school' left! This letter is dated Caldwell, Liberia, April 3, 1830.'

'Sir, the state of things, with regard to schools, is truly lamentable. The only school in the Colony at this time, is a remnant of one at the Cape. Among the present emigrants, there are seventeen out of forty-eight that can read the Holy Scriptures, leaving thirty-one that cannot. Now, Sir, suppose each company of emigrants to this place bring a like proportion of illiterate persons into the Colony, then what state, think you, it must be in? But again, Sir: I am greatly mistaken if this Colony is not, for several years yet to come, mostly to be peopled with slaves sent out by their present owners, without any education themselves, and without means and very little desire to have their children instructed; and add to the above, that this people is planted in the midst, and are daily conversant with, a people that are not only heathen, but a people extremely partial in favor of their grovelling superstition. My dear Sir, this being the case, whether is it probable that they will come over to us, or we go down to them? To me the latter is the most likely, as it is the very essence of human nature to seek the lowest depth of degradation. Permit me to say, Sir, there must be a great revolution in this Colony before it can have a salutary influence on the surrounding natives; that is, before it can have a moral influence over them.'*

Subsequent accounts, I am happy to state, present a better aspect in relation to the education of this outcast and persecuted people their wants, however, are only partially supplied.

The annual increase of the free colored and slave population in the United States is variously estimated from sixty to seventyfive thousand. The American Colonization Society proposes the annual removal of this vast body,-and more, if it be possible, provided the energies and patronage of the General Government be enlisted in this expulsive crusade. Now, suppose the entire transportation effected, let any candid man decide how extremely difficult, not to say impracticable, it would be to discipline and instruct such an overwhelming mass of ignorance, or any considerable portion of it—and how pernicious must be the consequences to the colony and the natives, if it should not receive immediate culture !

Secondly. It is neither certain nor probable that, allowing all that is assumed by colonizationists, the influence of secular and religious instruction would be sufficient to restrain the selfish desires and knavish propensities of those whose main object is,

* African Repository, vol. 6, p. 121.

not to evangelize the natives, but to secure, by a summary process, competence and power for themselves. Indeed, their juxtaposition with the natives would be eminently calculated to induce the fever of avarice, and to generate the lust of dominion. It is well known that so eager are the colonists to acquire a rapid accumulation of wealth, by trafficking their paltry beads and poisonous rum and tobacco for ivory, camwood and gold dust, it is with the utmost difficulty any considerable portion of them are persuaded to cultivate the soil and engage in agricultural pursuits. Thus we are presented with the disgraceful, if not singular spectacle of a rivalry in cunning and trickishness between a colony of soi-disant missionaries (really avaricious and unscrupulous foreigners) and the tribes who are to come under their pious pupilage. If equal dexterity in trade is not apparent, each party is equally pleased with its successful attempts at deception, and both renew the fraudulent commerce with fresh alacrity-the one to gain a new triumph, and the other to retrieve an old defeat. And this is the mode of colonizationists to evangelize Africa! and this their mode to suppress the slave trade! and this their mode to elevate the free people of color! and this their mode to emancipate the slaves! It combines the folly and absurdity of a farce with the solemnity and murderment of a tragedy.

Far be it from me to leave the impression upon the mind of the reader, from these representations, that all the colonists are actuated by the same selfish motives, or that they have exhibited any new and extraordinary traits of character in their commerce with the Africans. Many of them, I believe, are men who fear God and desire the welfare of his creatures all of them have behaved as honorably, perhaps, and trafficked as equitably, as any other body of men, white or yellow, would have done in the same situation and under the same circumstances. Dishonesty in trade is no prodigy, even in this country. To bring accusations of fraud, cupidity and cunning against human nature, is not libellous. I am persuaded that robbery,-well contrived, deliberately executed robbery,-is perpetrated in every community among ourselves, without any due estimate of its moral turpitude, by reputable merchants and traders upon their cus

tomers, to a larger extent than all the avowed and heinous thefts collectively, which are committed against society. It is lamentable to see how studiously conscience and fair dealing are excluded from the secular business of the world. If we see, every day, illustrations of this dishonest conduct, given by men of refinement, intelligence and good character, what should we expect from those whose fetters have hardly fallen from their limbs; who have been systematically degraded by slavery ; who have not consequently that lively sense of moral obligation which accompanies intelligence; who are beyond the influence of public sentiment, and surrounded by a barbarous people?

The establishment of a colony of speculators, then, to evangelize Africa, does not discover much wisdom or promise much success; but, on the contrary, exhibits a total blindness of vision and a most unfavorable aspect.

