INFLUENCE OF LIBERIA ON THE SLAVE-TRADE. 3G1 



as are made free. But when numbers multiply so greatly, 

 what law, unless it be that another St Bartholomew 

 shall be enacted, will prevent these numbers from spread 

 ing over the land ? 



Two good results, however the one immediate and the 

 other more remote will be promoted by the plan now 

 successfully in operation of colonising the Liberian coast. 

 It will repress indeed, is already much repressing the 

 slave traffic, by lessening the extent of coast under the 

 dominion of native princes who are inclined to carry it on, 

 and by exercising a salutary influence over the African 

 tribes, among whom the practice of kidnapping and 

 selling their fellow-countrymen has hitherto prevailed. 

 It will also promote the introduction of Christianity, and 

 of the arts of civilised life, among the people of Central 

 Africa. The more Liberia flourishes, the more rapidly 

 and powerfully will its influence be exercised in favour 

 of both these ends. Had the founders of the Colonisation 

 Society established it, or did its present supporters uphold 

 it with a professed view to these objects as their chief 

 end, instead of merely as a remote, possible, and inci 

 dental consequence,* few would have ventured to speak 

 of them otherwise than in terms of commendation. But 

 the expatriation of men from the land in which they 

 were born, under the plea that they have no right of 

 home on American soil, is so unjust as to awaken at the 

 outset feelings of distrust and dislike against the plans of 

 those who urge it. The plea itself, also, comes so incon 

 sistently from a race which is itself a usurper of its 

 American homes a vast majority of which adopted 

 these homes only after the Africans had already been 

 long resident in the land and which, like the Celti- 

 berian in Mexico, is, in opinion of some physiologists, 



* In a memorial to Congress, two weeks after its formation, the 

 Society says, &quot; If the experiment, in its remote consequences, should 

 ultimately tend to the diffusion,&quot; &c. 



