Chap. XXXII. COMMERCIAL STATIONS. 670 



of it by a large portion of our own race. We now demand in- 

 creased supplies of cotton and sugar, and then reprobate the 

 means our American brethren adopt to supply our wants. We 

 claim a right to speak about this evil, and also to act in reference 

 to its removal, the more especially because we are of one blood. 

 It is on the Anglo-American race that the hopes of the world for 

 liberty and progress rest. Now it is very grievous to find one 

 portion of this race practising the gigantic evil, and the other 

 aiding, by increased demands for the produce of slave-labour, in 

 perpetuating the enormous wrong. The Mauritius, a mere speck 

 on the ocean, yields sugar, by means of guano, improved ma- 

 chinery, and free labour, equal in amount to one-fourth part of 

 the entire consumption of Great Britain. On that island, land is 

 excessively dear, and far from rich : no crop can be raised except 

 by means of guano, and labour has to be brought all the way 

 from India. But in Africa the land is cheap, the soil good, and 

 free labour is to be found on the spot. Our chief hopes rest with 

 the natives themselves ; and if the point to which I have given 

 prominence, of healthy inland commercial stations, be realized, 

 where all the produce raised may be collected, there is little doubt 

 but that slavery among our ldnsmen across the Atlantic will, 

 in the course of some years, cease to assume the form of a neces- 

 sity to even the slaveholders themselves. Natives alone can 

 collect produce from the more distant hamlets, and bring it to 

 the stations contemplated. This is the system pursued so suc- 

 cessfully in Angola. If England had possessed that strip of land, 

 by civilly declining to enrich her " Frontier colonists" by " Caffre 

 wars," the inborn energy of English colonists would have de- 

 veloped its resources, and the exports would not have been 

 100,000?. as now, but one million at least. The establishment of 

 the necessary agency must be a work of time, and greater difficulty 

 will be experienced on the eastern, than on the western side of the 

 continent, because in the one region we have a people who know 

 none but slave-traders, while in the other we have tribes who 

 have felt the influence of the coast missionaries, and of the great 

 Niger expedition ; one invaluable benefit it conferred was the 

 dissemination of the knowledge of English love of commerce and 

 English hatred of slavery, and it therefore was no failure. But 

 on the east, there is a river which may become a good pathway 

 to a central population who are friendly to the English ; and if 



