Liberia ^ 



In ] 864 S. A. Benson (a negro) had been succeeded as 

 President by Daniel Bashiel Warner, a mulatto, who, being 

 re-elected once, served from i 864 to 1 868. Although, like Benson 

 and Roberts, Warner was a Republican (or True Liberian) 

 candidate, he went over while in office to the Whig policy of 

 preserving Liberia jealously from white invasion. He was 

 moved to this distrust of Europeans by the actions of Harris 

 and other merchants, nor can he be held to have been wholly 

 unreasonable in establishing his Ports of Entry Law in 1865. 



According to this measure commerce to non-Liberians (and 

 any person of African race could become a Liberian citizen even 

 if he were a white Jew of Morocco) was restricted to six ports 

 of entry and a circle of six miles diameter round each port 

 of entry. The six places selected as trading ports were 

 Robertsport (Cape Mount), Monrovia, Marshall, Grand Basa 

 settlements, Greenville (Sino), and Cape Palmas,^ 



At all these places Liberian Customs-houses would be 

 established and the Liberian Government would as far as possible 

 be responsible for the safety of persons and property. 



Bitter complaints were raised, by British merchants chiefly, 

 against this law, since it restricted their commercial intercourse 

 with the indigenous Negroes at many calling places on the 

 coast. But it is difficult to see what other course could then 

 have been taken by the Liberian Government at that juncture. 

 Its revenue was far too small to permit of its equipping more 

 than six Customs-houses and ensuring law and order at these 

 stations, with all the monetary consequences resulting trom 

 any failure to keep the peace between natives and Europeans. 

 After all, even on the coast of British and French Africa, there 



' To these were added subsequently Grand Cestos River and Nana Kru, 

 and in addition foreigners may trade under certain provisions and restrictions 

 three miles into Liberia from any foreign frontier line. 



248 



