AFRICA 
 
 AND 
 
 THE DRINK TRADE. 
 
 BY 
 
 CANON FARRAR, D.TX, FAR.S. 
 
 *AND 
 
 FREE RUM ON THE CONGO. 
 
 W. T. HORNADAY, 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 The National Temperance Society and Publication House, 
 
 58 READE STREET. 
 
 1887. 
 
AFRICA AND THE DRINK TRADE. 
 
 BY CANON FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. 
 
 Africa has been the last of the great continents to 
 disclose its secrets to the pioneers of civilization; but 
 in this century, and especially in the last sixty years, it 
 has done so in all its regions. A host of travellers — 
 starting from Egypt, or from the Cape, or from Zanzibar, 
 or from St. Paul de Loanda — have traversed its breadth, 
 and penetrated far into its interior. Its vast waterways 
 and inland lakes have been explored. The basins of the 
 Niger, the Congo, and the Zambesi have been opened to 
 commerce; and the Nile, for the first time since man 
 was, has been traced to its hidden fountains. Many have 
 cherished high hopes that now, at last, might be ad- 
 dressed to the Dark Continent the words — “ Arise, shine ; 
 for thy light is come.” 
 
 Nothing can be loftier than the ideal of Christianity; 
 nothing more beautiful than the aspirations of that love 
 for man which Christianity inspires. Might not every- 
 thing which was blessed and hopeful be anticipated from 
 the combined influences of civilization and the Gospel ? 
 Had not England learned, by fatal experience, how easy 
 it is to commit irreparable crimes against the helpless 
 childhood of the world? Had not primeval races per- 
 ished before the advancing footsteps of her sons, like the 
 line of snow when the sunlight reaches it? Might not 
 many tribes and nations be enumerated which, in the 
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
4 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 last two centuries, have either ceased to exist, or have 
 withered into despair and decrepitude, simply from hav- 
 ing been brought into contact with the vices and diseases 
 of European races, and from having found those vices 
 and diseases to be agents of destruction far more potent 
 than could be counteracted by any advance in intellectual 
 or spiritual knowledge ? Is it not strictly true that the 
 footsteps of the Aryan man, as he Jjas traversed the 
 globe in his path of commerce and conquest, have been 
 footsteps dyed in blood ? And might it not be antici- 
 pated that — in the nineteenth century at least — we have 
 become humane and noble enough to have profited by 
 the disastrous lesson? 
 
 There was a further reason why we might have felt 
 high hopes for the future of the African tribes in particu- 
 lar. Africa has been the chosen field for the exertions 
 of the Christian and the philanthropist. Some of our 
 noblest explorers have been animated to their heroic 
 efforts — not by the desire for fame, not by the enthusi- 
 asm of discovery — but by motives of the purest pity. It 
 was the aim alike of General Gordon in the Soudan, and 
 of David Livingstone in Central Africa, to put an end 
 to the iniquities of the slave trade. In the centre of the 
 nave of Westminster Abbey is the grave in which lie the 
 remains of David Livingstone — carried by his faithful 
 blacks during an eight months’ journey to the coast, and 
 identified in England by the marks of the lion’s claws 
 upon his arm. That grave attracts universal attention ; 
 and on it are inscribed the last words he wrote in his 
 diary, before he closed his eyes — with none but black 
 faces round him — in his humble hut at Chetamba’s vil- 
 lage, Ulala. They are : “ All I can add, in my solitude, 
 is: May Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 5 
 
 one — American, English, or Turk — who will help to heal 
 this open sore of the world.” That open sore was the 
 slave trade. And under those words is the text : “ Other 
 sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them also I 
 must bring, and they shall hear my voice.” 
 
 We are proud — and justly proud — of the integrity and 
 generosity of our fathers in abolishing the slave trade, 
 and in being willing to pay £20, 000,000 for enfranchis- 
 ing the slave. In all our 800 years of history there are 
 on our statute-book no nobler acts than these. No 
 Englishman refers to them without a glow of pardonable 
 satisfaction ; and among foreign writers they are the 
 theme of unmingled eulogy. The men who toiled and 
 suffered in the cause of the slave are rewarded with 
 cenotaphs in our national Valhalla. There we read how 
 Zachary Macaulay, “during a protracted life — with an 
 intense but quiet perseverance, which no success could 
 relax, no reverse could subdue, no toil, privations, or re- 
 proach could daunt — devoted his time, talents, fortune, 
 and all the energies of his mind and body, to the service 
 of the most injured and helpless of mankind”; and how 
 Granville Sharp, “ founding public happiness on public 
 virtue, desired to raise his native country from the guilt 
 and inconsistency of employing the arm of Freedom to 
 rivet the fetters of Bondage, and establish for the negro 
 race the long-disputed rights of human nature.” It is 
 added that, in this glorious work, “having triumphed 
 over the combined resistance of Interest, Prejudice, and 
 Pride, he took his post among the foremost of the hon- 
 orable band associated to deliver Africa from the rapacity 
 of Europe.” 1 
 
 Can it be believed that we, the sons of the generation 
 which achieved these noble ends, and made these worthy 
 
6 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 sacrifices, have been so little true to their memory as to 
 inflict on this unhappy continent a curse far deadlier 
 than that which our fathers successfully labored to re- 
 move? Such, if we may trust the most abundant and 
 the most varied evidence, is the plain fact in all its naked 
 ugliness. If those who are animated by the enthusiasm 
 of humanity have ventured to believe that, taught by 
 past experience, we should make our presence in Africa 
 at any rate, an unmitigated blessing, those hopes have 
 been cruelly and shamefully blighted. The old rapacity 
 of the slave trade has been followed by the greedier and 
 more ruinous rapacity of the drink-seller. Our fathers 
 tore from the neck of Africa a yoke of whips ; we have 
 subjected the native races to a yoke of scorpions. Our 
 fathers conferred on that vast and hapless continent a 
 most precious boon ; we have more than neutralized the 
 boon by the wholesale introduction of an intolerable 
 bane. We have opened the rivers of Africa to commerce, 
 only to pour down them that “ raging Phlegethon of 
 alcohol,” than which no river of the Inferno is more 
 blood-red or more accursed. Is the conscience of the 
 nation dead ? If not, will no voice be raised of sufficient 
 power to awaken it from a heavy sleep ? Chatham called 
 upon the Bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of 
 their lawn, and the Judges to interpose the purity of 
 their ermine, to prevent the atrocity of a nation availing 
 itself of the tomahawk of savages. Are there none of 
 sufficient authority now to wield the mighty enginery of 
 the moral sense against “ the devil’s work which is being 
 done by the conscienceless greed of the drink traders,” 
 and to storm that Quadrilateral which, as the Echo 
 rightly said the other day, is fortified by the fourfold 
 combination of ignorance, habit, appetite, and interest ? 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 7 
 
 Many years ago, in Mr. Ruskin’s house at Denmark 
 Hill, I was sitting at lunch opposite to Turner’s mag- 
 nificent and awful picture of the slave-ship. I could 
 think of nothing else, as I gazed spellbound at those 
 waves incarnadined with sunset and horrible with the 
 scene of murder. And as I was trying to take in the 
 full awfulness of the moral protest which the picture 
 embodied, “Yes,” said Mr. Ruskin, “that is Turner’s 
 sermon against the slave trade.” Is no artist great 
 enough, or deeply-moved enough, to preach such a ser- 
 mon against the worse, because more plausible, more se- 
 ductive, more creeping, and more destroying shameful- 
 ness of the drink traffic, which inevitably involves not 
 only the demoralization, but even the sure if slow ex- 
 tinction of native races ? At any rate, those who read 
 the evidence here adduced are bound to refute it, or if 
 this cannot be done — as indeed it cannot — to admit that, 
 unless immediate steps be taken to undo the mischief 
 which our carelessness and our prejudices and our sac- 
 rifice to the mean doctrines of political expediency have 
 caused, we shall stand wholly inexcusable before God 
 and before mankind. 
 
 The results of the drink trade under its present con- 
 ditions are horrifying enough and sickening enough at 
 home. In the limits of one London parish, little exceed- 
 ing 4,000 souls, I have personally witnessed how, from 
 year to year, drink is the cause of assault, of burglary, of 
 prostitution, of incest, of suicide, of horrible cruelties, of 
 children dying like flies, of the beating of aged women 
 by their own drunken sons, of the trampling and maim- 
 ing of wives by the loathely ruffians whom they call their 
 husbands, but whom drink maddens into fiends; of well- 
 nigh every crime on the dark list of the calendar except 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 the direct shedding of blood, and even of that, except 
 that the" poor miserable victims “ die so slowly that none 
 call it murder.” All this, in the most literal sense, I 
 have seen going on at our doors, under the very shadow 
 of the Abbey, and within bow-shot of our great Houses 
 of Legislature. And when I look from the narrow limits 
 of one drink-afflicted parish — in which yet the temper- 
 ance agencies are exceptionally active, though unavail- 
 ing, against the temptation of glaring public-houses in 
 every street — when I look over the world from China to 
 Peru, I find everywhere the hideous evidences of the 
 curse caused by drink. It causes tens of thousands of 
 premature deaths ; it is the most prolific parent of all 
 kinds of disease ; it is the commonest cause of fatal ac- 
 cidents ; it yearly produces a widespread infant mortality ; 
 to it is due the most abject and the most degraded pau- 
 perism. In the words of the late Duke of Albany, it is 
 “ the only deadly enemy England has to fear.” It is the 
 curse of the poorest ; the curse of the most miserable of 
 our youths ; the curse of every home of which it takes 
 hold ; the curse of our young colonists all over the globe ; 
 the curse of every nation and race with which we come 
 in contact ; the curse of universal Christendom ; the 
 curse which more powerfully than any other impedes the 
 progress of Christianity ; the curse which dogs from land 
 to land and from clime to clime the course of European 
 civilization. The reiterated proofs of these facts are 
 patent for every one to see. We do not invent them ; 
 we only point to them. No one can escape from his 
 share in the responsibility for this bad state of things, 
 by the cheap, stale, and irrelevant assertion that “ tem- 
 perance reformers use such intemperate language ”; for 
 we refer them, not to anything which we have said, but 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 9 
 
 to the neutral annals of the past, to the careful pages of 
 contemporary history, to the colorless records of justice, 
 to the statistical testimony of unbiased and official wit- 
 nesses, to the Blue Books of the Legislature, to the Re- 
 ports of Convocation, to the narratives of all classes of 
 travellers, and to the often unwilling admissions of 
 traders and physicians. And yet, in spite of all this 
 black and damning evidence, the conscience of men of 
 the world, the conscience even of professing Christians, 
 is not only callous, but hard as the nether millstone to 
 the guilt and national disgrace which these facts involve. 
 
