King Joe Harris, the native sovereign of that fine harbor. It was bought at a moderate price, and without a drop of spirits. The negociation was effected in November last, 1834, and affords peculiar satisfaction to the friends of humanity, inasmuch as no less than 500 SLAVES had been shipped from there in October." N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, 17th March, 1835. The same fact is stated in the "Colonization Herald," 4th April, 1835.

Such are the refutations furnished by the Society itself, of all its boasts about suppressing the slave trade; and yet we are told that the Society is the ONLY means of putting an end to the traffic! It seems never to occur to these gentlemen, that the abolition of slavery would, as a matter of course, put an immediate and total stop to the trade.*

But in what way does the Society expect to destroy this commerce? By planting colonies of ignorant and depraved negroes on the African coast. Every slave factory is of itself a colony, and for the most part, of intelligent white men ; and yet it is supposed, that negro colonists, who, when in America, were "the most depraved of the human race,' will be too virtuous to yield to the temptations of a lucrative commerce. Why, should the free negroes of America, who Mr. Clay assures us, are "of all descriptions of our population, the most corrupt, depraved, and abandoned," have, when removed to Liberia, a greater abhorrence for the iniquity of the slave trade, than their brethren of Sierra Leone? If the trade has been actually promoted by the latter colony, why will it be suppressed by the former?

"The acting Attorney General of Sierra Leone declared, 1812, on the trial of certain persons for the infraction of the British abolition laws, that the town of Sierra Leone was the heart from which all the arteries and veins of the Slave trading system, had for years been animated and supplied." Dr. Thorpe's views of the present increase of the slave trade, p. 71.

The following facts are gathered from documents pub

*To what extent the importation of slaves in the United States is now carried, we are ignorant. In 1819, Mr. Middleton of South Carolina, stated on the floor of Congress, that, in his opinion, 13,000 Africans were annually smuggled into the Southern States. Mr. Wright of Virginia, estimated the number at 15,000.

lished by the British Parliament in 1832. Chief Justice Jeffcott of Sierra Leone, in 1830, delivered a charge to the Grand Jury, in which he declared that he had received credible information, that persons in the colony were engaged in aiding and abetting the slave trade, and fitting our ships for the trade. He asserted, that the colony "established for the express purpose of suppressing this vile traffic, was made a mart for carrying it on." He also stated, that within the last ten years, twenty-two thousand Africans had been located in the colony by the British Government, at an expense of nearly seven millions sterling, and that now there are not to be found in the colony above seventeen or eighteen thousand men! These extraordinary and appalling declarations, attracted the attention of the British Government, who appointed a Commission to inquire into their truth. The Commissioners, in their report, dated the 26th October of the same year, state that, from the testimony taken before them, "they cannot but conclude, that the nefarious system of kidnapping has prevailed in this colony to a much greater extent, than was even alluded to in the charge of the Chief Justice." From the testimony published with the report, it appears that the slave vessels are in the habit of bringing out specie, for the purchase of supplies on the coast; and that "Mr. Hilary Teague, who resides at the American settlement at Liberia, at Cape Mesurado, near the Gallinas, and who trades between that place (Gallinas, a slave factory) and Sierra Leone, purchasing some goods from a Mr. Lake, a merchant in the colony, produced a bag containing about one thousand dollars, on which was marked the name of the Spanish schooner Manzanares. This vessel took in her cargo at the Gallinas, and was subsequently condemned as a slave ship."

Here we find a colonist of Liberia, trading at a slave factory, and afterwards exhibiting 1000 dollars in specie, received in all human probability from a slave ship. It is surely unreasonable to suppose, that petty colonial merchants will refuse to sell supplies to slave ships for specie. Indeed every new colony on the coast, will, while slavery continues, give new facilities to this accursed commerce; nor can the government at home, prevent avaricious and

unprincipled colonists from participating in it. No one can question the desire of Great Britain to purge Sierra Leone of this enormity, and yet we find the following statement in the English Monthly Review, for May, 1833. "One of the Schoolmasters in Sierra Leone, has been tried for selling some of his scholars. There were lately upwards of one hundred liberated Africans, who were kidnapped from Sierra Leone, and were conveyed to a place near the banks of the river Pongos. Here they were detained, till an opportunity occurred of re-shipping them as slaves."

CHAPTER IV.

INFLUENCE OF THE COLONIZATION SOCIETY ON AFRICADIFFUSION OF CIVILIZATION AND CHRISTIANITY.