Let it be remembered, however, that rum and tobacco (two poisons which are exactly adapted to destroy both soul and body) are the principal articles given to the natives-because pertinaciously demanded by them-in exchange for their own. Their appetite for spirituous liquor, first created by the slave traders and subsequently excited by the colonists, is insatiate. Even the justly lamented ASHMUN, if I do not mistake, for I have not his letter now before me, was so imprudent in one of his epistles to the Board of Managers as to concede the fatal necessity of selling rum freely to the natives, in order to maintain a commercial intercourse with them. Rum they would have, or nothing; and rum they obtained then, and do now obtain. Any one who will take the trouble to read the advertisements in the Liberia Herald will discover that ardent spirits form a prominent item in the list of articles offered for sale.. Of the sobriety of the colonists, however, common report speaks in the most gratifying manner; but as their number is to be increased by a redundant importation, we have reason to fear a declension of morals.

Thirdly. Colonizationists strenuously contend that our colored population are destined always to remain a degraded class in this country. If educated any where, they must be educated in Africa. We must take them in their ignorance, and just

released from bondage, and translate them to another continent on the wings of the wind. Delay would be injurious to ourselves, and calamitous to them. They must go in large bodies -by thousands and tens of thousands annually-till the whole be expelled from our shores. For it seems, according to the logic of colonizationists, every individual tainted with black blood must be transported, to insure the regeneration of Africa! Neither fifty thousand, nor one hundred thousand, nor half a million of these missionaries will be able to accomplish the task; but two millions of slaves and four hundred thousand free people of color, and all their descendants in time to come, hereeven little babes (pretty prattling reformers!) and children— the maimed, the halt, and the blind-all must be sent off-else alas! alas! for poor benighted Africa! This is no caricature. An ugly face is sure to quarrel with its own likeness. But what is the portrait worth, if it bear no resemblance to the living original? They who place themselves in a ridiculous attitude must not claim exemption from ridicule.

Let us turn to the picture once more. It is worth our while to contemplate it a few moments longer.

What do we see? More than one-sixth portion of the American people-confessedly the most vicious, degraded and dangerous portion-crowded on the shores of Africa, by means which are hereafter to be considered, and at an expense which we shall not stop now to calculate, for the purpose of civilizing and evangelizing Africa, and of improving their own condition! Here, then, are two ignorant and depraved nations to be regenerated instead of one !—if we may call all the natives that occupy that vast continent a nation-two huge and heterogeneous masses of contagion mingled together for the preservation of each! One of these nations is so incorrigibly stupid, or unfathomably deep. in pollution, (for such is the argument,) that, although surrounded by ten millions of people living under the full blaze of gospel light, and having every desirable facility to elevate and save it, it never can rise until it be removed at least three thousand miles from their vicinage and yet it is first to be evangelized in a barbarous land, by a feeble, inadequate process, before it can be qualified to evangelize the other [PART I.]

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nation! In other words, men who are intellectually and morally blind are violently removed from light effulgent into thick darkness, in order that they may obtain light themselves and diffuse light among others! Ignorance is sent to instruct ignorance, ungodliness to exhort ungodliness, vice to stop the progress of vice, and depravity to reform depravity! All that is abhorrent to our moral sense, or dangerous to our quietude, or villanous in human nature, we benevolently disgorge upon Africa for her temporal and eternal welfare! We propose to build upon her shores, for her glory and defence, colonies framed of materials which we discard as worthless for our own use, and which possess no fitness or durability! Admirable consistency ! surprising wisdom! unexampled benevolence! As rationally might we think of exhausting the ocean by multiplying the number of its tributaries, or extinguishing a fire by piling fuel upon it.

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Lastly. Any scheme to proselytize which requires for its protection the erection of forts and the use of murderous weapons, is opposed to the genius of christianity and radically wrong. If the gospel cannot be propagated but by the aid of the sword,—if its success depend upon the muscular power and military science of its apostles,-it were better to leave the pagan world in darkness. The first specimen of benevolence and piety, which the colonists gave to the natives, was the building of a fort, and supplying it with arms and ammunition ! This was an earnest manifestation of that peace on earth, good will to man,' which these expatriated missionaries were sent to inculcate! How eminently calculated to inspire the confidence, excite the gratitude, and accelerate the conversion of the AfriTheir dread of the great guns of the Islanders,' (to adopt the language of Mr Ashmun,) must from the beginning have made a deep and salutary impression upon their minds; and when, not long afterward, every shot' from these guns 'spent its force in a solid mass of living human flesh '—their own flesh-they must have experienced a total regeneration. Bullets and cannon balls argue with resistless effect, and as easily convert a barbarous as civilized people. One sanguinary conflict was sufficient to spread the glad tidings of salvation among

cans !