Sierra Leone and Liberia:
Their Origin, Work, and Destiny
THERE is historical evidence that the portion of Africa where are situated the Colony of Sierra Leone and the Republic of Liberia was known to the ancients. The earliest authentic account we have, however, of any visit to this coast by foreigners is contained in a fragment of Carthaginian literature, called the Periplus of Hanno, which shows that five hundred years before Christ, or more than two thousand years ago, Sierra Leone was visited. This document is said to be “the one relic of Carthaginian literature which has come down to us entire.” It has been preserved, however, not in the Carthaginian original, but in a Greek translation.[1]
In modern history, the Portuguese claim to have discovered Sierra Leone about 1415, and they are said to have planted a settlement here in 1463, twenty-nine years before the discovery of America by Columbus. The priority of discovery is, however, disputed by the French, who pretend that the merchants of Dieppe visited these coasts in 1346, seventy years earlier. Two of their authors, Villault and Robbé, detail at some length the origin and progress of the French settlements at Sierra Leone, Cape Mount, River Sestos, and Elmina.
The object of these early establishments was legitimate commerce—no thought of carrying the people away into slavery had at that time occurred. The discovery of America in 1492 was the fountain and source of that transatlantic traffic in men which, for more than three hundred years, entailed woes innumerable upon the people of this country. The slave trade was regularly established by Spain twenty-five years after the great exploit by Columbus.
The first Englishman who engaged in the odious traffic was Sir John Hawkins, and the first scene of his disastrous labours was Sierra Leone. He sailed from England for this port in October, 1562. Here he found the aborigines living in peace and quietness, producing by agriculture and trade all that their necessities required. By the sword and other means, he obtained possession of three hundred persons, sailed with them to St. Domingo, where he exchanged them for hides, ginger, sugar, and a good quantity of pearls, returning to England in September, 1563. He subsequently obtained the sanction of Queen Elizabeth, and a grant of two of Her Majesty’s ships for his nefarious expeditions. It must be stated in justice to the Queen, however, that she strongly objected to the traffic, and remonstrated against it; but she was assured that none were transported from Africa but those who voluntarily offered themselves as labourers; that their religious condition was improved by being taken away from their native superstitions. The Queen seems to have contented herself with issuing some stringent injunctions against the employment of force, with which those interested in the trade promised to comply.[2]
The principle of African colonisation in modern times, with a view to the improvement of the country and the people, must be attributed to the Swedes. To them belongs the glory of forming the first specific plan for alleviating the evils which the inhuman traffic had caused and was causing to this country; and to the Danes must be assigned the credit of first carrying into execution the idea of an agricultural establishment for instructing the natives in the cultivation of their fertile soil.
A society formed in Sweden, in 1779, obtained a charter from His Swedish Majesty, Gustavus III, empowering forty families to settle on this coast under the protection of Sweden, to organisetheir own government, to enact their own laws, and to establish a community entirely independent of Europe. In the report of those who were sent out to examine the coast, Cape Verde appeared the most eligible situation; but it was claimed by the French, who had twice purchased the whole peninsula. After Cape Verde they fixed upon Cape Mount and Cape Mesurado, where now stands the capital of the Republic of Liberia. Cape Mount was represented as the Paradise of New Guinea.[3]
The idea of restoring free blacks as colonists, from the countries of their exile in the West to the land of their fathers, originated in England with Granville Sharp and a few others of like philanthropic spirit. Through the efforts of Sharp, a decision was obtained from Chief Justice Mansfield in 1772, laying down the principle that “ as soon as any slave sets foot on English ground he becomes free.” At that time, there were in England numerous slaves who had been carried from the West Indies and America by their masters. When this decision was published, they were either driven from the houses of their masters or they left of their own accord. Several hundreds of this class of persons were, therefore, found wandering about London homeless and starving, and Sharp and his friends made themselves responsible for their unprotected and suffering condition.
To provide means for their relief a society was organised. In the meanwhile, Granville Sharp conceived the idea of sending them back to Africa, and sketched the outline of a plan for a settlement for all such persons. In July, 1783, while this plan was under serious consideration, Dr. Smeatham, who had spent several years on the coast of Africa, wrote an interesting letter to Dr. Knowles, which came to the notice of Sharp, suggesting the idea of a free Negro settlement at Sierra Leone, “for the purpose of checking and putting down the slave trade, and of diffusing the principles of the Christian religion among the natives.”
A commercial company, called St. George’s Bay Company, organised about 1756, had established its operations at Sierra Leone.[4] Through this company Granville Sharp and his associates secured a considerable district of land for the purpose of settling the emancipated slaves. In the year 1787, a subscription of a few thousand pounds having been raised for assisting the destitute blacks to reach Africa, the Government very liberally seconded these views by taking upon itself the expense of transporting them to their destination, and of supplying them with necessaries during the first six or eight months of their residence in Africa. The number that left England was four hundred and sixty, of whom eighty-four died during their detention in the Channel or on the passage; and near a hundred more fell victims to the hardships to which they were exposed during the first rainy season. They landed here in May, 1787, In May, 1887, three years hence, we shall have reached the centennial anniversary of the settlement. It is to be hoped that it will be duly celebrated by all the inhabitants, and that the occasion will be marked by some suitable memorial.
In modern history, the Portuguese claim to have discovered Sierra Leone about 1415, and they are said to have planted a settlement here in 1463, twenty-nine years before the discovery of America by Columbus. The priority of discovery is, however, disputed by the French, who pretend that the merchants of Dieppe visited these coasts in 1346, seventy years earlier. Two of their authors, Villault and Robbé, detail at some length the origin and progress of the French settlements at Sierra Leone, Cape Mount, River Sestos, and Elmina.
The object of these early establishments was legitimate commerce—no thought of carrying the people away into slavery had at that time occurred. The discovery of America in 1492 was the fountain and source of that transatlantic traffic in men which, for more than three hundred years, entailed woes innumerable upon the people of this country. The slave trade was regularly established by Spain twenty-five years after the great exploit by Columbus.
The first Englishman who engaged in the odious traffic was Sir John Hawkins, and the first scene of his disastrous labours was Sierra Leone. He sailed from England for this port in October, 1562. Here he found the aborigines living in peace and quietness, producing by agriculture and trade all that their necessities required. By the sword and other means, he obtained possession of three hundred persons, sailed with them to St. Domingo, where he exchanged them for hides, ginger, sugar, and a good quantity of pearls, returning to England in September, 1563. He subsequently obtained the sanction of Queen Elizabeth, and a grant of two of Her Majesty’s ships for his nefarious expeditions. It must be stated in justice to the Queen, however, that she strongly objected to the traffic, and remonstrated against it; but she was assured that none were transported from Africa but those who voluntarily offered themselves as labourers; that their religious condition was improved by being taken away from their native superstitions. The Queen seems to have contented herself with issuing some stringent injunctions against the employment of force, with which those interested in the trade promised to comply.[2]
The principle of African colonisation in modern times, with a view to the improvement of the country and the people, must be attributed to the Swedes. To them belongs the glory of forming the first specific plan for alleviating the evils which the inhuman traffic had caused and was causing to this country; and to the Danes must be assigned the credit of first carrying into execution the idea of an agricultural establishment for instructing the natives in the cultivation of their fertile soil.
A society formed in Sweden, in 1779, obtained a charter from His Swedish Majesty, Gustavus III, empowering forty families to settle on this coast under the protection of Sweden, to organisetheir own government, to enact their own laws, and to establish a community entirely independent of Europe. In the report of those who were sent out to examine the coast, Cape Verde appeared the most eligible situation; but it was claimed by the French, who had twice purchased the whole peninsula. After Cape Verde they fixed upon Cape Mount and Cape Mesurado, where now stands the capital of the Republic of Liberia. Cape Mount was represented as the Paradise of New Guinea.[3]
The idea of restoring free blacks as colonists, from the countries of their exile in the West to the land of their fathers, originated in England with Granville Sharp and a few others of like philanthropic spirit. Through the efforts of Sharp, a decision was obtained from Chief Justice Mansfield in 1772, laying down the principle that “ as soon as any slave sets foot on English ground he becomes free.” At that time, there were in England numerous slaves who had been carried from the West Indies and America by their masters. When this decision was published, they were either driven from the houses of their masters or they left of their own accord. Several hundreds of this class of persons were, therefore, found wandering about London homeless and starving, and Sharp and his friends made themselves responsible for their unprotected and suffering condition.
