rived of many advantages which he
wishes to acquire, and may even be reduced to a state of starvation. But
speculations of this sort may be left to the philosopher and the
sociologist. They have little interest for the practical politician. Sir
Edward Grey endeavoured, for the purposes of the subject now under
discussion, to define slavery. "Voluntary engagement," he said, "is not
slavery, but forcible engagement is slavery." The definition is correct
as far as it goes, but it is incomplete, for it fails to answer the
question on which a great part of this Portuguese controversy hangs,
viz. what do the words "voluntary" and "forcible" mean? The truth is
that it is quite unnecessary, in dealing with this subject, to wander
off into a field strewn with dialectical subtleties. It may not be
possible to define slavery with the same mathematical precision which
Euclid gave to his definitions of a straight line or a point, but every
man of ordinary common sense knows the difference between slavery and
freedom in the usual acceptation of those terms. He knows well enough
that however much want or the force of circumstances may oblige an
Englishman, a Frenchman, or a German to accept hard conditions in
fixing the price at which he is prepared to sell his labour or his
services, none of these individuals is, in reality, a slave; and he has
only to inquire very cursorily into the subject to satisfy himself that
the relations between employer and employed in Portuguese West Africa
differ widely from those which exist in any European country, and are in
fact far more akin to what, in the general acceptance of the word, is
termed slavery.

Broadly speaking, it may be said that the contention that the present
system of contract labour is merely slavery in disguise rests on three
pleas, viz. (1) that even if, as was often the case, the contract
labourers now actually serving were not forcibly recruited, they were
very frequently wholly unaware of the true nature of the engagements
which they had taken, or of the conditions under which they would be
called upon to serve; (2) that not only are they unable to terminate
their contracts if they find they have been deceived, but that even on
the termination of those contracts they are not free to leave their
employers; and (3) that, even when nominal freedom is conceded, they
cannot take advantage of it, for the reason that the employers or their
Government have virtually by their own acts