1830.] Sierra Leone Saints, and West India Sinners. 565 



ling, in the course of ten years, there are not now to be found in the colony 

 above 17 or 18,000 men !' " 



The Chief Justice, in passing sentence upon the missionary school- 

 master, told him 



" ' I have this day, in the discharge of a melancholy duty, been forced to 

 pass the awful sentence of death upon a man for stealing a sheep ; and upon 

 you, who have been convicted, upon the clearest evidence, of having stolen, 

 for the purpose of selling him to slavery, your former companion in captivity 

 one to whom the recollections of your common country, the fate which you 

 had both escaped, the benefits which you enjoyed in common, and the rela- 

 tions in which you stood to him as his instructor and his master ought to 

 have made you a friend and a protector, instead of a betrayer of the worst 

 description : upon you, I say, the law will not allow me to pass a heavier 

 sentence than that of a few years' imprisonment. But, had you consummated 

 your crime out of the boundaries of this colony had you accompanied your 

 victim to the Rio Pongas, and completed your offence on the high seas, within 

 the jurisdiction of the admiral you would have been tried by a different 

 court, arraigned upon a different indictment; and it would have been my 

 duty, on your conviction, to pass sentence of death upon you, and order you, 

 as I should have done, for instant execution, which I have little doubt you have 

 merited on former occasions ; for that this has been your first offence all the par- 

 ticulars of your case induce me to disbelieve.' " 



We consider it unnecessary to adduce any further proofs of the iniqui- 

 ties resulting from the absurd civilization and conversion theories of the 

 (e saints," or of the miseries which their ignorance and duplicity have 

 entailed upon Africa. If we may believe a statement made in one of 

 their own journals <c The Jamaica Free Press" their schemes for 

 instructing " our negro brethren" in the West Indies, " the lineal 

 descendants of the Amilcars, the Hannibals, the Ptolemys, and the 

 Confuciuses of olden time" as they are ludicrously styled, are equally 

 unsuccessful. ef But, alas !" sa"y these canting hypocrites, tf this is entirely 

 owing to ' slavery/ that bane and curse of West Indian society, which, 

 by degrading, and almost brutalizing, its unhappy victims, has, to a 

 considerable extent, broken their spirits, and deadened their energies. 

 Hence the apathy which they evince, and the necessity for coercion." 



" The School of Industry," says one of their own body, " is still in 

 operation. I have repeatedly been on the eve of discontinuing it from 

 a lack of funds, but aware of its importance to a people so naturally dis- 

 posed to indolence, that fruitful source of crime and wretchedness, I have 

 endeavoured, though with extreme difficulty, to carry it on till now." 

 That there is still a necessity for coercion, and that these descendants of 

 the Carthagenians ! the Ptolemys ! and the Confuciuses ! of olden time, 

 are naturally disposed to apathy and indolence, are strange admissions, 

 after we have been so often told of the immense quantity of work they 

 would do, if placed in the situation of free labourers ; and if their being 

 in a state of slavery is the cause of their indolence and apathy, to what 

 cause would this " descendant of Amilcar," the Editor of the Free Press, 

 attribute the apathy of the free negroes in the schools at Sierra Leone 

 and in the crown colonies ? 



" In setting about the conversion of more than 800,000 black slaves 

 into free citizens/' says Mr. Coleridge, " we must act sensibly and dis- 

 creetly j especially, we must begin with the beginning, for it is not a 

 matter of Decree, Edict, or Act of Parliament ; there is no hocus pocus 

 in the thing, there are no presto movements. It is a mighty work ; yet 