To provide means for their relief a society was organised. In the meanwhile, Granville Sharp conceived the idea of sending them back to Africa, and sketched the outline of a plan for a settlement for all such persons. In July, 1783, while this plan was under serious consideration, Dr. Smeatham, who had spent several years on the coast of Africa, wrote an interesting letter to Dr. Knowles, which came to the notice of Sharp, suggesting the idea of a free Negro settlement at Sierra Leone, “for the purpose of checking and putting down the slave trade, and of diffusing the principles of the Christian religion among the natives.”
A commercial company, called St. George’s Bay Company, organised about 1756, had established its operations at Sierra Leone.[4] Through this company Granville Sharp and his associates secured a considerable district of land for the purpose of settling the emancipated slaves. In the year 1787, a subscription of a few thousand pounds having been raised for assisting the destitute blacks to reach Africa, the Government very liberally seconded these views by taking upon itself the expense of transporting them to their destination, and of supplying them with necessaries during the first six or eight months of their residence in Africa. The number that left England was four hundred and sixty, of whom eighty-four died during their detention in the Channel or on the passage; and near a hundred more fell victims to the hardships to which they were exposed during the first rainy season. They landed here in May, 1787, In May, 1887, three years hence, we shall have reached the centennial anniversary of the settlement. It is to be hoped that it will be duly celebrated by all the inhabitants, and that the occasion will be marked by some suitable memorial.
Footnotes:
1 Bosworth Smith's Carthage and the Carthaginians, p. 48.
2 Walker’s History of the Slave Trade, p. 37.
3 Villault, who saw Cape Mount in 1667, said: “ L’Afrique serait preferable A PEurope, si toutes les parties de cette vaste region resemblait aux environs du Cap Monte.”
4 This was not the earliest English establishment. Villault found an English factory on Bunce Island in 1666.
1 Bosworth Smith's Carthage and the Carthaginians, p. 48.
2 Walker’s History of the Slave Trade, p. 37.
3 Villault, who saw Cape Mount in 1667, said: “ L’Afrique serait preferable A PEurope, si toutes les parties de cette vaste region resemblait aux environs du Cap Monte.”
4 This was not the earliest English establishment. Villault found an English factory on Bunce Island in 1666.
In the year 1791, the St. George’s Bay Company was incorporated by Act of Parliament under the name of the Sierra Leone Company. In consequence of this recognition by the Government, the capital of the company rapidly increased, and the Directors had the opportunity of sending to the colony an additional number of black colonists acquainted with the English language and accustomed to labour in hot climates. In relation to this matter I take the following from the first Official Report of the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company, made in 1793:--
When the Act of Parliament had passed for incorporating the Sierra Leone Company, a delegate from a body of blacks in Nova Scotia, supposed to amount to a few hundred, who was then in England, represented that the persons who sent him hither had migrated to Nova Scotia at the end of the American war, having received from Government certain promises of lots of land which had never been strictly fulfilled; that both the soil and the climate of Nova Scotia, as well as many other circumstances in their situation, were complained of by them, and that many of them were desirous of becoming colonists at the settlement which they understood was likely to be made at Sierra Leone.
The Directors concurred with the delegate in applying to His Majesty’s Ministers for a passage for them at the expense of Government, and having obtained a favourable reply, they immediately availed themselves of the services of Lieutenant Clarkson, who very handsomely offered to go to Nova Scotia in order to make the necessary proposals, and to superintend the collecting and bringing over of such free blacks to Sierra Leone as might be willing to migrate.[5]
The Nova Scotians were a portion of those slaves, who, during the American War of Independence, ran away from their masters and took refuge in the King’s army. They were born in North America of African progenitors.
The number of Nova Scotians, the Report continues, who were willing to embark for Sierra Leone proved, to the great surprise of the Directors, to be no less than 1,196. In the month of February, 1792, the Company sent out the Nova Scotians in a fleet of sixteen vessels, from which there were landed in Sierra Leone, on the 28th of March, 1, 131 blacks, many of them labouring under the effects of a fever first contracted in Halifax, of which 65 had died during the passage.
About this same time, a few gentlemen in the United States, headed by the Revs. Drs. Hopkins and Stiles, of Rhode Island, having several years previously conceived the idea of a missionary settlement in Africa of Christian blacks, were endeavouring to induce merchants to send out a vessel with a few emigrants, and with goods, the profits on which would diminish the expense of the enterprise, and enable them to procure lands on which to make a beginning. But this plan did not succeed from want of funds.
On the 15th of January, 1789, two years after Granville Sharp’s first emigrants had been sent out, Dr. Hopkins wrote to him enquiring whether, and on what terms, and with what prospects, blacks from America could join his colony, But it appears that no satisfactory answer was received.
In 1800 and 1801 the colony received another accession of emigrants from Jamaica, called Maroons, 550 in number. On their arrival they found the Nova Scotians in rebellion against the Company, on account of a ground-rent or quit-tax which had been imposed upon their farms. They contended that the lands had been granted to them by the Crown. The Maroons joined the Company in the effort to restore order, and the rebellion was put down. This was the cause of bitter alienation of feeling between the settlers and the Maroons. But hostile and powerful attacks made upon the colony by the natives forced the two parties together, and made them feel that their cause was one, and that their only safety was in union and co-operation.
About this time, a charter of justice was obtained from the Crown, authorising the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company to make laws, not repugnant to those of England, and to appoint a Governor and a Council with a similar power of making laws subject to the revision of the Court of Directors. It placed the criminal jurisdiction in the hands of the Governor and Council, the determination of civil suits in a Mayor’s court, and the recovery of small debts in a court of requests, and, in civil and criminal cases, the right of a trial by jury.[6]
Though Dr. Hopkins died (December 20, 1803) before his philanthropic plan could be carried out, yet his ideas had been gradually spreading in the United States. In 1800, James Monroe, then Governor of the State of Virginia, was authorised by the Legislature of his State to correspond with the President of the “United States, on the subject of the removal of free blacks from the limits of the United States. President Jefferson, whose sagacious and humane mind had led him to say, in view of the sufferings of the Negro in America, “ I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just,” seized at once upon the idea, and recommended Africa as the country to which the free blacks should be removed. Having heard of the colony of Sierra Leone, he corresponded with the British Government concerning the transfer of blacks to the new settlement, but without success, the British Government having at that time no control over the colony.
The spirit which had been evoked in England in favour of freedom by the legal question raised by Granville Sharp, and decided by Lord Mansfield, led, after twenty years of struggle and conflict, to the abolition of the slave trade. British vessels, taken in the horrible traffic, were to be seized and their captives released. This Act passed the English Parliament in 1807. As a convenient place for landing and sheltering recaptives, Sierra Leone was fixed upon, and it was transferred by the Company to the Government; in 1808. Henceforward the resources of a great nation were to be devoted to making the colony what it was designed to be—namely, an establishment for the suppression of the slave trade, and the religious and moral improvement of the natives.
It is a very interesting fact that on the spot where Englishmen first began the work of African demoralisation, Englishmen should begin the work of African amelioration and restoration. England produced Sir John Hawkins, known to Sierra Leone by his fire and sword policy. Two hundred years later, England produced Granville Sharp, known by his policy of peace, of freedom, and of religion. The land of Pharaoh was also the land of Moses. Alone, amid the darkness of those days, stood Sierra Leone—the only point at which the slave trade could not be openly prosecuted—the solitary refuge of the hunted slave. The geographical position of the peninsula might be taken as an emblem of its moral status. For hundreds of miles on either side of the colony the coast is low and swampy; but here the land rises into mountains of considerable height, and a bold promontory stretches out into the sea, forming an excellent natural harbour for ships pelted by the storm— beautiful emblem of the sublime moral attitude of the principles upon which the colony was founded, and of the rest and protection which the persecuted slave might find here.