 The idle, the indifferent, and the interested seem to 
 think that God can be mocked by decrepit jests and im- 
 moral sophisms. When one hears such gibes repeated 
 for the millionth time, one feels induced to cry with 
 Cowper : 
 
 “Well spoken, advocate of sin and shame, 
 
 Known by thy bleating, Ignorance thy name ! ” 
 
 Those who care nothing for the anguish of mankind, 
 groaning under a curse which Mr. Gladstone, in full 
 House of Commons, described as “ more deadly, because 
 more continuous, than the three great historic scourges 
 of war, famine, and pestilence combined,” think it suffi- 
 cient to say, “ Because thou art virtuous shall there be 
 no more cakes and ale ?” They forget that Shakespeare 
 puts that question into the mouth of the most despica- 
 ble of his sots, and that, as in his Cassio he shows us 
 how drink can ruin a noble mind, so in his Caliban he 
 prefigures with prophetic insight the demoralization by 
 drink of the lowest races. Have we no fear lest some 
 even of these, if we suffer them to recover from their 
 drunkenness, should exclaim of our representatives : 
 
10 Africa and the Dri?ik Trade . 
 
 “What a thrice- double ass 
 Was I, to take this drunkard for a god 
 And worship this dull fool ! ” 
 
 Thus much I could hardly help saying on the general 
 topic ; but my immediate subject is not the curse of the 
 drink trade in general, though it seems to me one of the 
 worst proofs of our national degeneracy that no effectual 
 steps are taken to restrict it, and that, so far, against a 
 spurious liberty and base vested interests, righteousness 
 and compassion and morality have lifted up their voice 
 in vain. It is my narrower object to point out the effects 
 of the drink trade in one single continent. Ex nno disce 
 omnes. What is said of Africa might be said with equal 
 truth of many a tribe and nation all over the world — of 
 Hindostan, of Burmah, of Ceylon, of parts of China to 
 which we have access ; of the North American Indians, 
 of the Maoris of New Zealand, of the aborigines of many 
 lands. It is a tremendous indictment, which it would 
 be a guilt to bring if it could not be substantiated, and 
 which it would be a sin not to bring if it can. Christ 
 flung the offender against the innocence of his little 
 ones, with a millstone round his neck, into the sea. 
 Does He cars for individuals, and does He care nothing 
 for demoralized and perishing nations ? Does He care 
 for the few, and is He indifferent to the criminal destruc- 
 tion of many, committed for the sake of gain ? Is there 
 to be so awful a sentence against separate offenders, and 
 none upon the guilt of empires? Is it worth no more 
 solemn consideration than such as may be involved in 
 the venting of a platitude, or the reiteration of a jeer, 
 that we have put the stumbling-block of our iniquity 
 before the face of God’s little ones over all the world ? 
 
 The evidence which I shall adduce only exists in vari- 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . II 
 
 ous scattered Blue Books, pamphlets, and newspapers, 
 and I summarize it here in the hope that thus it may 
 arrest a more widespread notice. It has been gathered 
 by our missionaries and travellers ; and the noble zeal of 
 our great temperance societies has done its utmost to 
 make known the facts. There are some who are ill-in- 
 formed enough to sneer at the action of those who are 
 called “Temperance Reformers”; but it is enough to 
 quote respecting them the single evidence of Lord 
 Shaftesbury, who, with all the weight of his vast expe- 
 rience, said that “ but for temperance associations we 
 should be immersed in such an ocean of immorality, 
 violence, and sin as would make this country uninhabit- 
 able.” 
 
 That the drink traffic is becoming to Africa a deadlier 
 evil than the slave trade is a statement which may 
 startle some readers, yet it is most certain. It is dead- 
 lier in its incidence, and wider in the area of its perni- 
 ciousness. No one will dream of regarding Sir Richard 
 Burton as a temperance fanatic, yet in his book on “ Ab< 
 beokuta,” after speaking of the ravages wrought by rum 
 and war, he adds : 
 
 “ It is my sincere belief that if the slave trade were revived 
 with all its horrors, and Africa could get rid of the white man 
 with the gunpowder and rum which he has introduced, Africa 
 would be a gainer in happiness by the exchange.” 
 
 And here is the testimony of an extremely able native 
 gentleman, from whom I shall make several quotations — 
 the Hon. the Rev. James Johnson, the native pastor of 
 the island of Lagos.* In an eloquent speech, at the 
 
 * Mr. Johnson came to England as the representative of the 
 Christian natives of Lagos, to plead their cause before Parlia- 
 
12 Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 memorable meeting held on March 30th at Prince’s Hall, 
 he said : “ I may perhaps be allowed to refer to the work 
 of emancipation. Many hundreds and thousands of 
 slaves were set free, giving joy and pleasure to many a 
 heart. The work, however, in which your interest is 
 now being solicited is a far greater work than that. 
 [Cheers.] I say greater, because the work of the past 
 was to deliver the body of the slave from the grip of the 
 slave-dealer, but the work we have to do now is to de- 
 liver the mind, the body, the soul, the spirit of the na- 
 tive race from the power of the great European traders. 
 The work we are now trying to do affects all the races of 
 the world, and I should like to see, as the outcome of 
 this meeting, a strong movement for the suppression of 
 this traffic among native races. I represent here to-night 
 Africa — a country with a population of over two hun- 
 dred millions. This country, so large, with a people so 
 numerous, lies at the mercy of the traders of Europe, 
 who are flooding it with drink.” 
 
 And again, before a meeting of members of the House 
 of Commons in the committee-room on April 1, 1887, 
 he ended his speech by saying : 
 
 “ The slave trade had been to Africa a great evil, but the evils 
 of the rum trade were far worse. He would rather his country- 
 men were in slavery and being worked hard, and kept away from 
 the drink, than that the drink should be let loose upon them.” 
 
 And here is the verdict of an able and well-known 
 American newspaper, the New York Tribune of July 18, 
 
 ment Lagos is a small island on the West Coast of Africa, and 
 the key to the Yoruba country. It has a population of 75> 000 
 souls. 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 13 
 
 1881, upon the ruin and demoralization which our drink 
 trade is causing : 
 
 “ Perhaps the most striking and in every way shocking case 
 cited by Mr. Hornaday is that of the native chief whose clear 
 sight and patriotic spirit led him to banish rum from his terri- 
 tory, and whose protective measures were made futile by the 
 manoeuvres of a scoundrely English trader who smuggled the 
 liquor into the country. Think of the monstrous hypocrisy of 
 so-called Christian nations, vaunting themselves on their en- 
 lightened civilization, pretending a desire that the Gospel should 
 be carried to all peoples, and then invading the Dark Continent 
 armed with the rum bottle, and in cold blood debauching and 
 ruining its people. On the one hand are the missionaries. On 
 the other hand is the rum of Christendom. Free rum against a 
 free Gospel ! It is to be feared that Mr. Hornaday is right in 
 prophesying the success of the former. But what this letter 
 shows most clearly is that unless the moral forces of England, 
 America, Germany, and Holland are organized and applied to 
 put an end to the outrageous and abominable state of things on 
 the Congo, a few years will suffice to rot the heart out of the 
 Africans, and their further development will be made impos- 
 sible. What is being done out there in the name of commerce 
 is a world-crime of a character so colossal, of an immorality so 
 shameless and profound, that if it could be regarded as a type 
 and illustration of nineteenth century civilization, it would be 
 necessary to denounce that civilization as a horrible sham and a 
 conspicuous failure.” 
 
 And once more, Mr. Joseph Thomson, F.R.G.S., the 
 well-known African traveller, said in an address before 
 the Manchester Geographical Society : 
 
 “The notorious gin trade is a scandal and a shame, well 
 worthy to be classed with the detested slave trade. We talk of 
 civilizing the negro, and we pour into his unhappy country an 
 incredible quantity of gin, rum, and gunpowder. 
 
 “The trade in this baleful article (spirit) is enormous. The 
 appetite for it increases out of all proportion to the desire for 
 
14 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 better things, and, to our shame be it said, we are ever ready to 
 supply the victims to the utmost, driving them deeper and 
 deeper into the slough of depravity, ruining their body and soul. 
 The time has surely come when, in the interests of our national 
 honor, more energetic efforts should be made to suppress the 
 diabolical traffic. There can be no excuse for its continuance, 
 and it is a blot on Christian civilization.” 
 
