Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Letter to the Honourable Members of the Select Committee of the House of Commons: Appointed to Inquire Into the Question of the Slave Trade on the East Coast of Africa
This is not the first time that private malice has instigated similar attacks against me, which I have hitherto treated with the contempt they merit. But the importance given to the present, by being recorded in the evidence given before your honourable Committee, renders it my imperative duty to clear my name from the foul aspersions caston it by the Reverend Horace Waller.
Before detailing the circumstances under which I became largely connected with the-employment of slave labour, it may be well to explain what the Reverend Horace Waller has failed to do - viz., that slave labour is almost the only labour obtainable in Zanzibar, and is universally employed by all foreign residents engaged in commerce; there being some thousands of British subjects besides myself who so employ it.
It should be understood that in the town of Zanzibar, slaves, male and female, are allowed by their owners to hire themselves for the day to whomever they prefer to serve, and to perform whatever description of work they choose; one moiety of their day's wages being the perquisite of the owner, the other of the slave.
Several thousands of slaves of both sexes, and of all ages, are thus daily employed by the various mercantile houses in Zanzibar.
Gangs of slave porters are also constantly employed by the merchants, under annual or half-yearly contract with their owners, and without such an arrangement no vessels could be loaded or dis charged, ndr could goods nor produce be stored, as these porters� have the entire monopoly of such work, and no interlopers would be tolerated.
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