ria is, that her material capabilities, under the encouragement of judicious, patriotic, and honest administration, would soon free the Government, even without the introduction of foreign capital, from its chronic embarrassment, and keep the treasury supplied with far larger and surer resources than it has ever yet been able to command. There are Liberians of education, intelligence, and public spirit who feel the necessity of reform, but they are unfortunately few-daily, however, increasing in number; and before long the man may be placed at the head of affairs who not only possesses the requisite knowledge, courage, and energy to grapple with the evils, but who can bring to his support in the administration of the Government men of similar spirit.

A third source of weakness in Liberia, of which its most partial sympathizers can never deny the existence or disguise the importance, and which we should be glad if we could attribute to exceptional or other permanent causes, is the constant diminution and degeneracy of the population, both aboriginal and colonial. It is notorious that every town and village in Liberia is constantly dwindling in population, except the new settlements, which are kept up by accessions every from the United States. In some towns which, not many year years ago, were in a flourishing condition-notably Careysburgh, Harrisburgh, and Millsburgh-the desolation is painful. The only memorial of what twenty or thirty years ago was a prosperous settlement is now a crowded burial ground, or what would be a crowded burial ground if the heavy rains and the rapid growth of weeds did not obliterate all traces of the final resting places of those who were not long since the busy and hopeful workers in those almost deserted localities. The few survivors are spiritless and inactive, unable apparently to extract from a most generous soil the means to keep life in their worn and feeble bodies. Having scarcely any neighbors to compete with, the least industry seems to them tedious and superfluous. And, indeed, throughout the Republic, such is the sparseness of population in all the settlements that it seems impossible to excite that energy among the people which in all countries is due largely to the competition of numbers. The decrease and deterioration of population on this coast are owing to natural and insuperable causes, which science, inge

nuity, and money may modify, but can never wholly eradicate. Residence in the dry and elevated regions of the interior is the only remedy for this element in the deficiency of Liberia, and the only means practically within the power of the Government for increasing and preserving its population.

ART. V.-THE FREEDMEN.

Reports of Freedmen's Bureau. Reports of Commissioner of Education, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875. Reports of American Missionary Association. History of Amercan Missionary Association. Reports of the Presbyterian Committee of Missions for Freedmen. Reports of American Baptist Home Mission Society. Reports of Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

A GIANT wrong. A pigmy reparation. Two hundred and forty years of oppression and injustice toward God's poor. Fifteen years of prayers and money-giving for them. These fifteen years of humanity toward them are to the term of their bondage as one to sixteen. In time, one sixteenth; in amount, probably, not one sixteen thousandth. The compensation began to be made on the spot where the first slave ship entered the line of this continent. How strangely and widely contrasted the two events! The one, a system of wrongs, which, growing worse and worse by its inherent viciousness, continued for two and a half centuries, filling the fairest land of earth with avenging curses, and sending to Heaven the cries of millions of oppressed ones, until it culminated in a great civil war, which swept into its bloody vortex a million of men and more than five billions of dollars-the wealth piled up by centuries of unpaid labor. Look at the other. Mercy, in strictest line with the undoing of heavy burdens and the freeing of the oppressed, which Jesus came to do. Mercy, which should gather its inspiration and momentum from earth and heaven, and continue its benefactions until the compensation should equal the injury entailed; until all the resulting burdens of slavery are lifted from many hearts; until ignorance and debasement are displaced by culture; until vice and woe are supplanted by virtue and joy; until color-caste is stamped out, and the Freedman is as really free as the freest and the whitest. Selfishness and cupidity are the inspiration of the former system.

The latter is born of the purest benevolence. One is naked oppression. Uplifting the fallen and relieving the oppressed is the other. Of the one, we have read, in black letter, between shaded borders. We read of the other in illuminated letter, made radiant by the light of heaven.

To the American Missionary Association, then representing, and sustained by, nearly all the religious denominations, belongs the high honor of opening the first schools for the Freedmen. This occurred near Fortress Monroe, in Virginia. In September, 1861, Rev. Mr. Lockwood, a missionary of the Association, visited that part of Virginia to make investigations as to the condition of the Freedmen. They were there in large numbers -refugees from slavery-" contrabands," as Ben. Butler afterward happily designated them. He found the colored people assembled for prayer. They had been praying, and not in vain, when the skies above them were darker. Their sublime faith had never faltered. Their faith was now wonderfully quickened by rifts in the clouds, betokening the coming deliverance.. It had been a long, weary night; but the morning approached. Mr. Lockwood's coming was accepted as the special answer to their prayers. Two weeks later, namely, September 17, 1861, the first day-school for Freedmen was opened. This was the dim dawn of what was soon to become bright noon. The teacher of that first school was Mrs. Mary S. Peake, the daughter of a colored woman and of an Englishman of rank and culture. That was the beginning-the acorn of this movement-which has become a sturdy oak for strength, and a pomegranate for the abundance of its fruit.

