§ MR. ANDERSONasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If Her Majesty's Government has yet received information from Egypt as to the alleged sale of three hundred women at Cairo a few days after the Egyptian Government had sent a ship of war down the Red Sea for the suppression of the Slave Trade; whether the statement of Captain W. R. Kennedy, R.N., to that effect is confirmed; and, whether that sale was in any way at the instance of the Egyptian Government; and, if so, whether Her Majesty's Government has remonstrated with the Khedive on such inconsistency?
§ MR. BOURKE, in reply, said, that Her Majesty's Government had received information in reference to the alleged sale of 300 women at Cairo from the Consul general at Cairo. The Consul general stated that he had made a most careful and minute inquiry into the statement, and he had not been able to find anything at all to substantiate the statement of Mr. Kennedy, which appeared in the newspapers last February. The Consul also stated that it would be, in his judgment, impossible that a public sale of slaves on so large a scale could have occurred without becoming generally known; and he added that it was the habit of the authorities at Cairo to capture the different batches of slaves that were attempted to be brought into Cairo, and to release them.