 I will now show what we are doing in Africa, north 
 and south and east and west ; and will then briefly com- 
 ment upon it. 
 
 i. Of Northern Africa I shall say but little. Moham- 
 medanism is strong there ; yet we have the terrible tes- 
 timony of Mr. W. S. Caine, M. P., to the harm done in 
 Egypt by the drink supplied to English troops, and by 
 European capitulations. He said at Prince’s Hall : 
 
 “The native races of Egypt are being demoralized. We did 
 not originally take the drink there. I have no doubt it was there 
 before our occupation, and before we undertook the joint gov- 
 ernment with France; but it has terribly increased since then. 
 Twenty thousand troops were sent there, who gave a great stim- 
 ulus to the drink business. Nearly all the conspicuous public- 
 houses in Egypt bear English signboards: ‘The Duke of Edin- 
 burgh,’ ‘Queen Victoria,’ ‘Peace and Plenty,’ ‘The Union Jack,’ 
 etc. All the great public-houses are branded with English names. 
 They do not alone sell liquor, but deal in even a more disgrace- 
 ful vice than that. Each of these public-houses is a centre of 
 vice and iniquity of the deepest dye. I made careful inquiry as 
 to what was the effect upon the native races of Egypt in con- 
 sequence of the sale of intoxicating liquors in Egypt. I find 
 that wherever our army had gone up the Nile the liquor trade 
 had followed it ; that when they had left the stations where 
 the public-houses were established, the public-houses remained. 
 Where there had been five or six of these flaunting public-houses 
 which never existed before, there they still remained after the 
 soldiers had gone. Who buys the liquor now ? Why, the natives, 
 whom, I am sorry to say, the British soldier has largely taught 
 
A fried and . the Drink Trade. 
 
 15 
 
 to drink. It is the commonest thing in the world for the British 
 soldier to treat his donkey-boys to intoxicating liquor. I rode 
 on a good many donkeys, and became acquainted with the boys 
 in charge of them, and found that the demoralizing influence 
 of the British tourists on these boys was something terrible. 
 Wherever the Englishman comes in contact with the natives he 
 drags them down through intoxicating liquors. I went to a 
 temperance meeting — the only temperance meeting field in 
 Cairo — except those in the barracks for the soldiers. That meet- 
 ing was a large one, three hundred or four hundred people being 
 present. Every one of the speakers were natives of Egypt, and 
 speeches were made in Arabic, which I am sorry to say I do not 
 understand, but I had a good interpreter. Nearly every speech 
 was in denunciation of Englishmen, Levantines, and Europeans, 
 and Christians in particular, for bringing this accursed drink to 
 them. They were urging Mohammedans, whose religion forbids 
 them to drink, to sign the pledge, as we do here. That alone is 
 evidence of the truth of what I am saying. I was moved on 
 this subject, and went to see the Khedive about it. I found him 
 an enlightened, philanthropic man, sincerely anxious for the wel- 
 fare and happiness of his people. He said that he had viewed 
 with grief and shame the increase of public-houses in Cairo and 
 Egypt since the British army of occupation came. I asked him 
 what he would like to do. He said he should like to prohibit the 
 sale altogether. He was a prohibitionist. His religion told him 
 to be so ; it was an article of his creed. He said, ‘ I am power- 
 less.’ I said, * Why ? ’ He replied, * There are capitulations or 
 agreements which have been entered into between the Turkish 
 Government and other Powers for the protection of European 
 traders, and under these capitulations this liquor is forced upon 
 them to sell without control, and so cheap that you would 
 hardly credit me if I gave you the price.’ They import cheap 
 spirits from Hamburg with a duty of nine per cent. ; and you 
 can get drunk for two and a half pence, and some of the natives 
 for less. If I had one thing made more clear than another by 
 social reformers in Egypt, it was this fact, that a native once be- 
 ginning the drink becomes a drunkard almost immediately, and 
 nothing brings him back.” 
 
1 6 Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 In Egypt and the Soudan the prohibition of drink by 
 their prophet has been a powerful deterrent, but it has 
 been as ineffectual as the warnings of Scripture to save 
 dark races from a temptation which, though to them it 
 is absolutely fatal, is deliberately thrust upon them by 
 the representatives of a higher and a Christian civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 2. In Southern Africa our drink has done a yet more 
 deadly work. Mr. J. A. Froude has told us that, at the 
 beginning of this century, the Kaffirs and Hottentots 
 were strong and flourishing peoples ; now they are deci- 
 mated, degraded, and perishing by drink. This testi- 
 mony is amply supported. Of the Kaffir, Mr. Wheel- 
 wright, of Newlands, Capetown, says : 
 
 “ Especially amongst the raw Kaffirs there prevails a habit of 
 spirit drinking (Congo brandy, Cape smoke, Natal rum, and 
 like abominations), and as the cheap and vile compounds, con- 
 cocted for their peculiar benefit (?) are under no restrictions as 
 to a term of bonding, they are supplied to the unhappy native 
 reeking with fusel-oil, and, especially in the Diamond Fields, 
 create a mortality which would be appalling if the figures were 
 attainable.” * 
 
 Mr. N. de Jersey Noel, of Kimberley, says that “ the 
 natives largely succumb to drink when it is put in their 
 way. The natives employed in our diamond mines are 
 terribly demoralized by drink.” 
 
 Professor the Rev. N. J. Hofmeyer, of the Dutch Re- 
 formed Church, says: “Traders of the lower sort have 
 been, and still are, the means of inflicting an unspeakable 
 amount of misery upon the natives. If they take to drink- 
 
 * See “ British and Colonial Temperance Congress,” London, 
 1886, p. 209. 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . 17 
 
 ing brandy, the craving for it soon becomes uncontrolla- 
 ble. In a short time all their cattle are sold for the pur- 
 pose of buying brandy ; they then become thieves, sink- 
 ing to even deeper depths ; lose health and strength, and 
 miserably die. The drink traffic in South Africa means 
 ruin and death to the natives. In 1883 it was officially 
 reported that in two months 106 natives had been killed 
 by brandy-drinking. How many daily pine away and die 
 under this curse all over South Africa, of which no human 
 record is kept ! What a day of retribution is awaiting 
 the white man .... except he repent and seek the good 
 of the race which he is now destroying for lucre’s sake ! ” 
 Three years ago the Cape Parliament appointed a Com- 
 mission on the Liquor Traffic ; and here are one or two 
 items of the mass of evidence it received. Let the na- 
 tive kings and chiefs speak first. 
 
 Cetewayo, ex-king of Zulus : “ Do you think it a good thing to 
 allow the unrestricted sale of brandy ? — It is a very bad thing, 
 and would ruin the country.” 
 
 Kaulelo and Fingoe, headmen of Peddie, say: “Stop the can- 
 teens ; that is where our misfortunes come from.” 
 
 W. S. Kama and his councillors say : “ Our wives go to the 
 canteens and drink. They will throw away their clothes and are 
 naked. They are becoming lost to all sense of decency. The 
 white man must stop from giving us brandy if he wishes to save 
 us.” 
 
 Petrus Mahonga and Sam Sigenu : “ This brandy is destroying 
 our nation.” 
 
 Mankai Renga, a Tembu headman : “ I think the people ought 
 not to be allowed to purchase brandy at all. It is killing the 
 people and destroying the whole country.” 
 
 Umgudlwa, Mangele, Sandile, Vena, Sigidi, Sitonga, Ngcen- 
 gana, Tembu headmen : “ The canteen destroys the people.” 
 Chief Dalasile’s proposals : “ 8th. Dalasile also begs that the 
 
1*8 Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 Government will strenuously prohibit the sales of brandy in his 
 country. 
 
 Make and about sixty other headmen of Idutywa : “ We do not 
 wish to have canteens among us. A canteen ruins a man : brandy 
 destroys our manhood. We say we are happy in this country 
 
 because there are no canteens Brandy is a fearfully bad 
 
 thing. We would become wild animals here if it were introduced. 
 If we had brandy we should lose everything we possessed. I say, 
 do not let brandy come into the country.” 
 
 Umqueke said : “ I am a brandy-drinker myself, but I know 
 that what has been said is right. If brandy is introduced among 
 us, we shall lose everything we have.” 
 
 The Rev, J. A. Chalmers, of Graham’s Town, summed 
 up the opinion of the clergy when he said, If the peo- 
 ple are to be saved at all, we must restrict the sale of in- 
 toxicants among them.” 
 
 The Rev. Alan Gibson, a missionary of the S. P. G. in 
 the Transkei, said, “ The future of the Kaffir depends on 
 drink being kept from them.” 
 
 The Commission summed up its evidence in the words : 
 
 “ The use of spirituous liquors is an unmitigated evil, and no 
 other cause or influence .... is so completely destructive, not 
 only of all progress and improvement, but even of the reasonable 
 hope of any progress or improvement.” 
 
 And Sir Charles Warren, speaking at Oxford on Octo- 
 ber 25, 1886, said : 
 
 “ The blood of thousands of natives was at the present time 
 crying up to Heaven against the British race ; and yet, from mo- 
 tives of expediency, we refused to take any action. ” 
 
 We are not solely responsible for this terrible state of 
 things ; the Portuguese are probably much worse. But 
 the results are described as follows by Dr. Clark : 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade. 19 
 
 “ On the south coast of Africa, too, the people were very de- 
 moralized. The traders would sell a bottle of gin for 6d. ; and 
 he had seen thousands of girls lying drunk around the traders’ 
 wagons.” 
 
 The Basutos alone have partially liberated themselves 
 from the infernal snare of our temptations. But no thanks 
 are due to us. The deliverance has come from the vig- 
 orous temperance exertions of the chief, Paulus Mopeli, 
 brother of their chief Moshesh. 
 
