OUR COLONIES. 581 



The British settlements on the western shores of Africa, namely, 

 Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Cape Coast, are to us subjects of melan- 

 choly associations : viewed merely as commercial depots, or as points 

 for endeavouring to humanise the fierce races around them, we have 

 no objections to their continuance. But looking at Sierra Leone, 

 we shall hail it as a happy day when the purposes to which so many 

 valuable lives have been sacrificed, and an enormous amount of trea- 

 sure wasted, are abandoned. It is a most mistaken and absurd idea 

 that of locating negroes on the coast of Africa, with the intention of 

 elevating them in the social scale. There are here placed in contact 

 with the natives, beings of the same habits, feelings, and customs 

 with themselves; and the example, aided by the instinct of savage 

 life, is an all-potent check upon civilisation. Of the many thousand 

 liberated slaves who have been placed at Sierra Leone, we doubt if 

 any instances of satisfactory improvement, moral and intellectual, 

 could be authenticated ; and the settlement has entirely failed as a 

 means of extending the blessings of civilisation into the interior of 

 Africa. It has, indeed, been little beyond the means of enriching a 

 few private individuals, and affords a striking proof of how little our 

 colonial and home government are aware of the business, the means, 

 and the men on whom hundreds of thousands of pounds are lavished, 

 which have been wrung from the hard-won resources of our own 

 population. 



Our space will not permit us to go more at length into the varied 

 and valuable contents of Mr. Martin's work. It embraces the 

 Cape Mauritius, New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, Western 

 Australia, South Australia, the Falkland Islands, St. Helena, and 

 the British Settlements on the shores of Western Africa. It is full 

 of important details, told in perspicuous language, and given in a 

 comprehensive form. It is the first history of our Colonies ; and it is 

 no small praise to say of it, that it is in every way worthy its sub- 

 ject. It displays throughout a very laudable spirit of impartiality, 

 sound and enlarged views of commercial policy, an enlightened 

 mind, and a Christian temper. We wait with some impatience for 

 Mr. Martin's succeeding volume, which will contain a summary of 

 our Colonial Policy, and which we trust is destined to work a change 

 in the entire government of our immense external possessions. 



M.M. No. 6, 4 F 



