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From Chambers's Journal.

THE SLAVE-TRADE IN TURKEY.

THE newspapers gave an account, a few months ago, of the seizure, near Smyrna, of a slave-ship, and the liberation of the slaves it contained-one of those farces with which the Turks, from time to time, gratify their western admirers, and amuse, or rather abuse, the Europeon public. No one, not even their bitterest enemies, can refuse them credit for the perfection to which they carry this art of throwing dust in the eyes of their too lover-like protectors; nor is their merit the less, that their success can be accounted for by the consideration that it is the only art they design to cultivate. Like the dangerous man of one book, they are masters in their one art. It is the Alpha and the Omega of their civilisation - their way of expressing their regard for public opinion. To seem and not to be, is the problem which has been so successfully worked by the Sublime Porte for the last century and a half, especially for the last half-century.

England and English ambassadors the only people who exercise a disinterested philanthropy in looking after the domestic concerns of the Turks-have labored for the last twenty years to persuade the sultan to abolish, in all its branches, this one of his peculiar institutions. It is instructive to mark the progressive steps by which the power of the charmer's voice has been made evident. First, the fair daughters of Circassia were ordered to be kept for sale henceforward only in private houses; then the slavemarket, a large airy court surrounded by small rooms, and with some fine old trees in the centre, situated in the very busiest part of the bazaar, was ordered to be closed, and the human merchandise was transferred for sale to unwholesome, underground vaults, near Sultan Suleiman's mosque; next, under the pressure of war, the importation of white slaves was positively forbidden; and finally, the traffic was declared to be abolished by an imperial firman. England and humanity had thus gained a notable victory-upon paper. The practical result of all these measures was, that last summer the slave-market of Constantinople was so overstocked with white ladies, that they had fallen to one-third of their usual price; while black slaves, plentiful as blackberries in autumn, were almost as valueless. Never since the massacres of Scio had the faithful been able to stock their establishments on such reasonable terms.

The fact is that the slave-trade is at this moment as active as ever in all parts of Turkey, excepting in Egypt, if Egypt must be called Turkey. Its pretended abolition is only one of those paper measures to which the government has recourse periodically, to

satisfy the exigencies of some Frank, generally English, ambassador. Thank Heaven! while the representatives of other nations are carefully watching over their own interests, ours is even more actively and less selfishly promoting those of others.

To attempt to abolish slavery in a Mohammedan country is no easy task, to pretend to do so when those Mohammedans are Turks under Turkish rulers, is almost a desperate one. The abolition of male slavery would be difficult, but perhaps, with certain exceptions, not impossible; but to do away with female slavery would be striking at the root of Turkish society itself. It would be the subversion of domestic life as Turks understand it, alike opposed to their habits and to their religious ideas. The sultan has no wives; it is beneath his dignity to marryhe has only slaves; he is the son and grandson of slaves, bought in the market with "money current with the merchant." The hundred or two of white ladies who bloom in the parterre of his harem, require a still larger number of black ones to wait upon them, for no respectable Mussulman woman in Turkey, however poor she may be, would accept domestic service. What is true of the sultan's harem, is equally true on a smaller scale of the households of all his subjects. Free domesticity is unknown among women, and the small shopkeeper's wife who with us would employ a charwoman or keep a servant-of-all-work, has in Turkey one or two slaves at her orders. Male slaves, black and white, are still more numerous than females, and they are the only servants who enjoy their master's confidence. We cannot imagine a Turk without slaves; he would be as helpless as a child. We have seen a Turk, one of the greatest men in the empire, ask one of the slaves who stood before him for his handkerchief. The slave told him he had it by him. The master fumbled on the cushions without finding it; the slave was not the less positive that he had it. He stepped forward to search for it, rolled his unwieldy lord first to one side, and then to the other, to see if it were under him, then he searched his pockets, and finally drew it from his waist-band. Abbas Pacha, for it was no less a personage than the late viceroy of Egypt, submitted to this search with an unconcerned air, which showed that it was a common affair; and after the five or six minutes employed in it, resumed the conference with the English consul-general which it had interrupted.

