Enslaved people coached to profess freedom made Egyptian enforcement retreat

Evidence

Naturally, these slaves, who are very ignorant and under the impression they will be harmed, even if they wanted to desert their masters, are so afraid of the Egyptian authorities that all repeat the learned lesson, and say they are free and are accompanying their masters of their own free will. Faced with such declarations, the Egyptian authorities have to retreat. However, 90 per cent of these slaves, if not under so great a fear, and if one released them from the grips of their masters, would say they had been brought there to be sold, or to be offered as a bribe. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 705

Categorization

• QUESTION: Where does the ‘90 per cent’ figure come from? It looks like an estimate dressed as statistics within a colonial report.