SLAVERY ON BRITISH SOIL.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1310, 22 February 1883, Page 2

SLAVERY ON BRITISH SOIL.

No little disgust has prevailed,in England as to the allegations {.that slavery existed in various forms rathe Malay protected States. It was asserted that in Perak female slaves were put to a disgracetul traffic for the profit of their owners, that debt slavery also existed, and that cases were; frequent of grey-haired male and female slaves who had wasted their whole lives in bondage,,from which they had no hope of redemption. These reports were supported by an English magistrate, who declared he was often called upon to issue warrants for the recapture of fugitive slaves, and that ho always refused them, knowing that when retaken the slaves were certain to experience foul ill-usage, often to the extent of being being beaten to death. Naturally an official inquiry has been made into these statements, and it" is satisfactory to learn from a recenjty published Parliamentary paper thftt they are traversed by the replies of tlig Resident in Perak, This functionary denies everything out of his own ex- ■ perience.' If women had been tortured to death the case would have been dealt with as one of ordinary murder; whilo Mr Lord, the Resident, declares that wherever cruelty was proved before him in the Supreme Court, he invariably manumitted the slave without compensation to the owner, Mr Lord in also certain that the conditions of debtslavery are far more irksome in the neighboring island of. Borneo, which has not lieen affected by European in: fluence, than it is in Perak. The con troversy will not have been without its uses, for we are promised in consesequence the complete abolition of the slave traffic in 1884.