EUROPE AND AFRICA 
command the sympathy and the support of Her Majesty's 
Government will be that of the advancement of legitimate 
commerce, with security for the equality of treatment of all 
nations, and for the well-being of the native races.” In a 
further letter of instructions, dated November 12, he adds 
that there was “a very strong feeling in this country for the 
abolition of the slave trade and the restriction of the im- 
portation of spirituous liquors.” 
The powers, indeed, bound themselves to suppress the 
slave trade; but by far the greater portion of their discus- 
sions was devoted to the commercial and political questions 
involved. In the “General Act” itself, only Two out of 
thirty-eight articles dealt with the humanitarian interests. 
In Article VI the powers agreed “to protect the natives 
in their moral and material well-being, to cooperate in the 
suppression of slavery and the slave trade; to further the 
education and civilization of the natives; to protect mission- 
aries, scientists and explorers”; and to preserve freedom of 
religion. Article IX reiterates the intention of the Euro- 
pean states to abolish the slave trade. Sir E. Malet, in 
three long letters to Granville on the work and results of 
the conference, devotes only a few sentences to its philan- 
thropic achievements. In the third epistle, dated February 
21, 1885, in answer to the criticism that more time had been 
given to the interests of commerce than to the interests 
of the natives, he says: “I venture to say that, if this ob- 
jection is sound, the work of the conference has not fulfilled 
its intentions. But to meet it I would point to the Slave- 
Trade Declaration. ... The slave dealer’s trade will be, 
in the Congo regions at, it may be hoped, no distant date, as 
effectually extinguished on land as it has been on the sea. 
... The powers have further, by their Neutrality Declara- 
tion, engaged to endeavor to preserve these regions from 
the evils of war. If considerations of material interests and