Chap. XXXII. 
COMMEECIAL STATIONS. 
679 
of it by a large portion of our own race. We now demand in¬ 
creased supplies of cotton and sugar, and then reprobate the 
means our American brethren adopt to supply our wants. We 
claim a right to speak about tliis evil, and also to act in reference 
to its removal, the more especially because we are of one blood. 
It is on the Anglo-American race that the hopes of the world for 
liberty and progress rest. Now it is very grievous to find one 
portion of this race practising 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 ma¬ 
chinery, 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 gmano, 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 neces¬ 
sity 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 suc¬ 
cessfully in Angola. If England had possessed that strip of land, 
by civilly declinhig to emich her ‘‘ Frontier colonists” by ‘‘ Caffre 
wars,” the inborn energy of English colonists would have de¬ 
veloped 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 in valuable 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 pathway 
to a central population who are friendly to the English; and if 