Quorum sub vertice laté Aequora tuta silent.[7]
When the Act of Parliament had passed for incorporating the Sierra Leone Company, a delegate from a body of blacks in Nova Scotia, supposed to amount to a few hundred, who was then in England, represented that the persons who sent him hither had migrated to Nova Scotia at the end of the American war, having received from Government certain promises of lots of land which had never been strictly fulfilled; that both the soil and the climate of Nova Scotia, as well as many other circumstances in their situation, were complained of by them, and that many of them were desirous of becoming colonists at the settlement which they understood was likely to be made at Sierra Leone.
The Directors concurred with the delegate in applying to His Majesty’s Ministers for a passage for them at the expense of Government, and having obtained a favourable reply, they immediately availed themselves of the services of Lieutenant Clarkson, who very handsomely offered to go to Nova Scotia in order to make the necessary proposals, and to superintend the collecting and bringing over of such free blacks to Sierra Leone as might be willing to migrate.[5]
The Nova Scotians were a portion of those slaves, who, during the American War of Independence, ran away from their masters and took refuge in the King’s army. They were born in North America of African progenitors.
The number of Nova Scotians, the Report continues, who were willing to embark for Sierra Leone proved, to the great surprise of the Directors, to be no less than 1,196. In the month of February, 1792, the Company sent out the Nova Scotians in a fleet of sixteen vessels, from which there were landed in Sierra Leone, on the 28th of March, 1, 131 blacks, many of them labouring under the effects of a fever first contracted in Halifax, of which 65 had died during the passage.
About this same time, a few gentlemen in the United States, headed by the Revs. Drs. Hopkins and Stiles, of Rhode Island, having several years previously conceived the idea of a missionary settlement in Africa of Christian blacks, were endeavouring to induce merchants to send out a vessel with a few emigrants, and with goods, the profits on which would diminish the expense of the enterprise, and enable them to procure lands on which to make a beginning. But this plan did not succeed from want of funds.
On the 15th of January, 1789, two years after Granville Sharp’s first emigrants had been sent out, Dr. Hopkins wrote to him enquiring whether, and on what terms, and with what prospects, blacks from America could join his colony, But it appears that no satisfactory answer was received.
In 1800 and 1801 the colony received another accession of emigrants from Jamaica, called Maroons, 550 in number. On their arrival they found the Nova Scotians in rebellion against the Company, on account of a ground-rent or quit-tax which had been imposed upon their farms. They contended that the lands had been granted to them by the Crown. The Maroons joined the Company in the effort to restore order, and the rebellion was put down. This was the cause of bitter alienation of feeling between the settlers and the Maroons. But hostile and powerful attacks made upon the colony by the natives forced the two parties together, and made them feel that their cause was one, and that their only safety was in union and co-operation.
About this time, a charter of justice was obtained from the Crown, authorising the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company to make laws, not repugnant to those of England, and to appoint a Governor and a Council with a similar power of making laws subject to the revision of the Court of Directors. It placed the criminal jurisdiction in the hands of the Governor and Council, the determination of civil suits in a Mayor’s court, and the recovery of small debts in a court of requests, and, in civil and criminal cases, the right of a trial by jury.[6]
Though Dr. Hopkins died (December 20, 1803) before his philanthropic plan could be carried out, yet his ideas had been gradually spreading in the United States. In 1800, James Monroe, then Governor of the State of Virginia, was authorised by the Legislature of his State to correspond with the President of the “United States, on the subject of the removal of free blacks from the limits of the United States. President Jefferson, whose sagacious and humane mind had led him to say, in view of the sufferings of the Negro in America, “ I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just,” seized at once upon the idea, and recommended Africa as the country to which the free blacks should be removed. Having heard of the colony of Sierra Leone, he corresponded with the British Government concerning the transfer of blacks to the new settlement, but without success, the British Government having at that time no control over the colony.
The spirit which had been evoked in England in favour of freedom by the legal question raised by Granville Sharp, and decided by Lord Mansfield, led, after twenty years of struggle and conflict, to the abolition of the slave trade. British vessels, taken in the horrible traffic, were to be seized and their captives released. This Act passed the English Parliament in 1807. As a convenient place for landing and sheltering recaptives, Sierra Leone was fixed upon, and it was transferred by the Company to the Government; in 1808. Henceforward the resources of a great nation were to be devoted to making the colony what it was designed to be—namely, an establishment for the suppression of the slave trade, and the religious and moral improvement of the natives.
It is a very interesting fact that on the spot where Englishmen first began the work of African demoralisation, Englishmen should begin the work of African amelioration and restoration. England produced Sir John Hawkins, known to Sierra Leone by his fire and sword policy. Two hundred years later, England produced Granville Sharp, known by his policy of peace, of freedom, and of religion. The land of Pharaoh was also the land of Moses. Alone, amid the darkness of those days, stood Sierra Leone—the only point at which the slave trade could not be openly prosecuted—the solitary refuge of the hunted slave. The geographical position of the peninsula might be taken as an emblem of its moral status. For hundreds of miles on either side of the colony the coast is low and swampy; but here the land rises into mountains of considerable height, and a bold promontory stretches out into the sea, forming an excellent natural harbour for ships pelted by the storm— beautiful emblem of the sublime moral attitude of the principles upon which the colony was founded, and of the rest and protection which the persecuted slave might find here.
Quorum sub vertice laté Aequora tuta silent.[7]
Footnotes:
5 An account of the colony of Sierra Leone, from its first establishment in 1793, being the substance of a Report delivered to the Proprietors. Published by order of the Directors, London, 1795.
6 Report of Dr. Madden, Her Majesty’s Commissioner to Western Africa, 1840.
7 Virgil’s Æneid, i, 163, 164.
5 An account of the colony of Sierra Leone, from its first establishment in 1793, being the substance of a Report delivered to the Proprietors. Published by order of the Directors, London, 1795.
6 Report of Dr. Madden, Her Majesty’s Commissioner to Western Africa, 1840.
7 Virgil’s Æneid, i, 163, 164.
Sierra Leone—“ mountain of the lion”—was a prophetic appellation, for it is the mount of moral elevation from which the roaring of the lion of the nations has saved hundreds of thousands from an untimely death, or a protracted and cruel bondage worse than death.
The slave trade was a serious interference with African life. Early travellers to this coast describe the pacific character of the people, and their quiet and successful industry. Had the traffic between the natives and Europeans continued regular and normal —such a trade, for instance, as there has been between China or Japan and Europe, a trade in which men did not form a commodity—this country would not now be behind any other tropical country in productive capacity. Before the demand for Negro labour in the Western hemisphere taught the people of the coast districts to make war upon each other, there was continuous intercourse between Sierra Leone and the interior. An extensive agriculture beautified the landscape on every hand.
There was gradual, regular growth in the elements of civilisation. But when the necessities of the slave trade spread confusion and disorder through all the maritime regions, legitimate trade retired from this part of Africa, and found its way across the desert to the Mediterranean.
In the sixteenth century, about the same time that John Hawkins was conducting his unhallowed operations, John Leo, or Leo Africanus, was travelling in the interior, about the headwaters of the Niger, where he witnessed a degree of civilisation which could not have failed to develop, by this time, into considerable importance. He thus describes the Kingdom of Melli, which is probably the modern Masina or Bambarra:--
In this kingdom there is a large and ample village, containing to the number of six thousand or more families, and called Melli, whereof the whole kingdom is so named. And here the king hath his place of residence. The region itself yieldeth great abundance of corn, flesh and cotton. Here are many artificers and merchants in all places; and yet the king honourably entertaineth all strangers. The inhabitants are rich, and have plenty of wares. Here are great store of temples, priests and professors, which professors read their lectures in the temples. The people of this region excel all other Negroes in wit, civility, and industry.[8]
This was three hundred years ago. But one hundred years ago Bornou was described as follows:--
Bornou is a very extensive and powerful monarchy. The capital thereof is so large that travellers, in describing its magnitude, state that Cairo, which contains half-a-million of people, “is a trifle to it.” Kashna, which is subject to Bornou, is said to contain one thousand towns and villages. The country is represented as being very pleasant, beautifully diversified with hill and dale, very fertile, well cultivated, abounding in flocks and herds, and very populous.[9]
Residents of Sierra Leone, who know, by experience, something of the activity and value of the trade from the interior, even now, after all the waste of the slave trade, can find no difficulty in crediting the accuracy of these descriptions.
