A Century of Emancipation
This country when it stands before history, will stand, when all else has passed away, not by her fleets and her armies and her commerce, but by the heroic self-denying exertions which she has made to put down this iniquitous [slave] traffic (Lord Rosebery).
Dedicated to a Lady
As a century of effort to abolish slavery in all its forms drew to a close, the forces engaged against overwhelming odds in the defence of Native Races found their ranks inspirited by a new personality in their midst - a woman with her soul aflame for the succour and freedom of the oppressed had come forward and had thrown herself into the struggle.
Like Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Fry and Harriet Beecher-Stowe, she lays bold hands upon men and women in every walk of life. She will lay under tribute rulers of the earth as readily as she enlists the help of the widow with her generous mite. Neither physical limitations nor social engagements are permitted to curb her humane activities. She is often the despair of her doctors when at the risk of her own health she undertakes some enterprise in order of save the bodies and souls of others. Such a woman is Lady Simon, and to her this book is gratefully dedicated.
This book is an attempt to meet what I am told the public demands - 'a popular book' setting forth the story of struggles during a hundred years for emancipating child races, backward races, native races from systems either of slavery or of oppression under which they the weaker races have been in the past and are still to-day exploited for selfish ends.
I don't know exactly what constitutes a 'popular book,' but I am told that its first essential is brevity - a book in a chapter, a chapter in a page, a paragraph in a sentence! This task of compression has been no light one. Let the reader imagine what it means to bring within the compass of less than seventy thousand words the suffering, and for the majority untimely death, of at least 25,000,000 human beings during the last hundred years. Millions of them during their short existence had their flesh torn with the lash or their bodies broken under torture; millions again have known no family life; their persons and their labour have been at the disposal of the highest bidder. Any one of the systems of slavery under which they have suffered would require at least one book to itself - and there have been a dozen of them during the hundred years under review.
This book is not merely an attempt to portray suffering, it is also an attempt to give a brief account of the systems under which these things have been done, and still more an effort to recount the light and shade of the great struggles carried on by a mere handful of earnest souls beginning with Clarkson, Wilberforce, Buxton, Pitt, Sturge, Macaulay, Lushington, Grey, Livingstone, then on to Vandervelde, Dilke, Fox Bourne, Morel, Hodgkin and others.
The book will fail in its purpose if it does not focus public attention on systems of oppression which are in operation to-day - Slave- systems which hold in bondage over 5,000,000 men, women, boys and girls, every one of whom is a saleable property; Labour systems which hold men and women by force or fraud; Land systems which take from the native his only means of economic freedom.
The book shows how those who have struggled and are still struggling with these sordid but powerful forces have never numbered more than a few hundreds. Whilst it may be true that those few hundreds have been men and women of wisdom and influence, yet it is even more true that they have been men and women possessed of souls burning with a spiritual passion for freedom and justice - that was and is their chief source of strength.
If this had not been so, how could they have slain so many Goliaths of greed and cruelty in every decade of the last hundred years, for they have never been equipped with the ample resources of other philanthropic bodies? The splendid missionary work of Great Britain attracts no less than £2,500,000 a year for Protestant missions to preach the gospel of divine forgiveness and love. The great work for the prevention of cruelty to animals, with its generous income of £100,000 a year, is another parallel. But for the purpose of preaching the divine gospel of simple justice for native races and for the prevention of cruelty to the child races of the world, less than £2,000 a year is contributed! Surely a sorry fact which is not less amazing than the splendid victories which have been won, the millions saved from the lash, the chain, the shackle and the gun; the millions whose labour systems have been cleansed from fraud and force, and the millions whose economic freedom has been preserved to them.
In the difficult task of compressing the accumulated mass of material and presenting it within the compass of these 270 pages, I am deeply indebted to my friend and colleague Lady Stewart, who has given her time and talents regardless of many other claims upon her time and energy. But above all, we have shared a personal interest which at a time of exceptional stress and difficulty has been an invaluable comradeship.
To many members of the Buxton and Wilberforce families, particularly to the Earl and Countess Buxton, Lord Noel Buxton, Mr. Travers Buxton and Sir Herbert Wilberforce, we have been much indebted for suggestions, facts and documents, some of which have hitherto been either unpublished or unknown.
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