 3. Turning to Eastern Africa, we are faced by the tragic 
 story of Madagascar — a story which the Rev. H. W. Lit- 
 tle, once a missionary on the island, calls “ without paral- 
 lel for pathos and consuming interest in the history of 
 the world.” In 1800 the Malagasy were a nation of 
 idolaters ; now, thanks in great measure to the London 
 Missionary Society, they are a nation of Christians. They 
 loved, they almost adored the English who had done so 
 much for them. Unhappily, however, Mauritius became 
 a sugar-producing colony, and rum was made from the 
 refuse of the sugar-mills. What was to be done with it ? 
 It was not good enough for European markets, and Mada- 
 gascar “ was made the receptacle for the damaged 
 spirit of the colony ! ” They received the curse in their 
 simplicity, and it produced frightful havoc. “ The crime 
 of the island rose in one short year by leaps and bounds 
 to a height too fearful to record.” The native Govern- 
 ment was seized with consternation, and the able and 
 courageous king, Radama I., paid the duty, and ordered 
 every cask of rum to be staved in on the shore, ex- 
 cept those that went to the Government stores. The 
 merchants of Mauritius complained ; the English offi- 
 cials interfered; and from that day the “ cursed stuff” 
 has had free course, and deluged the land with misery 
 
20 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 and crime. Radama’s son, Radama II., a youth of great 
 promise, became a helpless drunkard and a criminal ma- 
 niac, and was assassinated, after a reign of nine months, 
 by order of his own Privy Council. Drunkenness is con- 
 sidered a European fashion, and in spite of the grief of 
 the native authorities, “ this crying injury to a perishing 
 people remains unredressed and unheeded by the most 
 humane and Christian nation in the world. The same 
 story may be told, with very slight variation of detail, 
 of all the native tribes on the east African seaboard. . . . 
 Tempted by greed and avarice, white traders introduced 
 the cheap rum of Mauritius. Souls of men were bartered 
 for money, and Africa is still being slowly but surely deso- 
 lated by the foremost missionary nation in the world.” * 
 
 4. Turning to Western Africa we have a flood of evi- 
 dence of the ghastly ruin which we are causing by our 
 drink trade. 
 
 The Rev. H. Waller makes the following remarks : 
 
 “ For generations the West Coast negro has been accustomed 
 to see the ocean cast up the powder-keg, the rum-cask, and the 
 demijohn — these have been the shells of his strand. Borne from 
 Bristol, Liverpool, Hamburg, and Holland, they come rolling 
 through the surf out of steamers and sailing vessels. 
 
 “ The idea of drinking spirits is inseparable from the notion of 
 European life in the ken of the native.” 
 
 Gallons. £ 
 
 Great Britain sent in 1884 602,328 value 117,143 
 
 Germany “ “ 7,136,263 “ 71 3,634 
 
 Portugal “ 1882 91,524 “ 6,166 
 
 America “ 1884-5 921,412 “ 56,889 
 
 8,7 5L5 2 7 ^893,832 
 
 The Rev. Hugh Goldie, missionary for nearly forty 
 
 * “ British and Colonial Temperance Congress,” pp. 232-238. 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 21 
 
 years in Old Calabar, says that the missionaries every- 
 where found themselves preceded by the gin bottle, and 
 that “ half of the expense of the mission in money and life 
 may be fairly charged to the account of the drink traffic ; 
 while it continues the Church cannot hope for the suc- 
 cess at which she aimed.” 
 
 Writing from Sierra Leone, Mr. Thomson says : 
 
 “ To a man, the Kruboys have spent years in contact with such 
 ameliorating influences as are to be found in those parts, yet 
 their tastes have risen no higher than a desire for gin, tobacco, 
 and gunpowder. These they get in return for a few months’ or 
 a year’s labor, to go back home, and for a few short days enjoy a 
 fiendish holiday. I visited one of their villages, and such a scene 
 of squalor and misery I have rarely seen.” 
 
 And again : 
 
 “ In West Africa our influence for evil enormously counterbal- 
 ances any little good we have produced by our contact with 
 Africa.” 
 
 And these are the grave and simple remarks of the dis- 
 tinguished native, the Rev. James Johnson: 
 
 “ Now, to give you some idea of the amount of drink that is 
 exported from this country to West Africa, I would just instance 
 Lagos. Into this small island Europe exports every year an av- 
 erage of about 1,231,302 gallons of spirits. Out of that quantity 
 1,205,160 gallons are what are known in West Africa as ‘trade 
 rum ’ and ‘ trade gin.’ The town of Lagos owns a population of 
 37,000, and in it there are fifty shops where liquors are dispensed 
 to the 37,000 inhabitants. If we go to the Niger, there are about 250 
 miles of coast-line under British protection. On this coast-line the 
 annual consumption of drink is estimated at about 60,000 hogs- 
 heads, each hogshead measuring 50 gallons. You have now an 
 idea of the terrible flood of strong drink that is coming into Africa 
 by the commerce of Europe. That would be sufficiently serious 
 
22 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 if the spirits sold to these people were sound good spirits, but 
 it becomes a much more serious matter when you come to think 
 of the quality of the stuff that is dispensed. The Government 
 of Berlin convened a conference for the purpose of encouraging 
 the extension of European commerce, and with it the drink traffic, 
 throughout the length and breadth of Africa. I know of noth- 
 ing that brings such a reproach upon Christianity and upon civ- 
 ilization as that. This conference of Christian Powers refused 
 to stop that trade. What is the quality of ,the stuff they bring ? 
 It is the vilest manufacture under the sun. It is so bad — the 
 ‘ trade rum * and ‘ trade gin ’ — that the lowest European trader on 
 the coast would never drink it himself. It is so bad that in West 
 Africa native painters have used it instead of turpentine. One 
 kind they call ‘ death ’ itself, because every one who drinks it 
 suffers most seriously ; the other kinds are just as dangerous, as 
 destructive, and as ruinous, only they do their work more slowly. 
 It has a most injurious effect upon the people ; it weakens the 
 body, it debases the mind, it demoralizes the intellect, and it feeds 
 the war element in the country. There has been no peace in 
 Africa for centuries, but this drink traffic makes it worse. Why 
 should European proximity to Africa be Africa’s ruin? Negroes 
 have proved themselves able to survive the evils of the slave 
 trade, cruel as they were ; but they show that they have no power 
 whatever to withstand the terrible evils of drink. It renders the 
 natural increase of population an impossibility. Imagine this 
 kind of spirit being spread over the whole country. Surely you 
 must see that the death of the negro race is simply a matter of 
 time.” 
 
 After such evidence, which I have been obliged greatly 
 to curtail, no one can doubt that the drink trade is as- 
 sailing Africa, to its utter destruction, from every quarter 
 of the compass, and leaving everywhere its baleful mark, 
 “as uniform as the movement of the planets, and as 
 deadly as the sirocco of the desert.” Ought we not, as 
 Chatham did, to call upon all the ministers of religion, 
 of every denomination*, to perform a lustration, and 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 23 
 
 purify their country from this stain ? Or is it too late ? 
 And does the voice of Judgment say to us: 
 
 “ Do not repent these things. A thousand knees, 
 
 Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, 
 
 Upon a barren mountain, and still winter 
 In storm perpetual, could not move the gods 
 To look that way thou wert ? ” 
 
 And there are two considerations suggested by the 
 subject to which I should like to draw special attention. 
 
 1. One is the aggravation of our national guilt in this 
 matter by the fact that even these helpless races have 
 yet found a voice to express their entreaty that they may 
 be delivered from the alien curse inflicted by a contact 
 which they did not seek, and which is destroying them. 
 “ We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that 
 we saw the anguish of his soul, and would not hear.” 
 
 In 1883 the natives of the Diamond Fields implored 
 the Cape Parliament to have public-houses removed 
 from them for a distance of six miles, and their petition 
 was cruelly rejected. The Blue Book of the Cape Com- 
 mission abounds with their entreaties. 
 
 “ There has broken out,” says Mr. Waller, “ not only in one or 
 two, but in several densely populated tracts of Africa, an intense- 
 desire to shake off the drunkenness which has arisen as a con- 
 sequence of contact with civilization.” 
 
 King Malikd, the Mohammedan Emir of Nupd, in- 
 vokes, in terms of touching simplicity, the aid of Bishop 
 Crowther : 
 
 “ It is not a long matter ; it is about barasa (rum or gin). Bara- 
 sa, barasa, barasa; by God ! it has ruined our country- it has 
 ruined our people very much ; it has made our people become 
 mad. I have given a law that no one dares buy or sell it ; and 
 
24 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 any one who is found selling it, his house is to be eaten up (plun- 
 dered) ; any one found drunk will be killed. I have told all the 
 Christian traders that I agree to everything for trade except bara- 
 sa. Tell Crowther, the great Christian minister, that he is our 
 father. I beg you, Malam Kipo (Mr. Paul), don’t forget this 
 writing, because we all beg that he (Crowther) should beg the 
 great priests (Committee C. M. S.) that they should beg the Eng- 
 lish Queen to prevent bringing barasa into this land. 
 
 “ For God and the Prophet’s sake ! For God, and the Prophet 
 His messenger’s sake, he must help us in this matter — that of 
 barasa ! We all have confidence in him. He must not leave our 
 country to become spoiled by barasa. Tell him, may God bless 
 him in his work. This is the mouth-word from Malike, the Emir 
 of Nupe.” 
 
 “ It is not only the teetotalers of Lagos,” said Mr. 
 Johnson in the Committee-room of the House of Com- 
 mons ; “ it is the leaders of the people who are calling 
 out.” 
 
 “ Their kings and chiefs had endeavored, by their own laws, to 
 put a stop to the importation of this drink, yet they had no power 
 over their people. Men and women and children all drink.” 
 
 2. And the second consideration to which I would 
 draw attention is, that the drink trade is, and will be, 
 increasingly fatal to every other branch of commerce. 
 The evidence is decisive that every other branch of trade 
 will be sapped and blighted to feed the bloated fungus 
 of hideous prosperity with which the drink trade flour- 
 ishes. 
 
