allusion has already been made are "no longer permitted to roam
at large about the colony, but are, save a very few who are allowed to
live outside on giving a security, kept in the forts of Loanda."

Further, it would appear that until recently the officials who
registered the "servicaes," or native contract labourers, had a direct
pecuniary interest in the matter, and were "thus exposed to the
temptation of not scrutinising too closely the genuineness of the
contracts themselves, or the extent to which they were understood and
accepted by savage or semi-savage contracting parties." In other words,
the Portuguese officials employed in registration, far from having any
inducements offered to them to protect the labourers, were strongly
tempted to engage in what, brushing aside official euphemism, may with
greater accuracy be termed the slave trade pure and simple. It seems
that this practice is now to be altered. The registration fees are no
longer to go into the pockets of the registering officials, but are to
be paid into the Provincial Treasury. The change is unquestionably for
the better. But it is impossible in this connection not to be struck by
the somewhat curious standard of official discipline and morality which
appears to exist in the Portuguese service. Colonel Freire d'Andrade
told Sir Arthur Hardinge that "he knew of one case where L1,000 had been
made over a single contract for 'servicaes' in this way by a local
official who had winked, in this connection, at some dishonest or, at
least, highly doubtful transactions, and who had been censured and
obliged to refund the money." As in the case of the Europeans found
guilty of engaging in the slave trade, the punishment awarded appears to
be somewhat disproportionate to the gravity of the offence. One would
have thought that peculation of this description would have been visited
at least with dismissal, if not with a short sojourn in the Loanda gaol.

Colonel Freire d'Andrade further states that "the Lisbon Colonial
Office had sent out very stringent orders to the Governor-General of
Angola to put a stop once and for all to these slavery operations. New
military outposts had now been created near the northern and eastern
frontiers of the province." It is to be hoped that these orders will be
obeyed, and that they will prove effectual to attain the object in view.

On the whole, in spite of some features in the case which would appear
to justify friendly crit