Mungo Park tells us that the Mandingo manufacturers furnished the Moors with clothing. Perhaps some present will be surprised to learn that large quantities of ready-made clothing are imported into the settlement from Sego and other places on the Niger. These articles are made by native tailors, of stuff manufactured in the interior. The material is sold at three and four times the price charged for the blue baft from England, which is an inferior imitation of the Mandingo article.
The ancestors of these people understood the use of the cotton-plant, and the manufacture of cotton, when Julius Caesar found the Britons clothing themselves in the skins of wild beasts. Visitors to the British Museum may see, in the Egyptian department, cloth of the very same material and texture wrapped around the mummies. This cloth was made by those who understood the lost art of embalming, but who, when they retired by successive revolutions, into the interior—the heart of the Soudan, where the conditions of climate forbade the practice of embalming—lost that valuable art, but never forgot the manufacture of the cloth used in the process. Another proof, this, of the connection of the Nigritian tribes with the ancient Egyptians.
Between sixty and seventy years ago Sir Charles McCarthy, then Governor of Sierra Leone, set his heart upon developing the interior traffic of which he had heard so much, and again attracting it to the coast. His able and zealous efforts met with no little measure of success. In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, under date May 17, 1814, he depicts the state of things before he began his labours, as follows:--
Three-fourths of the produce of the very rich mines of Bambouk was allowed to find its way to the Barbary States, from whence the Bambarra Kingdoms derived all their articles of commerce, and even for several years back these mines have been almost totally neglected.
On the eve of his departure from Senegal, where he had been administering the Government (Senegal being then a British colony), he wrote to the Secretary of State, under date May 6, 1814:
I have great pleasure in reporting to your Lordship that I leave this colony in a perfect state of tranquility. I have received from the Moors and Negro Princes every possible assurance of a wish on their part to cultivate a good understanding with the British Government and encourage trade. The imports into the colony have exceeded double the amount of last year, and the exports of gum and gold will be in the same proportions.
Here I must crave your indulgence while I digress for a moment, to say a few words on the injurious notion which largely prevails among civilised Negroes, chiefly in foreign lands, gathered from the books they read, that the Negro has had no past, and that all his ideas of civilisation and all his tendencies to growth have been obtained from European instruction and example.
Now it is not surprising that this impression should prevail among white people, who see the Negro only in exile or along this coast, which still suffers from the demoralisation of centuries. But it is not for intelligent Negroes to allow themselves to imbibe this poisonous misrepresentation, especially those in this portion of Africa, who have the opportunity, by only a few days’ journey from the coast, to learn the truth about their people. It is this false conception of what Africa has been, and of its actual and possible condition away from the coast, which misleads so many who come for philanthropic and other work from Europe and America.
There is such a thing as the poetry of politics, what is sometimes called sentiment. It is the feeling of race—the aspiration after the development on its own line of the type of humanity to which we belong. Italians and Germans long yearned after such development. The Slavonic tribes are feeling after it. Now, nothing tends more to discourage these feelings, and check these aspirations, than the idea that the people with whom we are connected, and after whose improvement we sigh, have never had a past, or only an ignoble past—antecedents which were “ blank and hopeless,” to be ignored and forgotten.
We have then nothing upon which to base any hopes for the future, or from which to derive a sense of obligation to posterity. We have a feeling that those who have gone before us have done nothing for us, and why should we do anything for posterity? Under such circumstances, there can be no such thing as a real national history—no continuity or transmission of organic feeling;. but without such a feeling there can be no progress, A true respect for the past—a consciousness of a real national history—has not-only a binding force but a stimulating effect, and furnishes a guarantee of future endurance and growth. That which has been achieved in the past is a prophecy of what may be done in the future. You may call this poetry if you like, but it is the kind of thing on which nations thrive. Mr. Matthew Arnold has recently told us that “more and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console and sustain us.” When Napoleon on the burning plains of Egypt called out to his soldiers, “Forty centuries look down upon you from the summit of those Pyramids,” it was not only the military but the poetic instinct that suggested the words. He borrowed from the past achievements of an alien race inspiration for his exhausted troops. They connected themselves with humanity and took courage from the past deeds of the despised African.
While Sir Charles McCarthy was earnestly labouring in every way to bring the colony up to the performance of the work it was intended to achieve, the idea of transferring free blacks from the United States to Africa was assuming definite and practical shape. In the year 1815, Captain Paul Cuffee, a Negro of some means, brought out to Sierra Leone, in his own vessel, thirty emigrants. (I have been able to find no mention in the records of the colony of this arrival.) This philanthropic and patriotic deed was suggestiveand instructive. What the white people had been thinking and talking about for thirty years was thus carried into effect by one of the oppressed class whose condition they were considering—thus showing that the project in contemplation was in harmony with the instincts and desires of the Africans in America.
The slave trade was a serious interference with African life. Early travellers to this coast describe the pacific character of the people, and their quiet and successful industry. Had the traffic between the natives and Europeans continued regular and normal —such a trade, for instance, as there has been between China or Japan and Europe, a trade in which men did not form a commodity—this country would not now be behind any other tropical country in productive capacity. Before the demand for Negro labour in the Western hemisphere taught the people of the coast districts to make war upon each other, there was continuous intercourse between Sierra Leone and the interior. An extensive agriculture beautified the landscape on every hand.
There was gradual, regular growth in the elements of civilisation. But when the necessities of the slave trade spread confusion and disorder through all the maritime regions, legitimate trade retired from this part of Africa, and found its way across the desert to the Mediterranean.
In the sixteenth century, about the same time that John Hawkins was conducting his unhallowed operations, John Leo, or Leo Africanus, was travelling in the interior, about the headwaters of the Niger, where he witnessed a degree of civilisation which could not have failed to develop, by this time, into considerable importance. He thus describes the Kingdom of Melli, which is probably the modern Masina or Bambarra:--
In this kingdom there is a large and ample village, containing to the number of six thousand or more families, and called Melli, whereof the whole kingdom is so named. And here the king hath his place of residence. The region itself yieldeth great abundance of corn, flesh and cotton. Here are many artificers and merchants in all places; and yet the king honourably entertaineth all strangers. The inhabitants are rich, and have plenty of wares. Here are great store of temples, priests and professors, which professors read their lectures in the temples. The people of this region excel all other Negroes in wit, civility, and industry.[8]
This was three hundred years ago. But one hundred years ago Bornou was described as follows:--
Bornou is a very extensive and powerful monarchy. The capital thereof is so large that travellers, in describing its magnitude, state that Cairo, which contains half-a-million of people, “is a trifle to it.” Kashna, which is subject to Bornou, is said to contain one thousand towns and villages. The country is represented as being very pleasant, beautifully diversified with hill and dale, very fertile, well cultivated, abounding in flocks and herds, and very populous.[9]
Residents of Sierra Leone, who know, by experience, something of the activity and value of the trade from the interior, even now, after all the waste of the slave trade, can find no difficulty in crediting the accuracy of these descriptions.
Mungo Park tells us that the Mandingo manufacturers furnished the Moors with clothing. Perhaps some present will be surprised to learn that large quantities of ready-made clothing are imported into the settlement from Sego and other places on the Niger. These articles are made by native tailors, of stuff manufactured in the interior. The material is sold at three and four times the price charged for the blue baft from England, which is an inferior imitation of the Mandingo article.
The ancestors of these people understood the use of the cotton-plant, and the manufacture of cotton, when Julius Caesar found the Britons clothing themselves in the skins of wild beasts. Visitors to the British Museum may see, in the Egyptian department, cloth of the very same material and texture wrapped around the mummies. This cloth was made by those who understood the lost art of embalming, but who, when they retired by successive revolutions, into the interior—the heart of the Soudan, where the conditions of climate forbade the practice of embalming—lost that valuable art, but never forgot the manufacture of the cloth used in the process. Another proof, this, of the connection of the Nigritian tribes with the ancient Egyptians.
Between sixty and seventy years ago Sir Charles McCarthy, then Governor of Sierra Leone, set his heart upon developing the interior traffic of which he had heard so much, and again attracting it to the coast. His able and zealous efforts met with no little measure of success. In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, under date May 17, 1814, he depicts the state of things before he began his labours, as follows:--
Three-fourths of the produce of the very rich mines of Bambouk was allowed to find its way to the Barbary States, from whence the Bambarra Kingdoms derived all their articles of commerce, and even for several years back these mines have been almost totally neglected.
