432 
THE SLAVE QUESTIOK. 
native chiefs and possessors of domestic slaves to 
employ them in the cultivation of cotton, sugar, &c., a 
powerful competition might be raised against the cruel 
exactions of the foreign slave-owner: and although 
as a necessary consequence of the less amount 
of exertion under his mild native task-masters, the 
individual produce would be less, the amount might be 
made up by the gi'eater extent of country, and by a 
population not requiring the artificial means of keeping 
up, resorted to in the Brazils, Avhere at the same time 
their supplies would be cut oflF. The example of free 
labour in the British settlement would not be lost 
on the surrounding nations, but might be the means 
gradually to remove the blot of slavery altogether 
from Africa. 
The establishment of a large and commodious 
bazaar at one settlement would ensure protection to 
commerce, and would render it the emporium of 
Central Africa. For a long while, however, we be- 
lieve that there would not be such a remunerative 
trade as to justify the immediate intervention of 
speculators in England. But the petty dealings of the 
settlers and the stimulus given to native merchants or 
Dilals, by buying up all the produce they bring, would 
cause accumulations that might be w^orth their atten- 
tion, especially if a company of philanthropists, such 
as composed the former agricultural society would 
enter into it with this prospect of loss in the outset. 
A better system of canoe-traffic might be introduced 