 “ It was thought,” said Mr. Johnson, “that legitimate com- 
 merce would correct the evils of the slave trade in a great meas- 
 ure, and indeed the people have responded to the efforts made 
 to civilize and to elevate them. As you travel through some of 
 the interior country, your eyes rest upon miles and miles of land 
 well cultivated ; and as you stand at Lagos you can see fleets of 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 25 
 
 canoes laden with casks of palm-oil, nuts, and other produce. 
 But when they are returning home, what do they carry away with 
 them ? Very few pieces of cloth ; every one of them is laden 
 with rum and gin. We give Europe palm-oil and many other 
 useful things ; but what does she give us in return ? This vile stuff ; 
 this spirit which sends our people drunken and mad. Surely 
 you will agree with me that, in the interests of Christianity, in 
 the interests of humanity, something should be done to stop this 
 evil. What is the action of the Government ? Because on the 
 West Coast our colonists are Crown colonists — we are not inde- 
 pendent, we are ruled from England practically — we must submit 
 every measure to the Foreign Office here, and until it sanctions 
 the measure it cannot be carried. What is the action of the 
 Government toward this drink traffic ? It is not indifference ; it 
 is protection. It protects the trade. We have appealed to the 
 Government to help us. The natives of the interior countries 
 with whom we trade are groaning under the burden of this drink. 
 Kings have been known to take away the lives of their subjects 
 when they have been under its influence ; but our efforts meet 
 with no success from the Government. Individuals have spoken 
 to the Government, but the difficulty always is — the revenue con- 
 siderations will not allow it. It is a revenue raised at the ex- 
 pense of the lives of the people ; a revenue raised at the expense 
 of the lives of independent tribes with whom we trade ; a rev- 
 enue raised at the price of blood. We appeal to other Govern- 
 ments, and invite them to come to our aid. They, however, 
 say : ‘ If we give up the trade, it may fall into the hands of 
 others ; it may go into the hands of Germany.’ A similar point 
 was raised with regard to the slave trade, but William Pitt nobly 
 said it was our only duty to do what was right before God and 
 man. Now, what we desire is, that there should be a lively in- 
 terest in this question, and that the British Government should 
 be petitioned by you to take steps to suppress this traffic in West 
 Africa, and free the people from the burden under which they 
 now live.” 
 
 “ One principal cause of the depression of trade,” says the 
 Rev. Hugh Goldie, “ existing at present in this country is doubt- 
 less, as is alleged, the vast amount of money spent in intoxicat- 
 
26 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 ing drink ; and we may well wonder that God continues to clothe 
 our fields with harvests, when so much of the food He provides 
 for us is destroyed and converted into that which is the cause of 
 so much evil. But the same cause operates against our manu- 
 facturing interest throughout the world. When Africa expends 
 so great a part of the product of its industry in strong drink, it 
 can have little to give for that which is profitable to itself or to 
 us. A friend mentioned to me lately that a member of a Glas- 
 gow firm stated to him that he formerly employed a large num- 
 ber of looms weaving cloth for the African market ; now he has 
 not one. A trader in the Calabar River wrote recently to his 
 principals to send no more cloth — drink was the article in de- 
 mand. Mr. Joseph Thomson, in his recent journey into the 
 Niger regions, found this evil so abounding therein, that it will 
 render hopeless the demand, anticipated by some, by the natives, 
 for unlimited supplies of calico, as effectually as will the sterility 
 of the Eastern countries through which he formerly travelled. 
 In all its effects, moral and economical, this traffic is only evil : 
 impeding the work of the Church at home, marring her mission 
 work abroad, and destroying beneficial industry.” 
 
 Similar is the evidence of the Rev. W. Holman Bent- 
 ley, of the Baptist Mission : 
 
 “ When at Loango four years ago, spirits were the chief article 
 of barter. The trader with whom I was staying laughed at the 
 idea of my talking to the chiefs about laborers for our mission 
 after eleven o’clock in the morning. He said that the principal 
 men would be drunk at that hour. 
 
 “ The result of such a state of things cannot be favorable to any 
 industry, either native or European, except to a few distillers. 
 Such natives will not have sufficient energy of mind and body 
 for trading expeditions into the interior, while the heavy com- 
 missions or customs levied by such chiefs discourage the native 
 trader. Sometimes as much as one-half, or at least one-third, of 
 the payments in barter is put aside for the native broker from the 
 neighborhood of the factory. 
 
 “ Our manufacturing districts ought to second every effort to 
 put a stop to this traffic, which fills the pockets of a few distillers. 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 27 
 
 chiefly German and Dutch, while all legitimate trade and manu- 
 facture suffer considerably in consequence." 
 
 The African Lakes Trading Company, officered by 
 Scotch agents, has made a noble stand against this curse. 
 Mr. Moir, its representative, says : 
 
 “ The profits on the sale of spirits is 700 per cent, as conducted 
 by some of the European houses. I heard it all figured out by 
 one of themselves. This included a pretty liberal addition of 
 water to some of the fouler liquid; so you have a very hard 
 enemy to fight. I have seen boys and girls of about fourteen or 
 fifteen years old getting their wages in this poison.” 
 
 The Committee of the Baptist Mission call attention 
 to the fact that the European traders, who have firmly 
 resisted traffic in spirits, have been driven, in consequence 
 of the general prevalence of such barter, to abandon their 
 trade. 
 
 In face of such facts as these, the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury might well say in his sermon on May 2d in West- 
 minster Abbey : 
 
 “ It is a dread commerce. But it is rather an anti-commerce. 
 The fear of it and the dread of it will soon be upon commerce 
 itself. If we have long seen monopolies to be a bar and obstruc- 
 tion to trade — if we have found that to put a whole trade into 
 the hands of one man is to kill trade — what shall we say of a 
 system which, in the name of freedom, threatens with extinction 
 all trades but one ? What of bales of goods reshipped because, 
 in the drunken population, there was no demand but for drink — 
 because they would receive nothing else in barter — would take 
 no other wages for the early morning’s work, and were incapable 
 when the early morning was past ? These, and darker tales than 
 these, are the depositions of eye-witnesses, whom we have no 
 ground to mistrust, or even suspect of exaggeration. But these 
 surely must be unexpected results of the foreign diplomacy which 
 
28 
 
 Africa and the Drink Trade. 
 
 insisted, without qualification, on ‘ the interests of trade ' and 
 * commercial liberty.’ It would be treason to our neighbors to 
 suppose that such results were foreseen — such crippling of com- 
 merce, such disabling of industrial energies as must supervene.” 
 
 “ Rum,” as Mr. Waller says, “ is in more senses than 
 one the skeleton-key to Africa ” of the trade in liquor ; 
 and all other traders, whose articles of commerce are 
 harmless or beneficent, may feel very sure that the drink- 
 seller, who is hardly likely to be more tender to their 
 interests than to those of the myriads whom he is now 
 actively helping to extirpate, will effectually and un- 
 scrupulously lock the door of Africa against them, until 
 he has no more victims left to slay ; a result which seems 
 to be in rapid course of accomplishment. Then immoral 
 traders — these “ artists in human slaughter,” as Lord 
 Chesterfield called the gin-distillers a hundred years ago — 
 will look out, no less remorselessly, for other dark and 
 helpless races, which they have not yet wholly extermi- 
 nated — if such there be — whom, for their own filthy 
 lucre’s sake, they may demoralize and destroy. For they 
 are secure in our mean doctrines of political expediency, 
 secure in our reckless shibboleths of doctrinaire finance 
 and abhorrent liberty ; and all the while, such is the 
 capability of self-sophistication by the human conscience, 
 they will persuade themselves, and others will persuade 
 them, that they are excellent philanthropists and exem- 
 plary Christian men ! 
 
 Mr. Joseph Thomson, who speaks with all the author- 
 ity of an eye-witness, said in this Review last Decem- 
 ber, that “ for any African who is influenced for good by 
 Christianity, a thousand are driven into deeper degrada- 
 tion by the gin trade ”; and that “ Mohammedan mission- 
 aries are throwing down the gage to Christianity, and 
 
Africa and the Drink Trade . 
 
 29 
 
 declaring war upon our chief contribution to Western 
 Africa — the gin trade.” 
 
 And this is the way in which we are teaching “ the 
 Morians land ” to stretch out her hands unto God ! 
 
 My odious task is finished. If these facts have no 
 weight on the minds and consciences of our rulers and 
 legislators, those consciences must indeed be callous be- 
 yond reprieve. Are we so wholly given up to the idol- 
 atry of the two brazen idols of spurious liberty and 
 economical laissez-faire as to bear contentedly the 
 weight of this infamy and this guilt ? Are we content 
 to be represented to the minds of savages by our worst 
 and greediest sons? A nation may for a time sin in 
 ignorance. It may be for a time unaware of the nefari- 
 ous trade to which its least worthy representatives offer 
 a holocaust of tribes and nations, passing them through 
 the fire to a demon even viler than Moloch, the abomi- 
 nation of the children of Ammon. But England can 
 plead ignorance no longer. If she continue to dabble 
 her hand in blood, if she continue to be liable to the 
 “ deep damnation ” of taking off these dark races, does 
 she think to be acquitted at the awful bar of God by 
 mumbling the shibboleths of “ free trade” or “vested 
 interest”? If so, let her not be deceived. The “sword 
 bathed in heaven ” is not in haste to strike ; but when 
 the hour for just retribution has come, it is apt “ to smite 
 once, and smite no more.” 
 
FREE RUM ON THE CONGO. 
 
 (A Letter to the “ New York Tribune ,” from the Author 
 of “ Two Years in a fungle .”) 
 
 CRIMES COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF COMMERCE— A 
 BLOT UPON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 To the average mind, the utter indifference of both 
 Church and State to what the rum-sellers are doing in 
 Africa is truly appalling. When we think of the in- 
 fluence and power wielded by both these great social 
 factors, and the quality of the intelligence which directs 
 them, it seems incredible that such gigantic evils should 
 be allowed right of way. The Christian world holds the 
 Dark Continent in trust. It has voluntarily assumed the 
 guardianship of the African negro, and drawn around 
 him the cordon of civilization. It proposes to give him 
 commerce, religion, law, and education. The trader and 
 the missionary are engaged in a race for his “ develop- 
 ment,” while civilization looks on and congratulates 
 itself on the grand work that is being done for the en- 
 lightenment of benighted Africa. The commercial world 
 in particular is dazzled by talk of steamer lines, railways, 
 “ stations,” “factories,” and “trade,” while the religious 
 world thinks of missionaries, converts, and education. 
 The surface of the subject has been stirred into a per- 
 fect froth of excitement over what has already been ac- 
 complished, and what is to be in the near future. Let 
 us see what lies under the foam. Brandy, gin, rum, 
 whiskey, alcohol, and wholesale drunkenness lie under 
 30) 
 
Free Rum on the Congo . 
 