On the eve of his departure from Senegal, where he had been administering the Government (Senegal being then a British colony), he wrote to the Secretary of State, under date May 6, 1814:
I have great pleasure in reporting to your Lordship that I leave this colony in a perfect state of tranquility. I have received from the Moors and Negro Princes every possible assurance of a wish on their part to cultivate a good understanding with the British Government and encourage trade. The imports into the colony have exceeded double the amount of last year, and the exports of gum and gold will be in the same proportions.
Here I must crave your indulgence while I digress for a moment, to say a few words on the injurious notion which largely prevails among civilised Negroes, chiefly in foreign lands, gathered from the books they read, that the Negro has had no past, and that all his ideas of civilisation and all his tendencies to growth have been obtained from European instruction and example.
Now it is not surprising that this impression should prevail among white people, who see the Negro only in exile or along this coast, which still suffers from the demoralisation of centuries. But it is not for intelligent Negroes to allow themselves to imbibe this poisonous misrepresentation, especially those in this portion of Africa, who have the opportunity, by only a few days’ journey from the coast, to learn the truth about their people. It is this false conception of what Africa has been, and of its actual and possible condition away from the coast, which misleads so many who come for philanthropic and other work from Europe and America.
There is such a thing as the poetry of politics, what is sometimes called sentiment. It is the feeling of race—the aspiration after the development on its own line of the type of humanity to which we belong. Italians and Germans long yearned after such development. The Slavonic tribes are feeling after it. Now, nothing tends more to discourage these feelings, and check these aspirations, than the idea that the people with whom we are connected, and after whose improvement we sigh, have never had a past, or only an ignoble past—antecedents which were “ blank and hopeless,” to be ignored and forgotten.
We have then nothing upon which to base any hopes for the future, or from which to derive a sense of obligation to posterity. We have a feeling that those who have gone before us have done nothing for us, and why should we do anything for posterity? Under such circumstances, there can be no such thing as a real national history—no continuity or transmission of organic feeling;. but without such a feeling there can be no progress, A true respect for the past—a consciousness of a real national history—has not-only a binding force but a stimulating effect, and furnishes a guarantee of future endurance and growth. That which has been achieved in the past is a prophecy of what may be done in the future. You may call this poetry if you like, but it is the kind of thing on which nations thrive. Mr. Matthew Arnold has recently told us that “more and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console and sustain us.” When Napoleon on the burning plains of Egypt called out to his soldiers, “Forty centuries look down upon you from the summit of those Pyramids,” it was not only the military but the poetic instinct that suggested the words. He borrowed from the past achievements of an alien race inspiration for his exhausted troops. They connected themselves with humanity and took courage from the past deeds of the despised African.
While Sir Charles McCarthy was earnestly labouring in every way to bring the colony up to the performance of the work it was intended to achieve, the idea of transferring free blacks from the United States to Africa was assuming definite and practical shape. In the year 1815, Captain Paul Cuffee, a Negro of some means, brought out to Sierra Leone, in his own vessel, thirty emigrants. (I have been able to find no mention in the records of the colony of this arrival.) This philanthropic and patriotic deed was suggestiveand instructive. What the white people had been thinking and talking about for thirty years was thus carried into effect by one of the oppressed class whose condition they were considering—thus showing that the project in contemplation was in harmony with the instincts and desires of the Africans in America.
Footnotes:
8 A Geographical Historie of Africa, written in Arabicke and Italian. By John Leo, a Moor, born it Granada and brought up in Barbary. Translated by John Pory, of Gonville and Oaius College, Cambridge.—London, 1600.
9 McQueen’s Central Africa, p. 219.
8 A Geographical Historie of Africa, written in Arabicke and Italian. By John Leo, a Moor, born it Granada and brought up in Barbary. Translated by John Pory, of Gonville and Oaius College, Cambridge.—London, 1600.
9 McQueen’s Central Africa, p. 219.
Two years after Paul Cuffee’s enterprise, the American Colonisation Society was organised (January 1, 1817). In November of that year Samuel I. Mills and Ebenezer Burgess were sent to this country as commissioners of the Society to select a site for a colony. Arriving in England in December, on their way out, they were courteously received by His Royal Highness, the Duke of Gloucester, patron and president, and by the other officers of the African Institution. Mr. Wilberforce introduced them to Earl Bathurst, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, who gave them letters to Sir Charles McCarthy, the Governor of Sierra Leone and other officers of the Colony, directing them to aid the explorers in their explorations. But before they could reach the colony, Sir Charles McCarthy, having already heard of the enterprise, addressed the following despatch to the Secretary of State:--
Government House,
Sierra Leone, January 2, 1818.
My Lord, —Understanding that it is in the contemplation of the Government of the United States of America to form an establishment of their people of colour in some part of Africa near this place, and being thoroughly convinced that such a measure would not only prove highly prejudicial to the interest of this Colony, but ultimately prevent all commercial intercourse with Great Britain, I beg leave to solicit your Lordship to adopt such measures as you may deem most advisable to prevent an establishment of that nature being formed either to the north of Sierra Leone, or nearer to the south than Cape Palmas. . . .
I have the honour, &c.,
The Right Honourable (Signed) C. McCARTHY. Earl Bathurst, K.G., &c., &c., &c.
Messrs. Mills and Burgess arrived at Sierra Leone March 22nd, 1818, a little less than three months after the letter was written, and were received by the Governor with great personal kindness. He gave them every facility for prosecuting their enquiries, though he did not conceal his unwillingness that an American Negro colony should be established in the vicinity of Sierr.a Leone. They examined the coast as far as Sherbro, and obtained promises that on the arrival of colonists suitable land should be furnished for their settlement. They then returned to Sierra Leone, and on May 22nd, embarked for England on their homeward voyage.
It appears that nothing more was heard at Sierra Leone of the projected colony until March 9th, 1820, two years after the departure of the explorers, when the ship Elizabeth, having sailed from New York, February 6th, arrived in the harbour of Freetown with the first settlers for the new colony—eighty- eight in number— from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.
Sir Charles McCarthy, three days after their arrival, wrote to Earl Bathurst as follows:--
Government House,
Sierra Leone, March 12, 1820.
My Lord,—I have the honour to inform your Lordship that the merchant ship Elizabeth, having left New York on the 6th February, arrived in this harbour on the 9th inst., having on board as passengers, four Agents from the United States of America, with Government stores, tools, provisions, and eighty- eight people of colour—men, women and children, labourers and medianics—for the purpose (as their senior Agent, the Rev. Samuel Bacon, states to me) of commencing an asylum for liberated Negroes in the River Sherbro, or in such other place to the leeward of this as they may find most convenient. I understand that the Elizabeth was to have sailed under the convoy of the American sloop-of-war Cyane, but lost sight of her in getting out of the harbour. She (the Cyane) is intended to afford the settlement or settlements protection, and at the same time to cruise on this coast. I hear also the Cyane is authorised to detain all American slave-vessels, to land the slaves at the new establishment, and send the vessels, for disposal, to America.
Although I am willing to give due credit to the humane and benevolent intentions which have led to the present measure, and that the superintendents are strongly recommended to me by the Honourable Bushrod Washington, and I may add that I trust I shall ever be found anxious to give my weak support and good wishes to any establishment of that description, yet I conceive it my duty, as Governor of this colony, to state that I fear any colonisation of a foreign power so immediately in our neighbourhood may be productive of considerable inconvenience, and even losses, in the trade of the colony. I had the honour of addressing your Lordship to the same purport on the 9th of May, 1818 (No. 144) and 20th same month (No. 150); and as your Lordship had been pleased to state in your answer dated 30th September, same year, that you concurred in my opinion, I had been led to hope that the Government of the United States would have paid some deference to your advice. I have not yet seen sufficiently of the gentlemen entrusted with the commission of the United States to be able to state positively that they will not attend to my own suggestions of forming their establishments farther to leeward. I shall transmit to your Lordship a copy of the documents they have communicated to me. The Cyane is not yet arrived. I scarcely need to observe that I shall show to the superintendents those marks of attention and civility to which they are entitled.
