to us to obtain the statement of Lord Morley that he had come to the conclusion that there was no difference between contract labour and slavery in the Portuguese Colonies.

In this connection we endeavoured to obtain a full Consular inquiry, because those of us who knew the actual conditions, both on the mainland and on the islands, were perfectly satisfied of this-provided we could secure an impartial and thorough investigation by a British official, he would come to precisely the same conclusion as we had already reached. Mr. Hoare has referred to this report. Well, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Buxton and I regard it as one of the most momentous features in the campaign for the liberation of the labourers on the Portuguese plantations. In official language, our Consuls go further than even Mr. Nevinson, Mr. Cadbury, Mr. Burt, or I have ever gone. We have never said that all slaves were bought on the mainland. We have never said that every contract was a sham, and every re-contract a farce. We have said that the majority were slaves, and the majority of the contracts were shams. But here we now have the official confirmation, going even further than we did.

There is one other point upon which we have had some concern, and that is the question of repatriation. Even amongst our own friends we have sometimes been urged to modify our demands. We have said that all these people were passionately attached to their homes in Central Africa. (Applause.) We have been met with the statement that they were very much happier on the islands. (Laughter.) We have been told—and of course it is perfectly true-that the food and the housing conditions of the people on the plantations were better than on the mainland; but we have always said that good food and good housing does not compensate for the loss of liberty. (Hear, hear.) This White Paper which has just been published tells from cover to cover of the passionate longing of these unfortunate people to be restored to their homes on the mainland. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, just to take the one fact in this report-it is only 93d., and everybody should read it. Consul Smallbones tells us how some of these people were brought before the Curador-and asked whether they were prepared to renew their contracts. Man after man pleaded to be sent back to his home in Central Africa, and last of all in that long line of people appealing for their liberty, there was one old woman who had lost both her feet, and Mr. Consul Smallbones says: Even the woman who had both her legs amputated below the knee insisted on wobbling on her hideous stumps to her native country to Central Africa. Another man who had suffered an accident, and was unable to walk, found a companion who was prepared to carry him on his back hundreds of miles into the interior of the African Continent. Ladies and gentlemen, you will understand from this how correct has been our assertion all along that these people were passionately attached to their homes on the mainland, and that the one thing which they

desired was their liberty. Since 1908 we have secured the emancipation and repatriation of four thousand of these slaves-(Applause)-but thirtyfive thousand remain, and remain in the condition we have described to you. I venture to assert that the publication of this White Paper imposes upon this Society a grave responsibility, to redouble its efforts until every single one of those slaves is set free to return to his home in Africa. (Applause.)

The fourth feature which has given us grave concern is that of forced labour for private profit. It is now recognized by all statesmen that whilst forced labour for works of public utility may be defended, when you have forced labour for private profit, that is none other than slavery. We have that upon the authority of men like Sir Edward Grey, Lord Cromer, and every other statesman of any colonial prominence. In Portuguese Africa we see a system of forced labour, officially recruited, officially demanded, officially shipped to the plantations. We have therefore to protest against that, to inquire into the working of it, and to expose it, so that if possible we may prevent a new system of slave-owning being established for these plantations.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like in conclusion to urge that every member of this Society should read through this White Book, which is a complete unmasking of this hideous and highly organized system of slaveowning and slave-trading in Portuguese West Africa.

Rev. LAWSON FORFEITT remarked that it was not clear that the charges against Mr. Bowskill had been finally abandoned by the Portuguese Government. The Baptist Missionary Society felt deeply indebted to Mr. Hoare for the very prominent and valuable part he had taken with regard to the arrest of Mr. Bowskill in the House of Commons, and he wished to take the opportunity of expressing his personal appreciation of Mr. Hoare's kindness and sympathy throughout this case.

The CHAIRMAN then put the Resolution to the meeting, which was carried unanimously.

Mr. DOUGLAS HALL, M.P., moved the next resolution :—

'That this meeting is of opinion that the Report of the Select Committee on the Putumayo atrocities and recent disclosures of abuses connected with the employment of native labour in different parts of the world show that there is great need for the consolidation and extension of the Slave Trade Acts, and urges upon His Majesty's Government to introduce a Bill for this purpose into Parliament at an early date.

He said :-I am particularly pleased to have been selected to be associated with this Resolution. Last Session for many weeks I sat on the Putumayo Select Committee the Committee which investigated into the concerns of the Peruvian Amazon Company. That Committee owed its

existence, I believe, almost entirely from the first to the work of your Association, and to the continuous and arduous struggle which your Secretaries, Mr. Buxton and Mr. Harris, made to have an investigation into the affairs of the Company. Indeed, it was a horrible Committee. The horrors which were brought before us on oath by responsible officials, and by responsible people, and the horrors contained in the Report of our Consul, were beyond belief, and it was terrible to think that the Company perpetrating these horrors was using British capital collected in the greatest city the world has ever known-London-and that their dividends, made by this torture and this cruelty, were distributed in London to the shareholders, who little knew how they were made, and who were protected by our laws.

After sitting on that Committee and drawing up our Report we unfortunately came to the conclusion that there was nothing at present existing on the Statute Book which would allow us to prosecute the directors of the Company. There was nothing sufficiently disclosed to allow them. to be prosecuted in any Court of Justice.

Mr. Douglas Hall then referred to the sub-committee formed by the Society to follow up the subject, and to the Bill to amend and extend the Slave Trade Acts which it had drafted. It had not at present been introduced, but there was another Bill brought in by Dr. Chapple now on the table of the House of Commons, and it was hoped that perhaps these two Bills might be amalgamated into one, which should be the basis of the reform. which we desire, and so make it impossible that the good name of England shall be mixed up in atrocities like these. (Hear, hear.)