Our readers do not require to be told who are the unhappy creatures employed by the sultan and by all wealthy persons to watch over the morals of their harems, but it is necessary to refer to them, not only to de

nounce the inhuman treatment they have been subjected to, to qualify them for their degrading duties and their number has of late years little, if at all, diminished-but still more to call attention to the monstrous perversion, little known or thought of in England, by which these poor wretches have become the official guardians of the "Prophet's "tomb at Medina, and of the great Mussulman temple in Mecca. The barbarous practice of which they are the victims has thus become elevated to a religious rite, not only connecting the institution of slavery with a religion whose fairest claim to our sympathy is the mitigation its author sought to effect in the condition of slaves, but making slavery in its most revolting form a part of the Mussulman ritual.

Yet, while we denounce the dishonesty of a pretended reform which can only deceive the wilfully blind, we have no wish to convey to our readers a false impression of the condition of the slave in Turkey. He is not, as a general rule, employed in field-labors; he is not driven to work by an overseer armed with a lash; he is subjected to few privations, and he is not generally discontented with his lot. Bought at an early age, the young boys are employed only in the lightest tasks, such as presenting a cup of coffee, carrying a pipe, or standing for hours in silence with folded hands before their master. They are the playfellows of his children, with whom the white slaves are frequently educated. These often rise to high rank through his influence, and not seldom marry his daughters. Two of the present sultan's brothers-in-law were bought in the market of Constantinople. The slave is regarded as the child of the family-no odious distinctions of color are known in the east, though the negroes do not receive the same education as the whites, and a great man would hardly choose a black for his sonin-law. But even these, if accident advance them to office, as sometimes happens, become at once the equals of the proudest Osmanli. No idea of disgrace is attached to slavery the black slaves of a great man regard themselves, and are regarded by him, as infinitely above his white hired servants. They belong to him; they are a part of himself; and if he give them their freedom, he provides for them, and the relationship of adoption does not cease. When freed, they become at once the equals of every one. The Turks are thoroughly democratic; they have no rank but that of service, no nobility but that of money. This is the tendency, or rather the condition of absolutism, for the sovereign is not absolute when the subjects have rights he must respect; and the Turkish democracy is the most practical of all-it is the equality not of freemen, but of slaves.

Reared in domesticity, with no stimulus to industry, eating and sleeping without a thought of the morrow, the majority of the slaves are incapable of thinking or caring for themselves. To free them, therefore, is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted upon them. One of our friends in Cairo had long suffered in patience, or at least in silence, the whims and insolence of his wife's neutral attendant. At last, when his conduct became unbearable, neither exhortations nor threats having any effect, he determined to punish him. He did not sell him-he gave him his freedom. The poor useless wretch, when days went by, and he was not, as he supposed he must be, recalled to the house where he had so long been the tyrant, became as humble as he had been insolent, and going round to all his master's friends, besought their intercession for his restoration.

As a general rule, slaves are treated by their masters hardly indeed as reasoning beings, but with great kindness. As children, they may be whipped; but only great men venture to bastinado them when grown up. In fact, their masters are too completely in their power to venture to exasperate them by harshness. In the last two years we have known two men, one the govenor of a town in Asia Minor, the other a wealthy merchant, murdered for their brutality by their own slaves. It was from two of his white slaves that Abbas Pacha received at last the wages of his misdeeds.

The female slaves, in the seclusion to which they are condemned, suffer perhaps more than the men. They are exposed to the caprices of their white mistresses or of rival favorites, and the ill-humor of their guardians often falls heavily upon them. We remember seeing, a few years ago, in Damascus, one of the black keepers of the sultan's harem. He was living there in exile with the rank of pacha, having fallen into disgrace for a manual correction administered to one of the reigning favorites, who had found means to persuade the sultan that it had been undeserved. On the other hand, no slave who has born a child to her master can be sold; her children, whatever their color, are regarded as legitimate, and come in for an equal share of their father's inheritance. If dissatisfied with their master, slaves of whatever color or sex can oblige him, or rather have a legal right to oblige him, to sell them. Of course such a right can rarely be enforced. We know that with all this kindness there may coexist a large amount of tyranny and brutality, and in a large establishment there may be no small sum of unhappiness. We have known slaves appear before the cadi to claim the right of being sold, but we have never

known a case where such an appeal was successful.