I have the honour, &c., Right Honourable Earl Bathurst, K.G. (Signed) C. McCARTHY.
For the opportunity of perusing and copying these letters, I am indebted to the courtesy of His Excellency Governor Havelock, who kindly allowed me access to the archives at Government House for the purposes of this lecture. These despatches not only illustrate the very inadequate conception of that day as to the laws of trade, but also furnish one of the proofs, which are everywhere found in the records of that period, of the zeal and solicitude of Sir Charles McCarthy for the future welfare of the colony. It appears that four years after the American settlers had occupied Cape Mesurado, in 1825, opinion had so far advanced that General Turner attempted, by treaties with the native chiefs, to extend the colony of Sierra Leone to the Gallinas River in the direction of Liberia. Sir John Jeremie subsequently attempted the same thing, with a view chiefly to the suppression of the slave trade, but the untimely death of these energetic Governors caused the project to fail.
The progress of events—the growth of the two countries—has shown that not only has Liberia not interfered prejudicially with Sierra Leone, but it has presented a field for the energies, industrial and commercial, of many a native of the settlement. An interesting fact in the present history of Liberia, which Sir Charles McCarthy could hardly have foreseen, is this, that a native of Sierra Leone, brought up amid the institutions of the colony, is a successor of Messrs. Mills and Burgess, as agent of the American Colonisation Society, having charge of the location and rationing of all emigrants arriving in Liberia from America. This native of Sierra Leone is also the Mayor of the city of Monrovia, the capital of the Republic. On the other hand, a citizen of Liberia was, not very long ago, entrusted with the interior matters of this settlement, and executed—by appointment from the Governor-in-Chief— important diplomatic missions to powerful chiefs, for which ho received the commendation and thanks of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. These things, I take it, are only indications of the future relations of the two countries. The two peoples are one in origin and one in destiny; and, in spite of themselves, in spite of local prejudices, they must co-operate.
For some years past, a strong desire, just the reverse of that entertained by Sir Charles McCarthy, has prevailed among the Governors of this colony—a desire to carry out the policy of General Turner and Sir John Jeremie. It has been felt that the cause of civilisation and commerce would be subserved not by widening the gulf between the two countries, but by bringing them more closely together. And this desire has been recently realised by making the boundaries of the two countries conterminous. The Liberians, however, have protested against the manner of this junction. “Mohammed has gone to the mountain,” but the mountain has shrunk at his approach. The lion has lain down with the lamb, but a part of the lamb has been absorbed.
The present feeling at Government House here on the subject of Sierra Leone and Liberia is expressed in a recent unofficial communication from the Governor-in-Chief as follows: “It is perfectly obvious that cordial and close relations between Liberia and the British Colonies adjoining her would be beneficial to both parties.”
Government House,
Sierra Leone, January 2, 1818.
My Lord, —Understanding that it is in the contemplation of the Government of the United States of America to form an establishment of their people of colour in some part of Africa near this place, and being thoroughly convinced that such a measure would not only prove highly prejudicial to the interest of this Colony, but ultimately prevent all commercial intercourse with Great Britain, I beg leave to solicit your Lordship to adopt such measures as you may deem most advisable to prevent an establishment of that nature being formed either to the north of Sierra Leone, or nearer to the south than Cape Palmas. . . .
I have the honour, &c.,
The Right Honourable (Signed) C. McCARTHY. Earl Bathurst, K.G., &c., &c., &c.
Messrs. Mills and Burgess arrived at Sierra Leone March 22nd, 1818, a little less than three months after the letter was written, and were received by the Governor with great personal kindness. He gave them every facility for prosecuting their enquiries, though he did not conceal his unwillingness that an American Negro colony should be established in the vicinity of Sierr.a Leone. They examined the coast as far as Sherbro, and obtained promises that on the arrival of colonists suitable land should be furnished for their settlement. They then returned to Sierra Leone, and on May 22nd, embarked for England on their homeward voyage.
It appears that nothing more was heard at Sierra Leone of the projected colony until March 9th, 1820, two years after the departure of the explorers, when the ship Elizabeth, having sailed from New York, February 6th, arrived in the harbour of Freetown with the first settlers for the new colony—eighty- eight in number— from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.
Sir Charles McCarthy, three days after their arrival, wrote to Earl Bathurst as follows:--
Government House,
Sierra Leone, March 12, 1820.
My Lord,—I have the honour to inform your Lordship that the merchant ship Elizabeth, having left New York on the 6th February, arrived in this harbour on the 9th inst., having on board as passengers, four Agents from the United States of America, with Government stores, tools, provisions, and eighty- eight people of colour—men, women and children, labourers and medianics—for the purpose (as their senior Agent, the Rev. Samuel Bacon, states to me) of commencing an asylum for liberated Negroes in the River Sherbro, or in such other place to the leeward of this as they may find most convenient. I understand that the Elizabeth was to have sailed under the convoy of the American sloop-of-war Cyane, but lost sight of her in getting out of the harbour. She (the Cyane) is intended to afford the settlement or settlements protection, and at the same time to cruise on this coast. I hear also the Cyane is authorised to detain all American slave-vessels, to land the slaves at the new establishment, and send the vessels, for disposal, to America.
Although I am willing to give due credit to the humane and benevolent intentions which have led to the present measure, and that the superintendents are strongly recommended to me by the Honourable Bushrod Washington, and I may add that I trust I shall ever be found anxious to give my weak support and good wishes to any establishment of that description, yet I conceive it my duty, as Governor of this colony, to state that I fear any colonisation of a foreign power so immediately in our neighbourhood may be productive of considerable inconvenience, and even losses, in the trade of the colony. I had the honour of addressing your Lordship to the same purport on the 9th of May, 1818 (No. 144) and 20th same month (No. 150); and as your Lordship had been pleased to state in your answer dated 30th September, same year, that you concurred in my opinion, I had been led to hope that the Government of the United States would have paid some deference to your advice. I have not yet seen sufficiently of the gentlemen entrusted with the commission of the United States to be able to state positively that they will not attend to my own suggestions of forming their establishments farther to leeward. I shall transmit to your Lordship a copy of the documents they have communicated to me. The Cyane is not yet arrived. I scarcely need to observe that I shall show to the superintendents those marks of attention and civility to which they are entitled.
I have the honour, &c., Right Honourable Earl Bathurst, K.G. (Signed) C. McCARTHY.
For the opportunity of perusing and copying these letters, I am indebted to the courtesy of His Excellency Governor Havelock, who kindly allowed me access to the archives at Government House for the purposes of this lecture. These despatches not only illustrate the very inadequate conception of that day as to the laws of trade, but also furnish one of the proofs, which are everywhere found in the records of that period, of the zeal and solicitude of Sir Charles McCarthy for the future welfare of the colony. It appears that four years after the American settlers had occupied Cape Mesurado, in 1825, opinion had so far advanced that General Turner attempted, by treaties with the native chiefs, to extend the colony of Sierra Leone to the Gallinas River in the direction of Liberia. Sir John Jeremie subsequently attempted the same thing, with a view chiefly to the suppression of the slave trade, but the untimely death of these energetic Governors caused the project to fail.
The progress of events—the growth of the two countries—has shown that not only has Liberia not interfered prejudicially with Sierra Leone, but it has presented a field for the energies, industrial and commercial, of many a native of the settlement. An interesting fact in the present history of Liberia, which Sir Charles McCarthy could hardly have foreseen, is this, that a native of Sierra Leone, brought up amid the institutions of the colony, is a successor of Messrs. Mills and Burgess, as agent of the American Colonisation Society, having charge of the location and rationing of all emigrants arriving in Liberia from America. This native of Sierra Leone is also the Mayor of the city of Monrovia, the capital of the Republic. On the other hand, a citizen of Liberia was, not very long ago, entrusted with the interior matters of this settlement, and executed—by appointment from the Governor-in-Chief— important diplomatic missions to powerful chiefs, for which ho received the commendation and thanks of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. These things, I take it, are only indications of the future relations of the two countries. The two peoples are one in origin and one in destiny; and, in spite of themselves, in spite of local prejudices, they must co-operate.
