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Slavery.
1022 repeated. There is one particular evil feature of the system, as I understand, that is prevalent, and that is the system of pawning. I hope it is no longer true, but until recently the Government im- posed all sorts of arbitrary fines and, in order to meet these fines, parents were ready to pawn their children. The pawn could not be redeemed except by a third party. The persons who were pawned could not redeem it themselves. I should be very grateful if any information coul be given as to whether, through the League of Nations and the co-operation of the United States of America, some improvement of the situation might be effected in that alas ill-governed and unhappy country,
Slavery. concerned in the owning of slaves as a matter of property and pride, some of them having as many as 15,000 each. is chiefly, I suppose, in the west and south-west, which are distant from any kind of central control, that the slave- trading and slave-owning exist, and it is mainly, I am informed, in exchange for arms and ainmunition that the slaves are bought and sold, I wish that, by more strenuous international action, the importation of arms and ammunition into these wild border tribes could be re- strained, but certainly every word that the noble Earl has said will be echoed by all of us as to our doing everything that is possible to give understanding sympathy and assistance to the Emperor in carrying out his desires in spite of such overwhelming difficulties.
I think I ought to say a word about Liberia, though I know the noble Lord, Lord Lugard, will be able to say things much more to the point in a moment. It is a situation, surely, of the most sinister irony. This State was founded by philanthropists who were filled with the idea of "Back to Africa," and who sent numbers of liberated slaves from the southern States of America in the hope that they, who had suffered so much in their own lives, would be eager and zealous to do everything that they could to prevent similar happenings among the tribes of the country to which they went. And still, I am told, the motto of the country is: "The abolition of slavery and the love of liberty brought us here.' Yet the 15,000 or so negro and half-caste Liberians who have control of the country have imposed upon it every form of serfdom and of slavery. These friends of liberty are the creators of a widely-extended system of slavery. The evidence of the Christy Commission can- not be set aside. That evidence shows that between 1914 and 1927 no fewer than 7,268 slaves were taken away on ships, chiefly to Spanish and Portuguese plantations. I know of one contract for the procuring and shipping of 3,000 labourers at £9 each.
JJ
These unfortunate simple natives are decoyed, deceived and carried away, often not knowing where they are going, often treated with the greatest cruelty; and, in fact, all the old excesses of the slave days seemed to have been largely The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
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The only effective influence that can be brought to bear upon this problem is, course, the League of Nations. Happily the phrase which the noble Earl used, an international conscience" is now not only a phrase but a fact. It exists and it has its organ and establish- ment in the League; and we must all wish that the League should undertake this matter with the same continuity with which it has undertaken questions of the care of refugees, the sale of noxious drugs, the spread of disease and the white slave traffic. But the Anti-slavery Con- vention is not enough. The report once a year to the Assembly is not enough. There is need of unremitting vigilance and pressure and therefore I would most cordially endorse the plea made by the noble Earl that there should be created in connection with the League a standing bureau of information. I need not repeat the reasons which he has so clearly and fully given, but I am certain, so far as I can see, that in order to make the Anti- Slavery Convention really effective some such permanent Committee of experts, for the assembling of every sort of in- formation and giving to the Assembly a report really based upon accurate and accumulative knowledge of the facts, is necessary. Certainly we cannot rest satisfied with the position which still prevails over so large a part of the world, and we trust that by the time the cen- tenary of 1833 comes round we shall be able to secure some further progress towards the abolition of a system which is degrading alike to the owner and the slave.
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Mlavery.
Slavery.
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of Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Somali- land, Nyasaland, Uganda, the Coast, Ashanti, the Northern tories and Northern Rhodesia,
Gold Terri- and
a notification to that effect has been sent to the League. This was the course Pleni- urged by Sir John Kirk, our potentiary at the Brussels Conference in 1890 and the greatest authority we have He had on the question of slavery. pointed out that it was by this means that slavery was gradually abolished in India by the decree of 1843, without the dislocation of society, without compen- sation to the owners, and without the hardship and suffering which would have been involved by sudden emancipation. We have learnt, moreover, that there are forms of servitude even worse than the status of the slave,, because they lack the protection which, alike in ancient times and in modern Moslem States, is afforded to the slave by the obligations imposed on an owner, in those States in which slavery is still recognised as a legal in- stitution by the State.
[ 22 JULY 1931 ] LORD LUGARD: My Lords, it has become a tradition that the question of slavery should be discussed in one or other of the British Houses of Parliament, and it is entirely, as the most rev. Prelate has said, in accordance with tradition that the discussion this evening should have been inaugurated by one who bears a name so honoured in the annals of the suppression of slavery as the noble Earl, Lord Buxton. There can, I think, be no doubt of the value of these discussions in maintaining public interest on behalf of a class who cannot speak for them- selves, and also in educating and inform- ing public opinion on the subject. They afford proof that in spite of all its many other pre-occupations at the present time this country has not ceased to champion the cause of liberty. In these days there are very few countries in which slaves still exist as an integral part of the body politic. We all know that slave dealing and slave trading are regarded as criminal offences throughout the British Empire, but it is also true that in cer- tain of the British Dependencies there still happily exists a system of permissive slavery. I say happily exists because we have learnt that the forcible emanci- pation which compels a master to turn adrift his house-born slaves, whether they are aged or sick or unable to provide for themselves, is an act of cruelty, for- bidden by Moslem law, which would drive men into crime and women into prostitu- tion.
We have learnt that the essential thing is to abolish the legal status of slavery, and to make it known to every slave that he or she can assert his or her freedom without having to appeal to the Courts of Law or to go through any other for- mality, such as to prove that they have
otherwise. employment or
They can assert their freedom without formality and without deterrent. The point is that that the owner has not committed a crime against the law if he allows his house- born slaves to remain, at their own wish, in his household. In practice the rela- tion becomes that of master and servant. It is only a transitory stage, for all children born in the house are born free. Lest there should be any doubt on this question, within the last two or three years the legal status of slavery has been Ordi- formally abolished by special nances in the British Dependencies
It is to these forms of servitude that I would confine the few remarks which I intend to make; the more so that the noble Earl in moving this Resolution has dealt very largely with the subject of slave dealing and slave trading. I would merely wish to emphasise my view that the three most important aspects of slave dealing and slave trading are, as he said, the sale of women and children in China, the smuggling of slaves across the Red Sea to the Arabian coast from Abyssinia in that connection we have been reminded that Abyssinia is a land- locked country without access to the sea, and that the slaves must therefore be shipped across the Red Sea from a port under European control-and thirdly, the sale of children and of persons taken to Mecca under the guise of pilgrims: not merely slaves who are smuggled to Mecca, but people who have gone as servants to pilgrims and there been sold by their masters.
The
Western nations Europe and America-cannot escape the responsi- bility which their civilisation and their supremacy over the coloured races have imposed upon them. I do not allude to conditions in Russia because your Lordships have recently passed a Bill on this subject introduced by my noble friend Lord Phillimore. I refer only to
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