It is not, however, so much the condition of the slaves in their master's house which seems to warrant the interference of Europe, as the dreadful sufferings they are exposed to before reaching the market. The white slaves, at least the females, are exempt from these, and since the Circassians choose to traffic in their own flesh and blood, and the Turks to violate the prescriptions of their religion, which forbids the purchase of Mussulmans, we need not perhaps insist upon a reform which Russia will sooner or later effect. But for the black slaves, we have a right to interest ourselves, because helpless and unwilling victims, they are subjected to sufferings even more horrible than those disclosed recently by the capture of a slave-ship off Jamaica.

by the government in every possible way, even to the loss of more legitimate traffic. The number of slaves exported from Tripoli, in 1854 was three times larger than under the independent deys twenty years previously. About a year ago, after the publication of the firman forbidding the trade, we had occasion to speak with a merchant whose house is on the south-west frontier of Tripoli, and who trades to Timbuctoo. "What will become of your trade now, if this firman is enforced ?" was the question we asked. "It would be time enough to answer you," he said "when the firman is acted upon; but in those countries there is no want of objects of traffic. Slaves are at present the most profitable; but when these will no longer pay, there remain ivory, gold-dust, ostrich-feathers, and many other commodities. The people of the inner country cannot do without the articles we carry to them, and they will soon find wherewithal to purchase them. God is generous." He seemed little disturbed by the idea of the suppression of the trade; but whether from a conviction that this was not really intended, or from the confidence that other profitable investments would be found, we do not pretend to say. The goods exchanged for slaves are coarse cottons, paper, and small articles of hardware. It will be impossible to abolish the trade in men with all its attendant horrors, so long as slavery is permitted to exist in any shape in Turkey. Only its final abolition can put a stop to importations which the authorities both in Tripoli ond Constantinople are interested in encouraging. Even the sultan's ships-of-war are used for the conveyance of slaves.

The Egyptian frontiers are now closed to this traffic, and Constantinople depends for its supply upon Tripoli. The slaves thence procured are brought from the interior of Africa, a distance of 1000 or 1500 miles, sometimes from even more distant countries. They are the victims of the wars carried on by the chieftains of the black states nearest to Fezzan, for the sole sake of the prisoners, whom they sell to dealers from the Turkish territories. Murder stains this foul speculation in the first instance, and yet this is the least of the horrors which disgrace it. The captives are forced to follow on foot the caravans of their purchasers through sands hot as a furnace in the daytime, and cold as ice at night. Men and women, boys and girls, without clothes to cover them, or shoes to protect their feet, journey on for weeks, some- We can understand the desperate efforts times for months, supplied only with the made by the Turk to maintain this institution; scanty food which suffices to ward off death, but we profess ourselves unable to understand and often suffering horribly from thirst in a or to forgive the lukewarmness in the cause region where wells are rare, and the heat of of abolition of his European supporters. the sun often dries up or corrupts the con- The very argument which induces the Turk tents of the water-skin. On one route which to resist the attempt, is the strongest that can the caravans follow there is a distance of be urged in its favor. The abolition of slavtwelve days from one well to the next, and ery would effect a radical change in Turkish hundreds of victims annually whiten the des- society; and if we demanded it on no other ert with their bones. If only half arrive, the grounds, we should call for it on this one. profit is still so enormous, that the loss seems If Turkey has become a European state, it trifling to the hardened wretches in whose can be permitted to take a place in the coneyes a slave is only merchandise. The sur-gress of Christian nations only on the condivivors who reach Tripoli or Bengazi are carefully fed, that they may recover flesh, but they are still left in their almost primitive nakedness, shivering from the cold of a climate so different from their native tropics, that the buyers may have ocular demonstration that they are really freshly imported. The Turks prefer slaves who have as yet received no instruction. The slave-trade is the principal branch of commerce in Tripoli, and up to the present time it has been encouraged

tion of remodelling, not the government alone, but still more the social relations of its subjects. It is vain to hope for any real amelioration in these till slavery be abolished in every corner of the empire.

