SLAVERY IN EUROPE
of a country. After careful consideration, the committee is convinced that these acts in Belgium constitute a clear violation of the spirit, if not of the letter, of solemn international treaty obligations in regard to slave owning and slave-trading.
The European Powers have repeatedly pledged themselves to action to put down the slave trade and "the evils of every kind which attend it." As long ago as 1815 the Powers assembled at the Congress of Vienna (including Austria and Prussia) acknowledged the slave trade to be repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality, and asserted the duty and necessity of abolishing it as "a scourge" which had "long desolated Africa, degraded Europe and afflicted humanity." Again, at the Conference at Verona in 1822, the representatives of the Powers announced their intention of preventing "a traffic which the laws of almost every civilised country have already declared to be culpable and illegal, and of punishing with severity those who persist in carrying it on in manifest violation of these laws." In 1885, when acts of slave traffic had become restricted mainly to the coloured inhabitants of tropical and sub-tropical regions, the General Act of Berlin was signed. The signatories, including
