and condoned, but actually engaged in by the Diaz Government. It sanctioned the contract which condemned men, women, and even children, to torture and an early death; it gave assistance, in the shape of soldiers, rurales, police, to the hunting down of escaped slaves; it withheld punishment, where punishment was so greatly needed, for the barbarous ill-treatment and murder of these unfortunate creatures. Many of its high officials were themselves personally and actively concerned in the trade. The very procedures of law and justice were utilised for the purpose of procuring slaves. People were arrested on the least pretext, flung into prison, and quietly conveyed with a "contract labour" gang to the plantations. To protest was futile: there were none to whom an appeal might be made, for "the law," so-called, was on the side of the kidnappers—was, in fact, the arch-criminal. For its latitude and easy conscience, the Government received a substantial share of the profits of the slave-trade, and these we may suppose were not small.
As an indication of the extent to which this system of labour prevails, it may be mentioned that all over the Southern States the land is worked by slaves, or by peons whose condition is little better than that of slaves. True, the peon does not undergo the hideous suffering and degradation of the contract labourer, the deported Yaqui, the casual citizen arrested for some minor offence and dispatched to the plantations; yet with a system in force of compulsory service for debt, he is often equally little of a free agent, and his condition only less abject.
It is, however, the situation of the slave proper which most surely arouses pity and indignation. Travellers' tales are coloured with the horrors of those places where men, women, and children are herded together like cattle but treated far more brutally than cattle, for men, when they have spent their strength in the bitter service, are more easily replaced than kept alive, and it is not so with animals. Long hours of toil are theirs—they work from 4, 3, or even