But if slavery be an essential institution of Islam, then we are bound to hunt the professors of such a creed out of Europe. Humanity has a right to be intolerant of a standing offence against her laws; and if she proclaim a crusade in their vindication, freemen of all

and to decree the freedom of all slaves whatever after the lapse of a brief term. This would lead to their speedy emancipation; for their masters would in general rather free them at once of their own accord, than allow them to acquire their liberty as a right. Of course the law prohibiting the sale of slaves must be accompanied by the fixing of express punishments for its transgression; its mere publication and communication to the European ambassadors would give it no efficacy.

nations and of all creeds will acknowledge
that her object is holy. But this is not the
case. Islam found slavery established, and it
mitigated its rigors. In Tunis, slavery has
for many years been entirely done away with
-an unanswerable argument, by the way, in
favor of the independence of the bey, whom
our English policy seems inclined to reduce
to his long-forgotten subjection to Turkey.
If, on the part of the Turkish government,
the desire to abolish slavery were sincere, and
not a mere pretence to blind the people of
Europe to the real nature of their rule, it
would not be difficult to bring it about. The
first step necessary is to cut off the supply.
To effect this, a couple of steamers cruising
off the coast of Tripoli, backed by more
stringent orders issued to the English consul,
would be sufficient; and the waters of the
Mediterranean would no longer be stained by
this traffic. The traditions of Islam itself
would go far towards extirpating domestic
slavery; for the Arabian prophet teaches that
the granting his freedom to a slave is a mer-
itorious work in the eyes of God; he even en-
joins it as a propitiatory sacrifice on certain
occasions. In the opinions of all pious Mus-
sulmans, it is not lawful to retain a slave who
has embraced Islam in servitude more than a
short number of years. It would therefore
be enough to forbid the sale of slaves from its protegés.
this time forwards, either publicly or privately,

The Turks are too thoughtless to consider the sufferings of the poor slaves before they reach their hands; they only remember that they were idolators, and that they have made them Mussulmans. They are persuaded that God has put them into their power that they may save their souls. There is every excuse to be made for the Turks, who seek to evade a change which would revolutionise their habits of life, and whose necessity as a matter of humanity they cannot appreciate; but there is no excuse for their government, which thus scatters firmans broadcast over Europe, for the sake of propitiating a public opinion which it seeks to deceive; and still less is it possible to excuse the Christian diplomacy which stands smiling by and winks, lending the sanction of its silence to the bad faith of

THE CHASE OF THE OSTRICH.-This amuse- | less head, and at once deprives him of life, a ment is held in high estimation, and is only followed by the Arab aristocrat, who makes a long and expensive preparation for its enjoyment. For some weeks before the time appointed for the sport, the Arab feeds and trains his horses with especial care; and, unless their wind and condition are perfect, they stand no chance with the ostrich, he runs them out of sight. This is exactly what is done in our own country by good kennel management; the fox is overmatched by the condition of the hound. There is a curious point of similarity between the English sportsman and the aristocrat of the Sahara; he rides his second horse in the chase of the ostrich as the other does in that of the fox. But, if anything, he of the desert has the advantage; he posts his relay with such a thorough knowledge of the running of his game, that he rarely misses his mount; whereas the Meltonian makes a bad cast frequently, and as frequently he finds his second horse already half-beaten by the bad management of his groom. When the ostrich is blown in the chase, the rider strikes him a sharp tap on his feather

small stick being his sole weapon. A kouskoussou, surmounted by cutlets taken from the breast of the ostrish, is the royal dish of the desert; while the steam from the boiled fat imparts an unctuous taste and gamy flavor to the whole. The Arab of the desert exchanges ostrich feathers for corn grown by the Arabs of the Tell; thus their value to the former is incalculable, and were it not for the kous-koussou, they might follow the plan of the Lincolnshire fen-men with very justifiable advantage, that is, pluck the birds alive and turn them out for another crop. A visitor, anxious to witness the chase of the ostrich, in order to obtain accommodation and approximation to the hunting. ground, should go to Tougort, the capital of thirty-five villages in the Oasis of Oued-Rir, seventy-six leagues from Biskra; or to Leghrouat, a town of four thousand inhabitants, south-west of Riskra; or to Gardain, a town of the Beni-Mzab, easily accessible from Algiers, all within the Algerian Sahara, and consequently under the government and protection of France. "Davies' Algeria.”