Mr. Hall continued :-As you know, there are three of what appear to be very drastic Slavery Acts-namely, the Acts of 1824, 1843 and 1873; but apparently they were not drastic enough, and it was possible in tropical countries to engage so-called indentured labour, whatever you like to call it, but it was really to buy slaves and torture them, and not pay them properly to starve them, in order that they might do an unconscionable amount of work and bring in large dividends to the shareholders.

The history of the Peruvian Amazon Company is a very typical history of similar companies, I am sorry to say, throughout a great part of South America. We came to the conclusion in our Committee that this was not an isolated case, but that it was really a bad instance of a custom which was more or less prevalent throughout the whole of South America. As you are aware, in the case of this Company, the Peruvian Amazon Company, they had to go 1,000 miles up the Amazon to Iquitos, and then it was three or four weeks' journey before they came to these virgin forests whence they obtained the rubber. Those forests contain a population who have scarcely ever seen a white man-a peaceful population, and who moreover were not living under the tribal system,

but more under a family system. They found here a great quantity of wild rubber, and they also found a population to work at getting this rubber. They simply divided up the population amongst the rubber, and all they wished was that the population would last out the collection of the rubber. In a few years of their working they did to death and tortured 10,000 natives by the most cruel tortures imaginable. Gangs of ruffians were sent up by this Company, and all they were told was, " You have got to produce rubber. We do not want to know by what means you get it as long as you produce it, and produce it quickly whilst rubber is at such boom prices." And they did so produce it, and the means they took to produce it only came out originally through the action of your Society.

Now it was above everything necessary that we should have some legislation which should make directors in England and officials in England— directors living often in the highest circles of society and mixing among honourable men-responsible for their agents, to see that they did not employ slaves. One of the clauses which we propose is that any director or official of a company being British subjects are liable for misdemeanour and a very heavy fine if they are aware that any of their agents holds any person as a slave in a foreign country; and we also propose to make it a crime if they are proved to be culpably negligent, so that such atrocities can be carried on without their knowledge.

My friend Mr. Dickinson will tell you more about this in seconding the Resolution, but it was only because we made use of an antiquated process -the Speaker's Warrant-that we were able to seize the documents in their London offices and so arrive at a knowledge of the real state of things. Mr. Roberts, now Under Secretary of State for India, actually took the trouble to learn Spanish in order to decipher these documents, and he was thus able to form the opinion that if the directors had not known what was going on they must have been blind and imbecile. (Applause.)

The Right Hon. W. H. DICKINSON, M.P., who seconded the Resolution, said: I am glad that Mr. Douglas Hall had the opportunity, as he wished to get away, of speaking first, because his speech will have saved me from the obligation of going into very much detail in connexion with the work of the Putumayo Committee. The Resolution which we are asking you to support is that this Society, and I hope others outside, will do their utmost to press forward the Bill which has been prepared by a Special Committee, and which is, if not before Parliament, at any rate ready to be before Parliament, and if taken up by the Government may be passed into law. As we know, Parliamentary procedure is very slow. The machine wants a lot of pushing from the outside, and in this case, like others, the matter will only be brought to a successful conclusion, this year at any rate, if persons who are interested in this subject from outside press the Government to give time for its consideration.

This proposal is the outcome, as has been told you, of the considerations of the Putumayo Committee-a Committee which was appointed for a very limited purpose, namely, that of investigating how far the horrors and abuses that were admitted to have taken place in the Peruvian forests could be laid at the door of the individual directors of this Peruvian Amazon Company in London; and, as Mr. Hall has told you, we found it was difficult to bring any actual guilty knowledge, if I may say so, to the British directors, a thing which we were very glad to be able to report, because no one would like to think there was any actual intentional shameful dealing carried out by British subjects; and all we could say-and I think that was the general public opinion-was that the whole system of directorships in this country was open to these abuses, and that this particular Company had been guilty undoubtedly of not taking sufficient care to investigate the conditions under which their dividends were being produced, and under which the rubber was being collected, which, in our opinion, they ought to have done. But the Committee, fortunately I think, has really had a much broader effect than its mere decision upon that limited point may be taken to have represented, and that was largely due, I think, to the excellent Chairman we had in Mr. Charles Roberts, who was determined that we should really not waste our time, if I may say so, but bring our labours to some practical result which should be effective to cure what was undoubtedly a very great, and I am not sure it is not a growing, evil in the world at the present moment. (Hear, hear.) Our investigations brought to light a great many things, and brought them into much greater public prominence. The facts of the case I need not go into; the horrors which were perpetrated I need not explain, because I feel pretty certain that members of this Society at any rate have made themselves acquainted with the conditions which did take place in those Peruvian forests. I can only say that I do not believe greater horrors or greater cruelty ever existed in the worst times of the Middle Ages. I cannot believe that at any time humanity-individual human beings have been guilty of more atrocious cruelty towards perfectly harmless, innocent, not altogether savage, races of people, who were recognized by all who knew them to be docile, willing to work, very affectionate, not immoral, with a great many admirable domestic customs. They cultivated their own soil, they had their own family life, they were very much beloved by the missionaries who worked amongst them, and yet these poor people were subjected to cruelty, flogging, torture, abuses of all kinds, by a certain set of men who, possibly by reason of their surroundings (that is the only excuse one can give for them) had developed characteristics which were absolutely brutal.

Now what was all that due to? It was due entirely to the greed for money from top to bottom. (Hear, hear.) The whole of the Putumayo. atrocities arose from greed of wealth. In London what was taking place?