INTRODUCTION.                                                     7
There is no doubt but that the slave population of Brazil is gradually decreasing, in spite of the official census that says the contrary; the number of births being greatly below the number of deaths, and the country not having received any fresh supplies from Africa these twenty years. By the convention with England the slave trade ought to have ceased ever since 1826; but the great gains were too tempting an inducement. Any one who succeeded in safely landing his freight of " ebony" on any point of the Brazilian shore became at once a wealthy man; so, notwithstanding the English cruisers that out of a hundred slave-vessels could hardly capture more than three, on account of the great extent of the Brazilian and African coasts, about 28,000 slaves (at a moderate estimate) were annually brought over. Only during the reign of Don Pedro II. was the supply stopped, owing chiefly to the urgency of England, by searching on the plantations in the interior for negros novos (new negroes), and by imposing heavy fines on the culprits, both sellers and buyers. The consequence was that the price of the " black-ware " rose six and sevenfold, from 300 to 2,000 milreis.
From this moment, and still more after the slave-emancipation in the United States, every clear-sighted Brazilian must have felt that the time was come for rooting out from his own country that hateful relic of barbarous ages, and measures were taken accordingly. By the new law all children born to slaves (the condition of the mother always determining that of the children), after the first of January, 1872, are to be free on attaining their twentieth year. Until then they are to serve their owners as compensation for the care taken of them in their infancy. This measure, though not destroying the evil at one blow, but keeping it up for a number of years, must yet gain the approval of every one who has spent any time in a slave-trading country, and has seen the difficulties of the position. A sudden emancipation of the slaves, if it could be effected at all without entirely ruining the present owners, would certainly be attended with the saddest consequences, not only to the productions of the country in general, but also to the liberated slaves themselves.
If it be a difficult task to educate the rising generation to the degree of obtaining their labour without absolute compulsion, it is an impossible one as to the grown-up slave. Besides this, the evil consequences of the abominable institution will be felt for long years after its entire abolition,  in  the  lax  morality  of the  families,  in  the  total  want  of