific policy. Like the Crusader that he claims to be, he leaves to the secular Governments of Christendom the responsibility of devising a scheme. . It is plain that cruisers along the coast do very little to stop the nefarious traffic. Our hope must lie in establishing centres of civilisafion here and there in the iuterior of Africa, and thus organising the natives, so that, with modern weapons in their hands, they may be able not only to hold their own against the armed emissaries of Islam, but in course of time to drive them out of the country.