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 created a state of things which only leaves the slaves to choose between the alternative of continuing in a state of servitude or undergoing extreme suffering, ending not improbably in death.  It is submitted that, if these three propositions can be proved, it is mere juggling with words to maintain that no state of slavery exists.

As regards the first point, it is to be observed that when the superior intelligence and education of the recruiting agents are contrasted with the complete savagery and ignorance of the individuals recruited, there is obviously a strong presumption that in numberless cases the latter have been cozened into making contracts, the nature of which they did not in the least understand, and this presumption may almost be said to harden into certainty when the fact, to which allusion has already been made, is remembered, that the Portuguese officials engaged in the registration of contract labourers had until very recently a direct pecuniary interest in augmenting the number of labourers.  Further, Mr. Smallbones, writing on September 26, 1912, alludes to a letter signed “Carlos de Silva,” which appeared in a local paper termed the Independente.  M. de Silva says that the “servicaes” engaged in Novo Redondo “all answered the interpreter’s question whether they were willing to go to San Thome with a decided ‘No,’ which was translated by