could not be conceded to a private association
of men, however it might otherwise be worthy
of respect,—the Colonisation Society of the
United States decided on abandoning the land
altogether to the negro emigrants, reserving
only the space necessary for the further
purposes of emigration, and a tax for the
purposes of education. Liberia, therefore,
on the twenty-fourth of August in that year,
hoisted its own flag, and started with a
constitution of its own in the character of a free
negro republic. The Americans, the English,
and the French, all heartily supported the
new state. Conflicting accounts have been
given of its present condition; it appears,
however, to be fairly established, and to prosper
to the utmost of its means. The eight or
ten thousand civilised negroes from America
exert their influence upon three hundred
thousand natives who are living on Liberian
soil, consenting to the laws and customs of
their civilised society. Fifty thousand have
learnt English, schools abound, and the number
of Christians is increasing every month. The
Liberians grow coffee and cacao, export palm-
oil, camwood, ivory, rice, gold-dust, and other
things; their port of Monrovia being tolerably
familiar with ships. There is, of course, room
for much growth; their farms are at present
little more than country gardens, and they
are under the disadvantage of not yet having
succeeded in the attempt to maintain horses
or oxen in their country. The resources of
the two colonies of Liberia, and Maryland in
Liberia, have been so limited, that, little as
they may have done, they deserve full credit
for the achievement of remarkable results.

The Americans, moreover, deserve credit
for having, in the first instance, established
this Liberian outlet for the best class of their
free negro population. There is spread widely
in America a strong desire to do what is
right; and we believe that a large majority of
the proprietors in the slave states would
cease to become slaveholders, if they could
see their way clearly to the employment of
free labour, and a due provision for the future
life of the emancipated slaves. The money
value of the slaves in the United States is
considerably over a hundred millions of
pounds, and we must not be surprised if we
find men unwilling to pay that sum for the
support of a principle in which their faith is
weak. We think, too, that it is possible to
combine with the duty of emancipation the
not less important duty of undoing the evil
that has been done to the slaves' minds, and
of doing them some good service by way of
atonement. When we have clipped men's
minds and made them slavish, it is poor
compensation that their bodies should be set at
large. We believe that earnest and
dispassionate inquiry among men experienced in all
the details of the question, would lead eventually
to a performance by America of the moral
duty of emancipation in a way that might
wipe out every reproach for the past treatment
of the negroes, and reflect eternal honour
on the stars and stripes.

The stripes! Though slavery be not
abolished promptly, there can be no reason
why stripes should not cease. Though there
may be little of lashing and wailing in the
slave system, as it is commonly administered
in North America, yet men are degraded by
being set to work by a coarse action on their
fears, when the same men are far more capable
of being stimulated by an excitement of their
love of honour and reward. The negro has
what the phrenologists would call love of
approbation very strongly marked. Set him
to work for the hope of distinction, instead of
for the fear of blows. No doubt it has been
true that negroes, set to work by any motive
which called out their higher feelings as men,
would become ambitious and acquire a thirst
for freedom in the end. So it is, so let it be.
Educate the negroes on plantations, make
them intelligent men and women, let them
imbibe in their full freedom the doctrines of
Christianity. It has been true that it was not
safe to give knowledge to men who were
placed in a position which the faintest flash of
reason would resent. We have been told by
a Christian minister, who laboured in his
way to elevate the minds of negroes in some
North American plantations, that his permission
to preach was clogged with many
stipulations as to what he should not say;
that he was expressly forbidden to teach
anything which might induce a slave to question
his position or wish to be free; and that, in
consequence, he found himself unable to
preach even man's duty to his neighbour.
So it has been and must be; the slave who
acquires education and religious principle
must desire to be free: let it be so. Cultivate
the slave's best feelings, teach him, awaken
him to manhood; and do this fearlessly because
you are determined that he shall attain what
will become the object of his wishes. When
you have taught him to desire his proper
place among his fellows, let him take it; let
him work for you as a free man, and be well
assured that he will work. Negro labour will
become every year less in demand as the
number of Irish and other emigrants increases
in America. The time is not far distant
when the demand for negroes will be confined
wholly to those districts in which the climate
appears to be unsuited for field labour by
white men: even to those districts whites
will become acclimatised, but in those, for
some time at any rate, negroes will be needed.
It is not essential that the negroes should be
slaves. If, step by step, the degraded race be
raised, their higher impulses awakened, their
minds developed, their moral ties religiously
respected, there will arise out of the present
multitude of slaves, by slow degrees, a race
of free labourers far more efficient than the
present gangs, while the yearly increasing
surplus of black population educated into love
of freedom would pass over to Liberia, and