The projectors of this movement were those who were sustaining the American Missionary Association. Who were they? This Association was formed by a union of several religious denominations, including the Methodist Episcopal Church, which, as late as 1866, had had a representation in its direction, had contributed largely to its funds, and had furnished many teachers for the Freedmen's schools. In a convention of ministers and laymen of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in Cincinnati, Ohio, August 7th and 8th, 1866, this subject was carefully and thoroughly considered, especially the relation of this Church to voluntary and undenominational organizations for assisting the Freedmen. Out of that con

vention came the organization of the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In considering the subject pro and con, it was shown that the Methodist Episcopal Church informally, and by the action of members and ministers co-operating with union and undenominational Freedmen Associations, the American Missionary Association included, had been actively interested in the work for the Freedmen, as they had in the work of the Christian Commission. A few facts may be quoted from the proceedings of that convention in support of this view. It was stated, "Our Church has aided the efforts of the undenominational Freedmen's Aid Commissions of the country from their organization."

A paper was read at that convention by Rev. J. M. Walden, D.D., who had been officially connected with the "Western and North-western Freedmen's Aid Commission." A few extracts are made:

The membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church have been aiding these societies in prosecuting their work. . . . After efforts extending through the past two years and a half, the, several undenominational societies have united in a National Commission, having its branches in the East and West. (And yet, already, several Churches had then organized, or were organizing, distinct Church Freedmen's Associations.) The United Presbyterians United Brethren, Friends, Old School Presbyterians, Baptist, Congregational, and Protestant Episcopal Churches, have organized societies within themselves, leaving the New School Presbyterian, and Methodist Episcopal Churches, the only Churches of any size which have continued their co-operation without division, with the Commission. . . . A large per cent. of the home collections (for Freedmen) came from the Methodist Episcopal Churches and people. During the first year about one hundred thousand dollars in cash have been collected in the West. I think I am safe in saying that not less than fifty per cent. of the whole amount has come from the membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

While there were reasons existing at the time for the Methodist Episcopal Church to participate, if practicable, in so grand and catholic a work as those commissions, to have earlier turned away the Methodist Episcopal Church from sustaining them would leave them, it was thought, practically without support. When the Methodist Episcopal Church organized its Freedmen's Aid Society it did so leave them, and they languished and died. No one denomination of Christians,

then, can claim precedence over the others as having been first in the field, for all were unitedly engaged in it through the American Missionary and other associations. I propose to review the facts as to the Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist Churches. While other Churches have not been idle, as the Friends, United Presbyterians, United Brethren, and Protestant Episcopal, yet their work has been on a less scale than that of the Churches before named, and it has not been equally convenient to obtain their statistics. In distinctive operations, as a Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church was later in beginning than some others; yet in zeal, and in the wonderful results of their efforts, they are not a whit behind the chiefest.

The American Missionary Association was formed in 1846, when slavery was in its full tide of power and progress. Its home department was conducted with a special view to preaching the Gospel, free from all complicity with slavery and caste. It claims the high distinction of beginning the first decided efforts on slave soil, and while slavery was in full feather, for the education and religious instruction of the people of the South on an avowedly antislavery basis. With certain modifications and restrictions this claim, as to modern efforts in that line, is admitted. But it would be historically untrue to admit the claim without any restriction. Down to 1824, the Methodist Episcopal Church had been doing such work, more or less, through all the South. Records can be produced from various places in the South, down to that time, showing that Church discipline was faithfully administered upon slaveholders who were such for gain or for oppression. This was true both as to private members and ministers. For many of the earlier years of the Republic, the Methodist Episcopal Church, as an antislavery Church, as bearing an unequivocal testimony against slavery, operated in every slave State. Since 1844, in Kentucky, Arkansas, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Missouri, the Methodist Episcopal Church has existed and operated as an antislavery Church. So much as this should be said in vindication of the truth of history.

In 1848 John G. Fee, a Kentuckian, whose father, a slaveholder, disinherited him for his pronounced antislavery views, organized a Church in Berea, Kentucky, under the auspices of