522 United States of America, and British West Indies. [MAY, 



Before we attempt to give some idea of the condition of slaves in the 

 United States of America, we may be permitted to notice briefly some 

 further papers published by order of parliament (printed 17th Feb. last 

 No. 57), " relative to Sierra Leone," which fully confirm our former 

 statements. We do not feel disposed to dispute the anxious desire now 

 evinced by his majesty's ministers, as manifested throughout these papers, 

 to give the administration of the affairs of that deadly colony their 

 serious attention, and to place the whole of the establishments on the 

 African Coast on a better and more economical footing. With this 

 view, Cape Coast Castle, Accra, and their dependencies have been given 

 over to a committee of merchants, to be held as factories ; but it is pro- 

 posed to increase the number of settlers on the Gambia ! 



The total and instant abandonment of Sierra Leone as a colony is 

 undoubtedly a measure attended with difficulty. But we contend that, 

 so long as no European constitution is equal to the performance of the 

 arduous duties of governor for any number of years, every effort to en- 

 force steady and uniform measures of improvement must, in a great 

 measure, continue to be abortive ; that even compulsory labour, were 

 it to be more generally enforced, would not render the climate one whit 

 more salubrious, however it might, to a trifling extent, improve the im- 

 mediate vicinity of Freetown ; that little improvement can take place 

 amongst the liberated Africans, so long as they are spread over a great 

 extent of country, liable to the incursions and contaminating influence 

 of the neighbouring tribes ; and that the advancement of civilization in 

 the interior never can be effectually promoted by these settlements. 



Earl Bathurst complains of the vicious habits in which the Africans 

 appear to have been permitted to indulge, of wandering about the colony; 

 and, particularly, of assembling in large numbers in the vicinity of Free- 

 town;* but Sir Neil Campbell, on the other 'hand, complains, 7 March, 

 1827, that their village-location system is equally objectionable; "one 

 great evil tending to retard the civilization of a proportion of the liberated 

 Africans in every village is their being permited to form detached vil- 

 lages, where they speak no language but their own, and always continue 

 naked as they were in Africa, with all their former usages; never altering 

 from the state in which they landed from the slave ships."* Can the 

 inutility of the whole of this system for promoting civilization and 

 habits of industry be acknowledged in more direct terms ? 



Sir Neil discovered that the plan of buying and issuing rations was 

 bad j and the missionaries, to whom it had become a source of profit, are 

 ordered to confine themselves, in future, to moral and religious duties. 



When the Africans are liberated from the slave vessels, they are em- 

 ployed as labourers, or sent to the villages, and an allowance is made, 

 during the first six months, for the support of the males. The females 

 receive rations for three months only, by which time they must, it is 

 expected, get married, or lose their rations; a short and powerful argu- 

 ment, certainly, in favour of matrimony ! ! But we should much doubt 

 whether this hasty pairing system is likely to superinduce domestic com- 

 fort, and a becoming regard for moral obligations. 



" The greater portion of the land of the colony," say s Governor Ricketts, 

 ' ' will not, after a few years, yield a satisfactory crop ;" the liberated 

 African cultivator must, therefore, shift his ground in rotation, or clear 



* Sierra Leone Papers, printed 17, No. 3, 1830, No. LVII. p. 18. 



