350 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
that they have, if possible, a stronger and more 
direct interest to promote it by every means in 
their power. It is not my intention to enter into 
the very wide and comprehensive question grow- 
ing out of this position, namely, whether the free 
negro, if independent of his master, could ob- 
tain sufficient employment, or, obtaining, would 
be ready to accept it. The first authorities 
of the present day, the ablest political econo- 
mists of this and every other country, have de- 
cided that labour should be free ; not only as 
conducive to the increased comforts of the la- 
bourer, but as decidedly favourable to the pe- 
cuniary interests of the employer and consumer. 
The African chiefs, like the owners of slaves in 
other countries, think they have no security for 
their authority but the maintenance of their 
people in slavery ; and the prejudices of the ne- 
groes are such, the custom has been so long con- 
tinued and by time become so inveterately 
strong, that no one having pretensions to supe- 
riority will perform any of those useful occupa- 
tions which the best informed in civilised coun- 
tries so usually attend to. There is in the habit 
of slavery a something much more difficult of 
cure than even in the oldest and most stormy 
passions of educated man : there is within it a 
debasement not to be found in any other state, 
and it seems as absolutely to chain men to the 