 3i 
 
 it ; that is all. A nest of poisonous serpents, “ more 
 deadly than the serpent of the Nile,” and who have 
 placed their deadly fangs within striking distance of the 
 negro. The commerce of our boasted nineteenth cen- 
 tury civilization, and neither the State nor the Church 
 stretches forth a strong hand to stop the devilish work 
 that “ commerce ” is doing. Think you the figure is 
 overdrawn ? If so, read on, and study the character of 
 the message the European pioneer carries to the negro. 
 
 Those who read the Tribune of January 24th must have 
 noticed the following item of telegraphic news from 
 Berlin, dated the previous day : * 
 
 In the discussion in the Reichstag on the Cameroon credits, 
 Herren Windthorst, Richter, and Stoecker, charged Herr Woer- 
 man, deputy for Hamburg, and the chief of a large exporting 
 house, with sending poisonous brandy to the negroes in Africa. 
 Herr Woerman acknowledged that the charge was partly true. 
 He said, however, that he had never sent bad brandy to any of 
 the German colonies, but to the French colonies. To these he 
 had shipped rum of the worst quality. 
 
 Herr Woerman’s highly conscientious discrimination 
 in favor of the German colonies will doubtless be highly 
 appreciated in France. 
 
 This is what Joseph Thompson saw “ Up the Niger,” 
 as related in the January number of Good Words : 
 
 At each port of call, the eye becomes bewildered in watching 
 the discharge of thousands of cases of gin, hundreds of demi- 
 johns of rum, box upon box of guns, untold kegs of gunpowder, 
 and myriads of clay pipes, while it seems as if only by accident 
 a stray bale of cloth went over the side. 
 
 On the Congo, bottles of gin constitute the principal 
 medium of currency in dealing with the natives. The 
 
32 
 
 Free Rum on the Congo. 
 
 following paragraph is from the report of Mr. W. P. 
 Tisdel, special agent of the United States to the Congo, 
 as it appears in Consular Reports Nos. 54 and 55, De- 
 partment of State : 
 
 .... Of this variegated currency, gin is tne most valuable ; 
 indeed, it may be truly said, “ it is worth its weight in gold.” 
 . . . . Unfortunately, a few bottles of trade gin will go much 
 further in trade with the natives than ten times its value in 
 cloth ; and it often happens that traders are compelled to return 
 to the coast without having accomplished a trade, because the 
 natives insist upon having gin, while the trader was supplied with 
 cloth alone. A native man can be induced to work at a factory 
 for one or two days at a time upon the assurance that he can at 
 the expiration of that time have a bottle or two of gin, whereas, 
 if you offer him a piece of cloth, it is doubtful whether he would 
 work at all. 
 
 Here is a bit of testimony which shows what New 
 England is doing to help the cause along. The super- 
 intendent of Lutheran missions in West Africa writes as 
 follows : 
 
 The vilest liquors imaginable are being poured into Africa in 
 shiploads from almost every quarter of the civilized world. On 
 one small vessel, in which myself and wife were the only passen- 
 gers, there were in the hold over 100,000 gallons of New England 
 rum, which sold on the coast for $1 a gallon in exchange for palm- 
 oil, rubber, camwood, and other products common to the country. 
 I have seen landed from one steamer at a single port 10,000 cases 
 of gin, each containing twelve three-pint bottles. 
 
 The next witness shall be no less a man than the 
 founder of the Congo Free State. In Stanley’s “ Congo,” 
 vol. 1, p. 193, he writes as follows: 
 
 Gin is used as currency Gin and rum are also largely 
 
 consumed as grog by our native workmen. We dilute both 
 
Free Rum cn the Congo . 
 
 33 
 
 largely, but we are compelled to serve it out morning and even- 
 ing. A stoppage of this would be followed by a cessation of 
 work. It is “ custom custom is despotic, and we are too weak 
 and too new in the country to rebel against custom. If we resist 
 custom, we shall be abandoned. Every visitor to our camp on 
 this part of the Congo (the lower), if he has a palaver with us, 
 must first receive a small glass of rum or gin. A chief receives a 
 bottleful, which he distributes, teaspoonful by teaspoonful, among 
 his followers. This is the Lower Congo idea of “ an all-around 
 drink.” I see by the returns of the station chief that we con- 
 sume 125 gallons of rum monthly by distributing grog rations, 
 and native demands for it in lieu of a portion of their wages. 
 
 I have reserved the most important testimony until 
 the last. It is that of Dr. A. Sims, chief of the Living- 
 stone Island Congo Mission, who was the first mission- 
 ary to navigate the waters of the Upper Congo, and has 
 lately returned to this country after four years’ work in 
 that deadly climate. In a recent letter to the writer he 
 furnishes the following facts : 
 
 Besides the giving of rum in payment for goods or food sup- 
 plies, it is employed in a wholesale way as presents. The traders 
 keep their “ runners ’’ on the roads frequented by natives, whom 
 they bribe with liquor to trade only with their masters. The 
 moment natives with produce arrive in a merchant’s yard, they 
 
 are liquored all round All contracts, dues, and ground 
 
 rents are made payable more than half, or, as is often the 
 case, wholly in demijohns of rum and cases of gin. In this 
 the Congo Free State has followed the example set by the mer- 
 chants. Rum is now carried into the far interior by natives and 
 retailed at a profit. At my house, 325 miles in the interior, a 
 bottle of Rotterdam gin has been offered to me at 16 cents (eight 
 brass rods), and a demijohn at $3. At that place^aravans of 
 Bateke and Bakongo continually passed, of which twenty-five 
 men out of every hundred would be loaded with intoxicating 
 drinks. From such sources of supply I have seen many natives 
 and soldiers of the State become drunk immediately upon the 
 
34 
 
 Free Rum on the Congo. 
 
 arrival of a caravan. It is pretty certain that 50 per cent, of the 
 returned commerce account of the natives who live near the 
 trading houses is given to them in liquor. At Stanley Pool not 
 more than 25 per cent, of the value of their goods goes back to 
 them in liquor, but that is because of the distance. Were they 
 living near a trader they would be hopelessly drunken. It is a 
 sad thought that where five years ago liquor was unknown and 
 never asked for, the natives now beg for it, and nothing else can 
 better ingratiate one into their favor. As for the kings near the 
 seaside trading houses, intoxication is about their normal con- 
 dition. When I was assisting to conduct a mission at Bamana, 
 the port of the Congo, it was difficult to get the natives to as- 
 semble in a sober state on Sabbath morning. 
 
 Now, has the rum traffic on the Congo become an 
 abuse or not? The Congo Free-rum State took its place 
 definitely in the world no longer ago than last year, and 
 the present is only the foreshadowing of the future. 
 With bottles of gin and demijohns of rum in general 
 use as currency, and fifty per cent, of what the natives 
 produce paid for with liquor, what is to be the future of 
 the Congo native ? It is time for him to bow down 
 to the unknown God and pray, “ Save me from my 
 friends ! ” Do you ask who are the promoters of this 
 gigantic evil, and the particeps criminis in the matter? 
 The answer is easy. There are two sets of individuals 
 implicated in the crime and each set is wholly to blame. 
 It is a question which should be named first, the rum- 
 selling miscreants who are doing the devil’s work, or the 
 statesmen composing the Berlin Conference who agreed 
 to allow them to do it. On the whole, I think the latter 
 are entitled to the place of honor. 
 
 When the representatives of fourteen of the greatest 
 and most enlightened Powers on the earth met at Ber- 
 lin in the winter of 1884-85, to hold the great West 
 
Free Rum on the Congo . 
 
 35 
 
 African Conference, they settled definitely, and for the 
 next twenty years, barring accidents, the political status 
 of all the territory bordering on the Congo. They held 
 the Congo Free State in their hands, and shaped its 
 commercial future to suit themselves. They said what 
 it should do, what it should not do, and what the sub- 
 jects of their sovereigns should be allowed to do in it. 
 And the Alpha and the Omega of all their deliberations 
 was “ trade,” the absolute “ freedom of commerce,” gain, 
 national and individual advantage in hard cash. Did 
 the members of that august assembly, which had Prince 
 Bismarck for its president, think of the naked savage 
 in his grass hut, and try to legislate for him? Four 
 only out of the fourteen did so, and I will name them : 
 The Hon. John A. Kasson, representing the United 
 States ; Count de Launay, for Italy ; Sir Edward B. 
 Malet, for Great Britain ; and Count van der Straten, 
 for Belgium. To the everlasting honor of these gen- 
 tlemen and the countries they represented, they pro- 
 nounced strongly in favor of controlling the liquor 
 traffic on the Congo and the Niger. Indeed, the British 
 plenipotentiary proposed to prohibit altogether the tran- 
 sit of spirituous liquors on the course of the Lower 
 Niger. The sentiments expressed by the Belgian pleni- 
 potentiary were of the most convincing nature, and but 
 for the demands of greedy “ commerce,” would have 
 been irresistible. Thus runs the official report of his 
 remarks : 
 
 He related with emotion how, having lived in the midst of 
 Indian populations, in contact with the missionaries who strove 
 to impress upon them the seal of civilization, he attests the de- 
 spair of the Christian priests who witnessed the destruction of 
 the Indian race by succumbing to the excesses of strong drink. 
 
