pirical legislation, and the attempt to do so would result in chaos and misery. Slavery is at present the only form of labour contract, and a very real—though perhaps in our view an inadequate—return is made by the master for his slave's work. He is supported in sickness as well as in health; his master is responsible for any crime committed by him; he is usually given one or more days in the week to work on a piece of land of his own, and its proceeds are his personal property, with which he can, if he desires, redeem himself. Under a good master he becomes one of the family and cannot be sold when he has been long in service, and he may often rise to positions of high command. There are many other liberal provisions for the benefit of the slave in Mohammedan law, which space forbids me to discuss here. The general effect of the institution is to establish a form of contract (in a country where the idea of a written contract is unknown) not unsuited to a primitive race (as has been proved in the early history of almost every race in the world, including our own), and not illiberal to the lower classes if the laws of the Koran in their favour are made effective. Under this régime, when well administered, cases of desertion by slaves are few, and the people are for the most part happy. The evils attendant upon it are principally two, and these two are very great. In the first place the institution of slavery involves slave-raiding (for new slaves) and slave trade. The horrors of the slave raid are beyond description, and I will not enter into them here; I am dealing only with the administrative problem, and from that point of view they are a terrible evil in that the country is depopulated and laid waste. Men are killed by thousands and women and children are carried off or starve in the Bush, while in the slave-raiders there grows up a lawlessness born of the lust for butchery, rape, and rapine. In the second place, the institution of domestic slavery results in holding a very large portion (including the farm-slaves, probably considerably more than half the population of a Mohammedan community) in a
