Slavery has existed in all countries from the earliest recorded periods. The most enlightened philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were unable to conceive a community of which a section was not enslaved by the rest. As a system, slavery, by its long-continued, universal practice, and the simple solution it affords of what in our modern world is referred to as the labour difficulty, appeals to two powerful human instincts: conservatism and cupidity. The ethical unfairness of one man’s being made wholly subservient to the will of another; forced to labour for him without reward; his chattel to retain, sell, or slay, as though he were a horse or a dog, was perceived from the earliest times. But those most interested in the overthrow of the system, the slaves themselves, being ignorant, and purposely kept in that condition by their taskmasters, suffered on, century after century, finding no champion for their cause until the advent of the Redeemer of Mankind, preaching universal brotherhood and equal rights for all men. But the greater the wrong the longer it takes to right it, and Christ’s words were but the seed from which has sprung our great harvest of freedom. It has been a harvest of slow growth. For ages after the divine words were spoken on behalf of the slave by the first and greatest of his advocates, slavery was still regarded by many nations as indispensable to their existence. Indeed, eighteen centuries elapsed before there was any appreciable awakening to the deep infamy of slavery. It occurred in England, and was the result of the unwearied efforts of a small band of enthusiasts, whose labours, like those of all reformers, were at first derided. England, though free from the curse of slavery within her own proper borders, had in the course of history done as much as, nay, more than, any other nation to enslave the Negro. She had acquired him in Africa by thousands in exchange for guns, knives, alcohol, and dry goods; had transported him across the Atlantic to her American cotton plantations in a manner compared with which a modern steerage emigrant’s experience may be regarded as a luxurious cruise; and had then extracted the utmost amount of work from him by the aid of the lash. [Illustration: Types of Bearers (North Bank of Cataracts).] [Illustration: Group of Yie-Yie Women (Uelle).] [Sidenote: England’s Retribution.] All the vested interests created by this traffic, long persevered in, as well as the callousness engendered by its brutality, had to be fought against and overthrown by a small band of Liberationists, aided by nothing but their enthusiasm and a just cause. Nevertheless they daily gathered strength, and finally succeeded in inducing the British Parliament to vote a hundred million dollars for the purchase and liberation of every slave in every country where the British flag flies. This grand event took place in the year·1830. [Sidenote: The Fight for Right and Union.]