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 criticism, it would seem that the Portuguese Government are really endeavouring to suppress the trade in slaves.  All that the British Government can do is to afford them whatever assistance is possible in British territory, and to encourage them in bold and strenuous action against the influential opposition whose enmity has necessarily been evoked.