CONDITIONS IN LIBERIA 



729 



was tottering on its last legs into anarchy 

 and ruin. 



Take just one example out of many 

 that I could give. The leading merchant 

 of Grand Bassa was expecting an im- 

 portant shipment of merchandise from 

 Liverpool. The steamer that carried me 

 into that port was expected to bring the 

 goods. Instead the merchant received a 

 letter from the Liverpool shippers saying 

 that they deemed it inadvisable to fill his 

 order until Liberia recovered from its 

 turbulent condition. Now, to my knowl- 

 edge, the whole land was as calm as 

 Toronto on a Sunday, so I inquired into 

 the cause of the Liverpool rumor. 



And this was the cause : a delegation 

 of dissatisfied farmers from some of the 

 settlements up the Saint Paul River had 

 come down to Monrovia, marched in 

 orderly procession to the Senate cham- 

 ber, formally petitioned that body to 

 impeach President Barclay, and then 

 quietly dispersed. It was the "tamest" 

 sort of a political demonstration. I saw 

 a larger one, gotten up by the opposite 

 party to counteract the efifect of the first, 

 and it was about as tumultuous as a 

 parade of the Order of the Eastern Star. 

 Yet the British consul general cabled to 

 Europe that Liberia was in a state of 

 wild disorder and that the government 

 was in imminent danger of being over- 

 turned. 



Nobody outside of the British diplo- 

 matic service knows whether the fault 

 lies with the Foreign Office or the Colo- 

 nial Office, or with both, but nearly every 

 foreigner in Liberia (except the English) 



will tell you that some one has unques- 

 tionably had a dream of seeing the Eng- 

 lish flag flying over the Executive Man- 

 sion in Monrovia. 



Everybody knows how easy it is to 

 lend money to a negro ; knows also that 

 the lending of money is a popular way 

 that Europe has in playing the game of 

 grab. In 1871 some bankers of London 

 floated a loan of $500,000, with the ex- 

 port duty on Liberian rubber as security. 

 Sir Harry Johnston, being an English- 

 man, cannot be accused of exaggeration 

 when he says in his book that there was 

 so much fraud in the transaction that 

 $200,000 is a fair estimate of the money 

 that actually reached Liberia. 



Some later historian will show, in a 

 similar way, how another British com- 

 pany defrauded Liberia in the loan of 

 1906 for another half million. The 

 financial result of these two transactions 

 is that, from two loans amounting to 

 about half of Liberia's public debt today 

 and on which the country is regularly 

 paying interest to the British, the repub- 

 lic has very little to show. But the finan- 

 cial result proved to be unimportant as 

 compared with the political result. 



Here is what I found on arrival at 

 Monrovia : British officials sitting at the 

 receipt of custom ; British army officers 

 in command of the only regular troops ; 

 a British naval officer commanding the 

 only gunboat ; a British consul general 

 dictating peremptory dispatches to the 

 Liberian government after the fashion of 

 Lord Cromer in Egypt. 



CONDITIONS IN LIBERIA 



Notes from the Report of the Recent Commission to Liberia — Messrs Roland P. Folkncr, 



George Sale, and Emmet t f. Scott 



THE commission was impressed 

 with the dignity and intelligence 

 of the representatives of the gov- 

 ernment with whom it had dealings. 

 Though these were relatively few in 

 number, they represented the best of 



Liberia's citizenship, and the fact that the 

 best men find their way into public em- 

 ployment is itself a favorable circum- 

 stance. 



The Liberians are not a revolutionary 

 people. Since the beginning of their 



