The Spanish slave code, promulgated in 1789, is ad mitted on all hands to have been very humane in its character; and, in consequence of this, after Trinidad had become an English possession, the anti-slavery party resisted—and successfully- the attempt of the planters (181I) to have the Spanish law in that island replaced by the British. But notwithstanding this mildness of the code, its provisions were habitually and glaringly violated in the colonies of Spain, and in Cuba particularly the con ditions of slavery were very bad. The slave population of the island was estimated in 1792 at 84,000; in 1817 at 179,000; in 1827 at 286,000; and in 1843 at 436,00o. An act was passed by the Spanish legislature in 1870, providing that every slave who had then passed, or should thereafter pass, the age of 6o should be at once free, and that all yet unborn children of slaves should also be free. The latter, however, were to be maintained at the expense of the proprietors up to their eighteenth year, and during that time to be kept, as apprentices, to such work as was suitable for their age. This was known as the Moret Law, having been carried through the house of representatives by Senor Moret y Prendergast, then minister for the colonies. By the census of 1867 there was in Cuba a total population of 1,370,211 persons, of whom 764,750 were whites and 605,461 black or coloured ; and of the latter number 225,938 were free and 379,523 were slaves. In 1873 the Cubans roughly estimated the population at 1,500,000—of whom 500,000, or one-third, were slaves. In 1885, it was stated that "the institution was rapidly dying— that in a year, or at most two, slavery, even in its then mild form, would be extinct." Brazil.—There was a convention between Great Britain and Brazil in 1826 for the abolition of the slave trade, but it was habitually violated in spite of the English cruisers. In 1830 the traffic was declared piracy by the emperor of Brazil. England asserted by the Aberdeen Act (1845) the right of seizing sus pected craft in Brazilian waters. Yet by the connivance of the local administrative authorities 54,000 Africans continued to be annually imported. In 1850 the trade is said to have been de cisively put down. The planters and mine proprietors cried out against this as a national calamity. The closing of the traffic made the labour of the slaves more severe, and led to the em ployment on the plantations of many who before had been en gaged in domestic work; but the slavery of Brazil had always been lighter than that of the United States. On Sept. 28, 1871, the Brazilian chambers decreed that slavery should be abolished throughout the empire. Though existing slaves were to remain slaves still, with the exception of those possessed by the Govern ment, who were liberated by the act, facilities for emancipation were given; and it was provided that all children born of female slaves after the day on which the law passed should be free.
They were, however, bound to serve the owners of their mothers for a term of 21 years. A clause was inserted to the effect that a certain sum should be annually set aside from fines to aid each province in emancipating slaves by purchase. Seven years before the passing of this act the emperor, whose influence had always been exerted in favour of freedom, had liberated his private slaves, and many Brazilians after 1871 followed his ex ample. Finally, in 1888 the chambers decreed the total abolition of slavery, some 700,00o persons being accordingly freed.
In the colonies of more than one European country, after the prohibition of the slave trade, at tempts were made to replace it by a system of importing labour ers of the inferior races under contracts for a somewhat length ened term; and this was in several instances found to degenerate into a sort of legalized slave traffic. About 1867 we began to
hear of a system of this kind which was in operation between the South Sea islands and New Caledonia and the white settlements in Fiji. It seems to have begun in really voluntary agreements ; but for these the unscrupulous greed of the traders soon substituted methods of fraud and violence. The natives were decoyed into the labour ships under false pretences, and then detained by force; or they were seized on shore or in their canoes and carried on board. The nature of the engagements to go and work on the plantations was not fully explained to them, and they were hired for periods exceeding the legal term. The area of this trade was ere long further extended. In 1884 attention was drawn in a special degree to the Queensland traffic in Pacific Islanders by the "Hopeful" trials, and a Government commission was appointed to enquire into the methods followed by labour ships in recruiting the natives of New Guinea, the Louisiade archipelago and the D'Entrecasteaux group of islands. The result of the investiga tions, during which nearly 50o witnesses were examined, was the disclosure of a system which in treachery and atrocity was little inferior to the old African slave trade. These shameful deeds made the islanders regard it as a duty to avenge their wrongs on any white men they could entice upon their shores. The bishop of Melanesia, John Coleridge Patteson, fell a victim to this retaliation in the island of Nukapu on Sept. 20, 1871.
It now remains to consider the slavery of primitive origin which has existed within recent times, or continues to exist, outside of the Western world.
In Russia, a country which had not the same historical antecedents with the Western nations, properly so called, and which is, in fact, more correctly classed as Eastern, whilst slavery had disappeared, serfdom was in force down to recent days. The rural population of that country, at the earliest period accessible to our enquiries, consisted of ( ) slaves, (2) free agricultural labourers and (3) peasants proper, who were small farmers or cottiers and members of a commune. The sources of slavery were there, as elsewhere, capture in war, voluntary sale by poor freemen of themselves, sale of insolvent debtors and the action of the law in certain criminal cases. In the 18th century we find the distinction between the three classes named above effaced and all of them merged in the class of serfs, who were the property either of the landed proprietors or of the State. They were not even adscripti glebae, though forbidden to migrate; an imperial ukase of 1721 says, "the proprietors sell their peasants and domestic servants, not even in families, but one by one, like cattle." This practice, at first tacitly sanctioned by the Government, which received dues on the sales, was at length formally recognized by several imperial ukases. Peter the Great imposed a poll-tax on all the members of the rural popula tion, making the proprietors responsible for the tax charged on their serfs ; and the "free wandering people" who were not willing to enter the army were required to settle on the land either as members of a commune or as serfs of some proprietor.