UVINGSTONE ON AFRICA'S PROSPECTS. 637 



hopes of the world for liberty and progress rest. Now 

 it is very grievous to find one portion of this race prac- 

 tising 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 

 machinery, 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 kinsmen across the Atlantic will, in the course of 

 some years, cease to assume the form of a necessity 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 successfully in Angola. If England had 

 possessed that strip of land, by civilly declining to enrich 

 her " Frontier colonists " by " CafTre wars," the inborn 

 energy of English colonists would have developed 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 path- 

 way to a central population who are friendly to the 

 English ; and if we can conciliate the less amicable people 

 on the river, and introduce commerce, an effectual blow 

 will be struck at the slave-trade in that quarter. By 

 hnking the Africans there to ourselves, in the manner 

 proposed, it is hoped that their elevation will eventually 