For some years past, a strong desire, just the reverse of that entertained by Sir Charles McCarthy, has prevailed among the Governors of this colony—a desire to carry out the policy of General Turner and Sir John Jeremie. It has been felt that the cause of civilisation and commerce would be subserved not by widening the gulf between the two countries, but by bringing them more closely together. And this desire has been recently realised by making the boundaries of the two countries conterminous. The Liberians, however, have protested against the manner of this junction. “Mohammed has gone to the mountain,” but the mountain has shrunk at his approach. The lion has lain down with the lamb, but a part of the lamb has been absorbed.
The present feeling at Government House here on the subject of Sierra Leone and Liberia is expressed in a recent unofficial communication from the Governor-in-Chief as follows: “It is perfectly obvious that cordial and close relations between Liberia and the British Colonies adjoining her would be beneficial to both parties.”
Governor Havelock in 1884, and Sir Charles McCarthy in 1818, are two generations apart. The spirit of both is the same—intent upon the welfare of the colony under their rule; but the one utters valicinia post eventum, while the other, through the difficult mists of probabilities, puts forth his prophecies at a venture. After what has already happened in the history of the two countries, who will undertake to say that they will not be brought into even closer connection than the mere physical one? Lord Derby, Secretary of State for the Colonies, said, in a speech a few weeks ago, that “ Experience of public life had taught him that the words ‘Never’and ‘Forever’ ought to have no place in a statesman’s vocabulary.”[10]
A few days after the arrival of the Elizabeth at Sierra Leone, the emigrants were taken to Sherbro Island, at the mouth of the Sherbro River. Here the agents were discouraged in their attempts to purchase land for a permanent settlement. The hardships, sickness, and deaths which the colonists had to undergo, compelled their return to Sierra Leone, and they found temporary residence at Four ah Bay, where some now lie buried. The remnant subsequently removed to Cape Mesurado, 260 miles to the south-east, where, after they had occupied for three months a small island at the mouth of the Mesurado River, they were permitted to obtain a permanent foothold.
Thus it will be seen that the British Colony of Sierra Leone and the American Colony of Liberia are one in origin, not only as respects the philanthropic purpose that gave them birth, but as to the materials of the first settlement. Both were planted by Negroes who, having passed through the baptism of slavery on American soil, brought with them as spoils from the land of their captivity the elements of Anglo-American civilisation, finding their first shelter in the land of their fathers, under the shadow of the “lion mountain,” and getting refreshed during their first fevers from the brooks of King Jimmy and King Tom. Both colonies were founded by private enterprise and for philanthropic purposes. Both received the same name. Freetown is the Saxon for the idea of which Liberia is the Latin. Both were given up by their original founders, one after twenty-five years of supervision, and the other after twenty-seven years.
Sierra Leone entered upon effective colonial existence, having the care, attention and guidance of the mother country, drawing within the circle of its influence representatives of the different tribes, and giving the Negro the opportunity for rest from the persecutions of slave-traders. Benign agencies from Europe overshadowed the settlement to protect it from malignant agencies from the same quarter. A succession of able philanthropic representatives of the Queen has furnished continuous impulse to civilisation.
Liberia continued a colony of the American Colonisation Society until, as it began to grow and extend along the coast, questions of trade and territorial rights arose which could be adjusted only between sovereign powers. The United States Government, owing to its peculiar institutions, and, perhaps, to the view then taken of the Monroe doctrine, could not assume the direction of the colony.
The Liberians found that if they were to retain their existence at all they must become an independent community, with the right of final legislation for themselves, the power to enter into treaty relations with foreign powers, to regulate and restrict trade, &c.
Therefore the people voted—October 27, 1846—in favour of assuming the entire responsibility of their government. The Legislature, at its next session, ordered a Convention of Delegates to form a new Constitution. The Convention assembled, and after twenty-one days of deliberation, adopted— on the 26th day of July, 1847—their new Constitution and Declaration of Independence. In September, the Constitution was ratified by the almost unanimous vote of the people in their primary assemblies.
The Governor, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, was elected the first President. On the 3rd day of January, 1848, he delivered his inaugural address, and the new Government went into operation. In the course of that year, the Independence of the Republic was formally acknowledged by the Governments of Great Britain and France. It has since been acknowledged by all the leading States of Europe and America. In 1850, when the Republic was two years old, Her Britannic Majesty’s Government presented the youthful nation with a gunboat, to act as a revenue cutter and guarda costa, with a view to assist the infant State in her efforts to suppress the slave trade. When that vessel, named the Lark, became un-seaworthy, the British Government gave to Liberia another war schooner called the Quail.
Sierra Leone, in the meanwhile, and for fifty years after it was taken over by the Home Government, grew rapidly in population by accessions of recaptives from various parts of the coast. On their arrival these strangers received instruction in the ways of civilisation from the American and West Indian settlers whom they found here. The new comers at first turned to the soil for support, but found, with their limited means and want of skill in systematic agriculture, that it was impossible to do anything in that line with the barren, rocky and mountainous country with which they had to contend. The fact of the inferior quality of the soil had been noticed when the Sierra Leone Company first attempted to settle their emigrants on it. After several unsuccessful experiments at farming on this side, the Governor and Council, towards the end of 1792, purchased a small tract of land on the Bullom shore for enlarged agriculture, but they met with no better success there. Very recently a native member of the Legislative Council has made expensive outlays in the same region with a view to extensive agricultural operations, but his prospects of success, he informs me, are not very cheering. With a soil so unfavourable, the people turned naturally to trade, for which the situation of Sierra Leone furnished splendid opportunities. By strict attention to business, by persevering diligence and economy, many very soon rose to respectability and influence.
The settlers gradually died out, and there being no further accession from America, the recaptives [11] and their descendants naturally and properly came to the front, until they now own most of the valuable property in the colony; and by their enterprise, intelligence, and energy, are successfully competing with European commercial houses on the coast. But this element, which has superseded the Nova Scotians and Maroons is not exactly indigenous. As the Negroes from across the sea gave place to them, so they, receiving no accessions, will give place to the indigenous tribes. But this fading away will be less marked if, by judicious intermarriages, the Creoles’blend with the surrounding tribes. And I am glad to learn that this process is gradually going on, especially in the villages. Timnehs, Susus, and Mendis are now uniting in marriage with Eboes, Akus, and Congoes, so that in the course of time the tribal peculiarities, which have often been a source of misunderstanding and disunion, will be happily effaced.
Notwithstanding the reports sometimes put forward of the indisposition of the natives to work, they have won, even from the soil of this barren, rocky, and mountainous country, astounding victories. There are very few places in the world where the vegetable market is better stocked than in Sierra Leone. When one looks at the arid and parched character of the soil, and sees the attractive variety of fruit, greens, and vegetables which appears every morning, one wonders by what magic power such pleasing results are produced. It is almost like the miracle of bringing honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock. But not only mere garden products, but the heavier articles of agriculture are exported from the colony. The large quantity of ginger brought to market this season has been something marvellous— marvellous in view of the possibilities, or rather impossibilities of the soil.
A few days after the arrival of the Elizabeth at Sierra Leone, the emigrants were taken to Sherbro Island, at the mouth of the Sherbro River. Here the agents were discouraged in their attempts to purchase land for a permanent settlement. The hardships, sickness, and deaths which the colonists had to undergo, compelled their return to Sierra Leone, and they found temporary residence at Four ah Bay, where some now lie buried. The remnant subsequently removed to Cape Mesurado, 260 miles to the south-east, where, after they had occupied for three months a small island at the mouth of the Mesurado River, they were permitted to obtain a permanent foothold.
Thus it will be seen that the British Colony of Sierra Leone and the American Colony of Liberia are one in origin, not only as respects the philanthropic purpose that gave them birth, but as to the materials of the first settlement. Both were planted by Negroes who, having passed through the baptism of slavery on American soil, brought with them as spoils from the land of their captivity the elements of Anglo-American civilisation, finding their first shelter in the land of their fathers, under the shadow of the “lion mountain,” and getting refreshed during their first fevers from the brooks of King Jimmy and King Tom. Both colonies were founded by private enterprise and for philanthropic purposes. Both received the same name. Freetown is the Saxon for the idea of which Liberia is the Latin. Both were given up by their original founders, one after twenty-five years of supervision, and the other after twenty-seven years.
