£80 
THE WESTERN COAST. 
peared to be best calculated for promoting social 
order and general happiness, met at Norkioping in 
Sweden, to consider the colonization and cultiva- 
tion of waste lands in Europe, upon philanthropic 
principles. What seemed impracticable in Europe, 
from the jarring interests arid fluctuating politics of 
her powers, — the erection of a community, who 
might have the privilege of enacting its own laws, 
coining its own money, and exempting its members 
from imprisonment for debt, — was deemed practi- 
cable on the western coast of Africa. To the exe- 
cution of this plan, which had a more extensive ob- 
ject than even the emancipation of the negro race, 
the most formidable obstacle appeared to be the 
opposition which it would necessarily receive from 
the slave-trade ; a specific plan was however form- 
ed, and a charter, empowering forty families to 
settle on the western coast of Africa, under the 
protection of Sweden, to organize their own go- 
vernment, to enact their own laws, and to establish 
a society entirely independent of Europe, was pro- 
cured from his Swedish majesty Gustavus III. 
through the influence of the chamberlain TJlric 
Nordonkiold. The only conditions annexed to 
those privileges were, that the society should de- 
fray the expences of their expedition and establish- 
ment, and not infringe the territories possessed or 
claimed by other European powers. The execu- 
tion of this plan was, for some time, retarded by 
