Liberia *♦ 



occupation of Northern Sierra Leone will equally react on this 

 condition, since in all directions the market for slaves is being 

 closed. There does, however, remain — it must be admitted — 

 a great temptation to the Americo-Liberian planters, but one 

 which it is difficult to stem. Undoubtedly the system of 

 apprentices does not differ markedly from a legalised slave- 

 buying. The Liberian planter, we will say, goes inland and 

 is offered boy and girl or adult slaves by some native chief. 

 He pays perhaps from £i to £t, value in trade goods for 

 each human being, and to satisfy his own conscience calls 

 them apprentices. These people are then conveyed — usually 

 very willingly on their part — to his own plantation or place 

 of business, where they settle down as cultivators. He may, 

 if he likes, take advantage of the existing law of apprenticeship 

 and bind these people, if they are under age, as apprentices 

 for a short term. But this is the only legal control he has 

 over them, and that amounts to very little. If he does not 

 treat his apprentices well and they run away to some one who 

 will treat them better, the employer has practically no redress. 

 Therefore, although in theory this is not a proceeding without 

 its objections, in practice it serves to people the coast regions, 

 to increase the future number of civilised Negroes growing up 

 under Liberian laws, and to give these unfortunate outcasts at 

 any rate a life of tranquillity and safety ; whereas if they re- 

 mained as slaves in the interior they would be liable to ill- 

 treatment and death on small provocation. A good many of 

 these apprentices become porters, retaining all or nearly all 

 their earnings, and a good deal of the transport between the 

 coast and the interior is carried on by ex-apprentices, who if 

 they do chance to revisit the former place of their slavery, 

 do so as men of the world, not at all inclined to put up with 

 any aggression from their former masters. 



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