36 
 
 Free Rum on the Congo* 
 
 Count van der Straten has observed in the American plantations 
 at the South the same ravages produced by alcohol on the black 
 race, especially those who inhabited the centre of Africa. The 
 Belgian plenipotentiary said that the indigenous races of the 
 free zone must be sober, or soon cease to exist. There was, 
 moreover, a difference between the effects produced by alcohol- 
 ism upon the Indian races on the one part, and the African races 
 on the other. The negro does not yield physically to drunken- 
 ness ; he succumbs morally. If the Powers do not save him 
 from this vice, they will make of him a monster who will destroy 
 the w'ork of the Conference. 
 
 Mr. Kasson declared it indispensable to control the 
 traffic in spirituous liquors, in the interest of humanity ; 
 and the Count de Launay, who was the first to propose 
 this measure at a very early stage of the deliberations, 
 was also its champion to the last. 
 
 So far, good ; but mark well what follows. The rep- 
 resentatives of Germany and Holland objected to the 
 placing of any restriction upon the rum traffic, for the 
 reason that rum is used as currency, and without it com* 
 merce would suffer. To the everlasting disgrace of those 
 two countries, their plenipotentiaries succeeded in de- 
 feating the Count de Launay’s measure. In this con- 
 nection it should be stated that Herr Woerman, the ship* 
 per of poisonous rum, was present at the conference as 
 a delegate, and he, more than any other one person, was 
 instrumental in shaping its final action on the liquor 
 question. Unfortunately, the conference was so consti. 
 tuted that no measure could be adopted without a unani- 
 mous vote of the whole fourteen plenipotentiaries. Thus 
 were the demands of the rum-seller, and the meanest 
 rum-seller of them all, allowed to triumph over the sa- 
 cred rights of humanity. Thus did the high-minded 
 apostles of Saint Commerce perpetuate their right to 
 
Free Rum on the Congo. 
 
 37 
 
 ship “ rum of the worst quality ” to Africans, and sink 
 them into still blacker darkness by making drunkards 
 of them. Send missionaries there if you wish, ye 
 churches — aye, send them by the shipload if you like ; 
 but they shall not avail against Herr Woerman and free 
 gin. There are about 50,000,000 people in the basin of 
 the Congo, and it is a race with the traders to see who 
 will distribute the most and the worst rum among them. 
 Gin can go where missionaries cannot ; and I will back 
 it against the Gospel every time. 
 
 Here is the “ proposition ” finally adopted by the con- 
 ference respecting the rum traffic. It is an invertebrate 
 of a very low order, having neither teeth, legs, nor back- 
 bone: 
 
 The Powers represented at the conference, desiring that the 
 indigenous populations may be guarded against the evils arising 
 from the abuse of strong drinks, avow their wish that an agree- 
 ment may be established between them to regulate the difficul- 
 ties which might arise on this subject, in such a manner as to 
 conciliate the rights of humanity with the interests of commerce, 
 in so far as these interests may be legitimate. 
 
 And this after it has already been agreed most posi- 
 tively and beyond a peradventure that commerce and 
 navigation shall be absolutely free, excepting for pilot- 
 age and port dues on vessels. This “ proposition ” merely 
 says : “ I really wish I could, but I can’t. Be ye warmed 
 and fed, but keep hands off my precious commerce ! ” 
 Of all the subterfuges that were ever adopted to escape 
 a great responsibility, and throw dust in the eyes of the 
 world, it seems to me this is the most paltry and inex- 
 cusable. On the part of some of the plenipotentiaries 
 there was not too much courtesy, and not enough firm- 
 
38 
 
 Free Rum on the Congo. 
 
 ness ; while on the part of the remainder there was a con- 
 spicuous lack of honesty and humanity, joined to inor- 
 dinate selfishness and greed. If ever a set of men failed 
 in the discharge of their duty, were false to their trust 
 and deliberately fostered a gigantic evil, it was those 
 members of the Berlin Conference who insisted upon 
 free trade in rum on the Congo. It is a sickening sight 
 to see a great nation like Germany, so fiercely vigilant 
 in shielding her own subjects against all harm from 
 without, pander to the demands of her rum exporters 
 for the privilege of debasing the blacks past all hope of 
 rescue. 
 
 Oh, commerce ! How many crimes are committed in 
 thy name. Trade is the new Moloch on whose altar 
 millions of victims are sacrificed annually. It was even 
 Christian England who opened with her bayonets the sea- 
 ports of China for the sale of the opium wh$ch her Anglo- 
 Indian planters produced. When “ trade ” demands 
 fresh victims, they must be produced, even though it 
 requires the hand of a statesman or a sovereign to lead 
 them forth. So long as statesmen bow meekly before 
 the power which is wielded by the promoters of vice, 
 just so long will vice be promoted and the devil’s harvest 
 be reaped day by day. 
 
 Just so long as rum may be sold in Africa without let 
 or hindrance by whomsoever can send it there, just so 
 long will there be unprincipled merchants to ship it and 
 retail it among the natives. If the natives had happened 
 to prefer opium or arsenic, why, then, opium and arsenic 
 would now be used as currency instead of gin. Every 
 country has a grand army of unhanged liquor-sellers, any 
 one of whom, for the sake of “ business ” and a profit of 
 three cents, will sell a glass of liquor with the knowledge 
 
Free Rum on the Congo. 39 
 
 that it will send its purchaser into the gutter the next 
 moment. 
 
 All men who are mean enough to promote vice for 
 money deserve to be hanged, or else put where they can 
 prey only upon each other. It is bad enough for one 
 educated European to sell intoxicants to another ; but 
 what shall we say of the intelligent white man who sows 
 drunkenness, disease, degradation, and death broadcast 
 among the ignorant blacks, who, like so many children 
 in knowledge, are just emerging from savagery. Since 
 these murderers of morals are without conscience, their 
 depredations should be limited by law, even if all the 
 rest of this great world has not the power to suppress 
 them entirely. A few months ago I published the ob- 
 servation that “ savage tribes deteriorate morally, physi- 
 cally, and numerically according to the degree in which 
 they are influenced by civilization.” This opinion was 
 sneered at by some of my reviewers as being “ somewhat 
 crude,” and by one ( The London Daily News) I was in- 
 formed that “ it is the triumph of civilization to protect 
 the weak against the strong.” Let me ask who is pro- 
 tecting the weak against the strong to-day on the Congo 
 and the Niger, and in South Africa ? Here is a case in 
 point from Dr. Emil Holub’s “ Seven Years in South 
 Africa,” which will serve to point my moral, even though 
 it does not adorn a tale. 
 
 Khame, the King of the Bamangwatos, had passed a 
 law that no liquor should be sold in his territory, under 
 heavy penalty, and also that no trader having liquor in 
 his possession for sale should enter his kingdom, nor 
 even be permitted to pass through any portion of it. 
 Just at the time of Dr. Holub’s visit, along came an 
 English trader, Mr. “ X.,” who smuggled several casks 
 
40 
 
 Free Rum on the Congo . 
 
 of alcohol into the territory, — “ atrocious stuff ” which 
 “ completely overpowered Westbeech,” and enabled the 
 worthy trader to swindle him in regulation style. Being 
 detected, “ X.” was ordered out of the country. After 
 trekking a short distance he buried his alcohol, returned, 
 “ lied atrociously ” to the King about it, and afterward 
 sold it to the King’s subjects. Finally his perfidy was 
 discovered and he fled ; but the King’s soldiers hunted 
 him down and captured him. At Shoshong, the capital, 
 Dr. Holub saw the excellent “ X.” fined £100 for break- 
 ing the law, and formally expelled from the territory as 
 a dangerous character. “ At the same sitting the King 
 fined two traders’ agents £\o apiece for being drunk 
 outside their quarters, in the outskirts of the town, tell- 
 ing them that if they were determined to drink they 
 must confine themselves to their own wagons ; he, for 
 his part, was quite resolved that they should not make 
 an exhibition of themselves before his subjects.” 
 
 What a pitiful spectacle is this, of an ignorant African 
 savage struggling with intelligent European Christians 
 (!) to save his people from the horrors of intemperance, 
 a vice thrust upon him by civilization. Have the law- 
 makers of Cape Colony and Natal ever forbidden the 
 importation of “atrocious stuff” and placed a penalty 
 on its sale to natives? Tell us, my worthy reviewer, 
 how much has civilization protected “ the weak against 
 the strong” drink of the trader, all the world over. Tell 
 us also who is going to protect the people of the Congo 
 against Herr Woerman. Will it be the Society for the 
 Protection of the Aborigines? Surely it ought to do 
 something. We remember well the outcry it made, and 
 how it “ attracted Lord Derby’s attention ” in 1876 when 
 brave Stanley shot a few bloodthirsty savages in pure 
 
Free Rum on the Congo. 
 
 4i 
 
 self-defence on the Victoria Nyanza ; and surely, to de- 
 stroy a few bodies by bullets in a moment’s time is not 
 half so bad as to destroy millions by intemperance. 
 
 Something must be done at once, if ever, to stop the 
 flow of intoxicants into Africa and among the natives. 
 It is a herculean task, but if the political forces which 
 brought the Congo Free State into existence, combined 
 with those of the Church and the advocates of temper- 
 ance, are not sufficient to put a quietus upon this rum 
 traffic, then let Europe and’ America acknowledge with 
 shame that rum is king. If the Church has more mis- 
 sionaries, let some of them be sent to Herr Woerman 
 and others of his kind in Germany and Holland, Eng- 
 land or America, or wherever they are to be found. Save 
 the black man from his friends, — those who would make 
 his country free and accessible at all points to the boats 
 and caravans of the gin peddler. 
 