ALTHOUGH the Society is not a missionary institution, builds no churches, employs no ministers, and distributes no Bibles or tracts, yet it has persuaded the public, that Liberia is a missionary establishment, and the radiating point, from which a flood of light and holiness is to spread over Africa. So confidently and constantly has the missionary influence of the Society been asserted, that many of the members unfeignedly believe it, and their contributions are lavished, and their prayers are offered for the regeneration of Africa by emigrants, who, when in the United States, were denounced as 66 a curse and contagion wherever they reside." Let us attend to the stupendous objects the Society proposes to accomplish.

It would publish

"It would illuminate a CONTINENT. the name of Christ on the dark mountains of Africa, and the burning sands of the desert. It would kindle up holiness and hope among uncounted tribes, whose souls are as black with crime and misery, as are the forms of matter that veil them." Af. Rep. I. 164. Editorial.

"The little band at Liberia, who are spreading over the wilderness around them, a strange aspect of life and beauty, are in every sense a missionary station. Every ship freight

ed from our shores with their suffering kindred, will be freighted also with the heralds of the cross. You will see the light breaking in upon one and another dark habitation of cruelty. The night of heathenism will depart. One tribe after another will come to the light of Zion, and the brightness of her rising. Ethiopia will awake and rise from the dust, and look abroad on the day and stretch forth her hand to God. The light will spread and kindle and brighten till ALL THE FIFTY MILLIONS of Africa are brought to the glorious liberty of the sons of God." Address to the Ken

tucky Col. Society by Mr. Breckenridge.

66

They (the emigrants) go to unchain MILLIONS of slaves fettered in the bondage of death." Af. Rep. IX. 198. "Like the star in the East, which announced the Savior to the astonished Magi, it (the Society) points to the advent of the same Redeemer, coming in the power of his spirit to roll away the darkness of a thousand generations." Speech of Mr. Frelinghuysen, Vice President.

"This Society proposes to add another regenerated coNTINENT to our globe, and ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLIONS to the family of civilized man.' Speech of Elliot Cresson before the Society. Af. Rep. IX. 360.

The number of Agents to be employed, are proportioned to the mighty work to be achieved.

"The Society proposes to send out not one or two pious members of Christianity into a foreign land, but to transport annually, for an indefinite number of years in one view of its scheme, 6,000, in another 56,000 missionaries of the descendants of Africa itself, to communicate the benefits of our religion and the arts." Mr. Clay's speech before Kentucky Col. Society. Af. Rep. VI. 24.

It will be observed that these missionaries are to communicate the benefits of both religion and the arts, and they are to be taken from two classes. The 6,000 are to be the annual increase of the free negroes; the 56,000 are to be manumitted slaves. The character of the first class is thus given by Mr. Clay, in the same speech in which he proposes their employment:

"Of all descriptions of our population, and of either portion of the African race, the free people of color are by far, as a class, the most corrupt, depraved, and abandoned."

As this seems rather an unpromising character for teachers of religion, we presume this portion are to be confined to instruction in the arts; and that the explanation of religious mysteries, and the inculcation of moral duties, are to be entrusted to the 56,000 just released from bondage. Of the peculiar opportunities afforded them by the laws of the slave States, for fitting themselves for their new vocation, we may speak hereafter. Of this "great company of preachers," about three thousand have already set up their tabernacle at Liberia. We might naturally suppose, that a colony of missionaries would be "a holy city," a sort of New Jerusalem, and such we are assured it is. We have heard of "the poetry of philanthropy," as applied to the sympathy expressed by abolitionists for the sufferings of the slaves; the following extracts prove, that there is a poetry of Colonization which

"Can give to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.'

"It (the colony) is already to the African tribes, like a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid. A thousand barbarians, who have long made merchandize of their brethren, and been regarded themselves as the objects of a bloody and accursed traffic, come within its gates, and are taught the doctrine of immortality,—the religion of the Son of God." 8th Report, p. 14.—1825.

Here we have a solemn and official annunciation by the Board of Managers, of one of the most extraordinary facts ever recorded in the annals of missionary exertions. It appears from official documents, that at the date of this report, the whole number of emigrants could not have been more than 242, and had probably been reduced by death below that number; and of this number, a large portion were, of course, women and children. Yet this little band of Christian missionaries, just escaped from the ignorance and vice in which they had been enveloped in America, and still struggling for existence in a sickly climate, and amid all the hardships and privations of a recent settlement in a savage land; casting aside the fear of man, and with a faith almost miraculous in divine protection, admit within their gates an army of barbarians, four times the number of