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Canning ever wrote such a letter as Lord Shaftesbury had imputed to her, and then demanded of Lord Shaftesbury who wrote the letter which his Lordship "saw," and by whose authority it was quoted by him. On February 4, Lord Shaftesbury, in another letter to the Times, remarked that some time before he spoke at Wimborne "he heard that there was a letter from the highest lady, &c., but that if, in the heat of speaking, he said he saw,' he had corrected this misstatement into 'he heard,' and that he had sent out a corrected report of his speech, which ran, I heard a letter from the highest lady,' but that, after all, what he meant to say was he heard of' a letter from the highest lady," &c. But he went on to add, "I have by me many letters narrating cases of still greater atrocity; but the sufferers or their relations shrink from any disclosure of their names."

ON Thursday, November 26, in a speech delivered at Crosby Hall, the Earl of Shaftesbury protested against the reticence which had been observed on the horrible details of the Indian mutiny. "The people," he said, "ought to know what has been done. the horrors that were perpretated and endured exceed all power of imagination." So he went on-while declining to speak of "the indecency of the details, since they were such that you could not commit them to writing" -to describe actual scenes of "women lying naked on their backs," and exposed to "insults the most awful, the most degrading, the most horrible and frightful to the conception, and the most revolting;" and of "children cruelly and anatomically tortured in the presence of their horrified parents." This speech was Few thought it worth while to catechize Lord commented upon, and its entire and strict Shaftesbury any further. The man who could veracity recognised, in a leading article of the say, and who never denied that he had said, Times of November 28. On January 29 ap-"he saw a letter," when it turned out that he peared a letter in the Times written in India, with the signature of Judex, which, purporting to be the result of inquiries made on the spot, declared that nine-tenths of the stories of violation and abuse were utterly untrue; and the writer asserted that, having made it his business to ascertain the truth, he distinctly believed" that not one survived to tell of injuries suffered, and that not one mutilated, tortured, or, as far as he could gather, dishonored person was alive." This letter, naturally enough, attracted a good deal of attention. Amongst others, it roused a writer signing himself "A Lover of Truth," who, in the Times of February 2, called attention to a speech of Lord Shaftesbury delivered in November, at Wimborne, in which his Lordship is reported to have said:

"I myself saw, the other day, a letter from the highest lady now in India, describing that, day by day, ladies were coming into Calcutta, their ears and their noses cut off, and their eyes put out; that children of the tenderest years have been reserved to be put to death under circumstances of the most exquisite torture."

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"A Lover of Truth," faithful to his assumed designation, observed that Lord Shaftesbury was bound either to prove his assertion or to withdraw it. On the same day, a paragraph in the official type of the Times stated that, with reference to cases of alleged mutilation by Indian mutineers, the General Relief Committee, after careful inquiries, have ascertained that no such cases have come down the

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only "heard of a letter," was not worth pow-
der and shot. People deemed Lord Shaftes-
bury's assertion as to a matter of fact worth
no investigation, and it was once generally as-
sumed that "in the heat of" writing, the
letters in his possession" would prove to be
as apocryphal as Lady Canning's
"letter
which he saw." Not so thought Mr. Har-
greaves, of Craven Hill-gardens, who, in the
Daily News of March 24th, has printed a
recent correspondence with Lord Shaftesbury.
Pinning his Lordship to the letter of Febru-
ary 4, and to the statement that "many cases
of mutilation had come to his Lordship's pos-
itive knowledge," Mr. Hargreaves asked for
"the testimony on which that statement was
founded;" because" the Calcutta Committee
had found no such cases, the India Company
had discovered none, none had come down
the Ganges, none had arrived at Southamp-
ton, and though a lady had expressed a wish
to leave a portion of her property to such un-
fortunates, the Directors of the East India
Company had been unable to find a single
case."

Lord Shaftesbury's reply is perfectly beauPascal to show up the successor of Busentiful, and we only wish that there were a baum & Co. Mr. Hargreaves, be it observed, asks Lord Shaftesbury about the cases which he, Lord Shaftesbury, had deposed to, which had come under his Lordship's knowledge, snd the testimony of which was in his possession. Hereupon :

"Lord Shaftesbury presents his compliments Ganges, nor have any come to England." &c., and has the honor to state that his belief On February 3, "A Lover of Accuracy" of the facts mentioned in the various papers denied, in a letter to the Times, that Lady of atrocities in India is quite unshaken.”

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