 “ How long, O Lord ! how long ” will it be until civil- 
 ized man acquires humanity enough to voluntarily ab- 
 stain from the promotion of vice and self-destruction 
 amongst the ignorant savages of the world at large? 
 Will the time ever come when a human being will weigh 
 more in the balances of the trader than a paltry sixpence ? 
 It will be no child’s play to enact laws for the suppression 
 of the liquor traffic on the Congo, and enforce them. If 
 any permanent good is to be accomplished, there must 
 be no temporizing, no making of terms with the devil, 
 nor half-way measures of any kind. Any laws for the 
 “regulation” of the traffic are sure to be evaded. No- 
 thing short of absolute and unconditional suppression of 
 the importation of intoxicants will ever reach the root 
 of the evil. “ But,” the trader will cry out, “ that can- 
 not be done without granting the local authorities the 
 
42 
 
 Free Rum on the Congo. 
 
 right to search all vessels.’ * Very well, then let them be 
 searched from stem to stern, from deck to keelson, and 
 whenever liquors are found pour them into the Congo 
 instantly. “ It will cripple commerce,” whines the trader 
 again, “ and prevent the development of the country.” 
 We reply, commerce that can live and thrive only by 
 the promotion of vice amongst an aboriginal race de- 
 serves to be strangled in its cradle. As matters stand at 
 present, the “ development of Africa ” of which we hear 
 so much, when stripped of its false colors, means simply 
 the enrichment of a few European traders and manufac- 
 turers at the cost of the moral degradation of fifty mill- 
 ion natives. Not even the slave trade has ever done so 
 much harm to the Congo blacks as intemperance bids 
 fair to do, and that right speedily. 
 
 Savage tribes accept the virtues of civilization at re- 
 tail, but its vices are generally taken by wholesale, and 
 for the latter the demand is very often greater than the 
 supply. This is precisely the state of affairs in the Con- 
 go to-day. From all accounts no aborigines have ever 
 shown such a universal passion for strong drink as pos- 
 sesses these people. If liquor can be kept away from 
 them, there is room for hope that the missionaries can 
 bring them into the light, and make civilization a bless- 
 ing to them instead of a curse. Who are the most 
 powerful, the traders who desire to get rich out of palm- 
 oil and India rubber purchased with gin, or the fourteen 
 Christian nations participating in the Conference, with 
 their 388 millions of Christians? America has sixty-five 
 foreign missionary societies, England seventy-one, and 
 the Continent fifty-seven exclusive of those of the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church. Are they powerful enough to 
 cope with the rum traffic on the Congo? Herr Woer- 
 
Free Rum on the Congo . 
 
 43 
 
 man and his colleagues have cut out work for them, and 
 it will require all the combined influence they can mus- 
 ter to persuade Germany and Holland to allow the rest 
 of the Christian world to enforce temperance on the 
 Congo. The rights of the money-makers are so sacred, 
 you know. 
 
 Will the Boards of Foreign Missions try to save the 
 tree by doctoring its leaves, one by one, while the sap is 
 being poisoned in the roots? We will see. 
 
 William T. Hornaday. 
 
 Washington, D. C., July io, 1886. , 
 
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC WITH NATIVE 
 RACES. 
 
 The following letter from the two Archbishops and 
 the Bishop of London has been posted to the bishops 
 of the British colonies and dependencies : — 
 
 “ Lambeth Palace, S. E., August , 1887. 
 
 “ My Lord : — The attention of the Church has been 
 recently drawn to the widespread and still growing evils 
 caused by the introduction of intoxicating liquors among 
 the native races in the colonies and dependencies of the 
 British Empire, and in other countries to which British 
 trade has access. 
 
 “ Part of the mischief is certainly due to other traders 
 than the British, but British trade, as exceeding in 
 volume that of many other countries put together, is 
 mainly responsible. 
 
 “ This mischief cannot be measured by what we wit- 
 ness among our own countrymen. The intemperance 
 is far greater ; the evils consequent on intemperance are 
 far worse. Uncivilized people are weaker to resist, and 
 are utterly unable to control temptations of this kind. 
 The accounts given of the numbers that perish from 
 this cause and of the misery and degradation of those 
 who survive are painful in the extreme. 
 
 “ And, besides the grievous wrong thus inflicted on 
 the native races, reproach has been brought on the name 
 of Christ. The English missionary who preaches the Gos- 
 pel, and the English merchant who brings the fatal 
 temptation, are inevitably associated in the minds of 
 ( 44 ) 
 
The Liquor Traffic with Native Races. 45 
 
 the heathen people, and by many not only associated, 
 but identified. 
 
 “ It is asserted by travellers of repute that in many 
 parts of the world, the moral character of the natives 
 gains more by the preaching of Mohammedanism than 
 by the preaching of the Gospel, for the former tends to 
 make them sober. 
 
 “ The evils of intemperance in the British islands 
 have, as you are well aware, long engaged the attention 
 of the Church at home. The report of the Lower House 
 of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury in 1869, 
 and that of the Province of York in 1873, in each 
 of which a large mass of evidence from every class of 
 society was got together, had a painful effect on the 
 public mind at the time, and they have served as trust- 
 worthy manuals on the subject ever since. 
 
 “The formation of the Church of England Temper- 
 ance Society has organized and concentrated the efforts 
 of those Churchmen who have been deeply impressed 
 with the necessity of combating intemperance, and that 
 society is daily growing in numbers and in influence. 
 Owing to these and similar endeavors made by both 
 Churchmen and nonconformists, drunkenness has been 
 and is still being diminished in these islands. And there 
 is every reason to believe that before long public opinion 
 will demand of the Legislature that steps should be 
 taken to remove, wholly or partially, the temptations 
 which now make it so difficult for weak men to lead 
 sober lives. 
 
 “ It is not for us nor for the bishops at home to sug- 
 gest to your lordship or your clergy the best means for 
 dealing with similar evils in our colonies and depend- 
 encies, and in the heathen countries in your own part of 
 
46 Prohibition in the Congo Country. 
 
 the world. But we have felt it our duty to bring to 
 your notice the painful accounts that have reached us, 
 and to assure you of our warmest and most earnest sym- 
 pathy with any efforts that you may see fit to make to 
 deal with the serious difficulty. You may have the 
 means of influencing your Legislature ; you may do 
 much to form public opinion ; you can at least make it 
 plain to all men that the Church is not and never can 
 be indifferent to this great sin. 
 
 “ In whatever you may be able to do in this matter, 
 you may be assured that the bishops at home are sup- 
 porting your action with their earnest prayers, and, 
 where co-operation is found possible, with their most 
 hearty co-operation. 
 
 “ Edw. Cantuar. 
 
 “ W. Ebor. 
 
 “ F. Londin.” 
 
 PROHIBITION IN THE CONGO COUNTRY. 
 
 The Board of Managers, at a meeting held the 20th 
 of January, 1885, adopted the following in relation to 
 prohibition in the Congo country : 
 
 “The National Temperance Society has heard with profound 
 gratitude of the action proposed by the International Conference 
 at Berlin prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating 
 liquors on land or water in the Congo country. We are the 
 more gratified that this action is understood to have been initi- 
 ated by our own representatives. 
 
 “ In the interest of the millions of Africa, that they may be 
 preserved from the curse of drunkenness, and in the name of 
 millions of citizens in our own country who value sobriety as an 
 essential factor in good citizenship, we do most earnestly plead 
 
Prohibition in the Congo Country. 
 
 47 
 
 for humanity’s sake that the high stand thus taken be not re- 
 tired from or materially modified.” 
 
 This was officially signed and duly forwarded to the 
 President of the United States and to Mr. Kasson, 
 American Minister at Berlin. We regret to say that 
 the Berlin Conference did not adhere to their first pur- 
 pose. They excluded slavery, but refused to exclude 
 opium or liquors, because it would interfere with the 
 freedom of trade. The following extract is from the 
 treaty : 
 
 “ Wares of whatever origin, imported under whatsoever flag, by 
 sea or by land, shall be subject to no other taxes than such as 
 may be levied as fair compensation for expenditure in the inter- 
 ests of trade.” 
 
 It was declared by a Boston paper that the largest 
 single shipment of rum ever made from America was in 
 a vessel carrying nothing else, and sent from Massachu- 
 setts direct to the Congo country. A London corre- 
 spondent, commenting upon the proceedings of the 
 Conference in relation to this subject says: 
 
 “ The Berlin Conference has closed its meetings with compli- 
 ments all around ; but if the African tribes of the Congo basin 
 could speak on behalf of themselves and their future interests 
 they would be anything but complimentary to the powers — 
 France, Holland and Germany — whose mercenary greed has made 
 it possible for the white man to put to the lips of his sable breth- 
 ren an untaxed bowl of fascinating but fury-creating poison. 
 One’s only hope for these poor creatures is that they will prove 
 more civilized than their tempters, and drive out from their 
 midst the dealers in liquid madness. The Berlin Conference 
 closes, at all events, with one page of indelible infamy in the 
 record of its proceedings.” 
 
MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS. 
 
 To the United States Senate and House of Rep- 
 resentatives : 
 
 Your memorialists, the Board of Managers of the 
 National Temperance Society, respectfully invite your 
 attention to the great devastation now being caused 
 among the native races of Africa by the introduction 
 among them, by American and other traders, of intox- 
 icating liquors ; to the fact that America is estimated to 
 have sent to the West Coast of Africa alone in 1884-5 
 an aggregate of 921,412 gallons of spirits; that the 
 wholesale demoralization and ruin thus resulting from 
 strong drink is a great injury to legitimate commerce, 
 in our relations with Africa, as well as disastrous to the 
 temporal and spiritual well-being of an untutored peo- 
 ple whom philanthropic and Christian men and women 
 of our own country seek to civilize and Christianize ; 
 and we hereby earnestly ask you, in the exercise of the 
 authority vested in you by the Constitution of the 
 United States, “ to regulate commerce with foreign na- 
 tions” [Article 1, Section 8], promptly to adopt appro- 
 priate and effective measures for the discouragement and 
 suppression of this wasteful and destructive African ex- 
 portation of intoxicating liquors by American citizens. 
 
 In behalf of the Board of Managers of the National 
 Temperance Society. 
 
 Theodore L. Cuyler, 
 
 J. N. Stearns, President. 
 
 Corresponding Secretary . 
 
 New York, September 27, 1887.