Sierra Leone entered upon effective colonial existence, having the care, attention and guidance of the mother country, drawing within the circle of its influence representatives of the different tribes, and giving the Negro the opportunity for rest from the persecutions of slave-traders. Benign agencies from Europe overshadowed the settlement to protect it from malignant agencies from the same quarter. A succession of able philanthropic representatives of the Queen has furnished continuous impulse to civilisation.
Liberia continued a colony of the American Colonisation Society until, as it began to grow and extend along the coast, questions of trade and territorial rights arose which could be adjusted only between sovereign powers. The United States Government, owing to its peculiar institutions, and, perhaps, to the view then taken of the Monroe doctrine, could not assume the direction of the colony.
The Liberians found that if they were to retain their existence at all they must become an independent community, with the right of final legislation for themselves, the power to enter into treaty relations with foreign powers, to regulate and restrict trade, &c.
Therefore the people voted—October 27, 1846—in favour of assuming the entire responsibility of their government. The Legislature, at its next session, ordered a Convention of Delegates to form a new Constitution. The Convention assembled, and after twenty-one days of deliberation, adopted— on the 26th day of July, 1847—their new Constitution and Declaration of Independence. In September, the Constitution was ratified by the almost unanimous vote of the people in their primary assemblies.
The Governor, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, was elected the first President. On the 3rd day of January, 1848, he delivered his inaugural address, and the new Government went into operation. In the course of that year, the Independence of the Republic was formally acknowledged by the Governments of Great Britain and France. It has since been acknowledged by all the leading States of Europe and America. In 1850, when the Republic was two years old, Her Britannic Majesty’s Government presented the youthful nation with a gunboat, to act as a revenue cutter and guarda costa, with a view to assist the infant State in her efforts to suppress the slave trade. When that vessel, named the Lark, became un-seaworthy, the British Government gave to Liberia another war schooner called the Quail.
Sierra Leone, in the meanwhile, and for fifty years after it was taken over by the Home Government, grew rapidly in population by accessions of recaptives from various parts of the coast. On their arrival these strangers received instruction in the ways of civilisation from the American and West Indian settlers whom they found here. The new comers at first turned to the soil for support, but found, with their limited means and want of skill in systematic agriculture, that it was impossible to do anything in that line with the barren, rocky and mountainous country with which they had to contend. The fact of the inferior quality of the soil had been noticed when the Sierra Leone Company first attempted to settle their emigrants on it. After several unsuccessful experiments at farming on this side, the Governor and Council, towards the end of 1792, purchased a small tract of land on the Bullom shore for enlarged agriculture, but they met with no better success there. Very recently a native member of the Legislative Council has made expensive outlays in the same region with a view to extensive agricultural operations, but his prospects of success, he informs me, are not very cheering. With a soil so unfavourable, the people turned naturally to trade, for which the situation of Sierra Leone furnished splendid opportunities. By strict attention to business, by persevering diligence and economy, many very soon rose to respectability and influence.
The settlers gradually died out, and there being no further accession from America, the recaptives [11] and their descendants naturally and properly came to the front, until they now own most of the valuable property in the colony; and by their enterprise, intelligence, and energy, are successfully competing with European commercial houses on the coast. But this element, which has superseded the Nova Scotians and Maroons is not exactly indigenous. As the Negroes from across the sea gave place to them, so they, receiving no accessions, will give place to the indigenous tribes. But this fading away will be less marked if, by judicious intermarriages, the Creoles’blend with the surrounding tribes. And I am glad to learn that this process is gradually going on, especially in the villages. Timnehs, Susus, and Mendis are now uniting in marriage with Eboes, Akus, and Congoes, so that in the course of time the tribal peculiarities, which have often been a source of misunderstanding and disunion, will be happily effaced.
Notwithstanding the reports sometimes put forward of the indisposition of the natives to work, they have won, even from the soil of this barren, rocky, and mountainous country, astounding victories. There are very few places in the world where the vegetable market is better stocked than in Sierra Leone. When one looks at the arid and parched character of the soil, and sees the attractive variety of fruit, greens, and vegetables which appears every morning, one wonders by what magic power such pleasing results are produced. It is almost like the miracle of bringing honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock. But not only mere garden products, but the heavier articles of agriculture are exported from the colony. The large quantity of ginger brought to market this season has been something marvellous— marvellous in view of the possibilities, or rather impossibilities of the soil.
Footnotes:
10 Times, March 4th, 1884.
11 The ward recaptive, which I have just employed, like the word Negro, seems to some to convey the idea of contempt and degradation; hut both are good words, and express important facts —one a fact of nature, the other a fact of history. “Negro” means a man of certain physical characteristics, whose colour and hair differentiate him from other races of men. In America it is applied indiscriminately to all persons of whatever colour who have Negro blood in their veins. “Recaptive” means one captured again. In the case before us it was the stronger saving the weaker from unscrupulous oppression. It was an intervention to suppress intervention. The word embodies the history not only of the sad dealings of Europeans with our people on this coast, but of the “fruits meet for repentance” which they brought forth when the iniquity of the nefarious traffic dawned upon them.
10 Times, March 4th, 1884.
11 The ward recaptive, which I have just employed, like the word Negro, seems to some to convey the idea of contempt and degradation; hut both are good words, and express important facts —one a fact of nature, the other a fact of history. “Negro” means a man of certain physical characteristics, whose colour and hair differentiate him from other races of men. In America it is applied indiscriminately to all persons of whatever colour who have Negro blood in their veins. “Recaptive” means one captured again. In the case before us it was the stronger saving the weaker from unscrupulous oppression. It was an intervention to suppress intervention. The word embodies the history not only of the sad dealings of Europeans with our people on this coast, but of the “fruits meet for repentance” which they brought forth when the iniquity of the nefarious traffic dawned upon them.
Some of the leading natives are expending of their means accumulated in other business for the purposes of agricultural industry, not merely for the pecuniary results in the future, but for the sake of the example, and to prove that by diligence, enterprise, and industry, agriculture, which is the only reliable basis of national prosperity, can be successfully pursued in Sierra Leone. Your leading barrister has been, for the last three years, giving his spare time to an enterprise on Bunce Creek, about 17 miles from Freetown, which promises well for the future, but has not yet risen above the character of a most costly experiment. This patriotic and self-denying effort must be remunerative in its moral and industrial results. And here I must beg your indulgence, and I am sure you will all sympathise with me while I pause and drop a tear over the memory of our dear friend, William Grant, whose foresight and anxiety for the welfare of his country led him to forsake another walk of life, in which he had been eminently successful in a pecuniary sense, to take the lead in this most important and difficult work, and to suffer the fate of all pioneers in every noble cause—to die that others might live. The remembrance of my personal loss in the death of that African patriot is one of the shadows in my existence that will depart only when its earthly career ceases.
The trade of the colony has seldom, within recent years, presented so encouraging an aspect as during the current season. The influx of “gold and hide strangers” has been almost unprecedented. In the months of January, February, and March, there arrived 3,726 persons with products seeking a market—Mandingoes, Foulahs, Seracoulies, Bundukahs, and Soosoos. From the 1st to the 15th of April, 738 arrived. This number is exclusive of traders from the Limba, Loko, Timneh, and other countries within two hundred miles of the coast. It was, indeed, an inspiring sight a few weeks ago, while walking the streets, to meet those stalwart men, with flowing robes and majestic tread, from every important city in Nigritia for a thousand miles from the sea. The streams poured into the settlement, sometimes hundreds a day, from the golden hills of Bouré, the shining plains of Wasulu, the pasture grounds of Futah, and the populous districts of Bambarra, from Timbuctoo, from Jenne, from Sego, from Kankan. And we heard, on every hand, the same vocal sounds which may be heard in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, of Morocco and of Tunis. This was a proof that the obstructions to trade are being rapidly removed. The Hooboos, those renegade Foulahs, who for thirty years have been a terror to caravans passing through the districts which they infested, have been scattered by the military energy of Samudu, a Mandingo chieftain from the Konia country, due east of Liberia. Abal, the chief of the Hooboos, has been captured and banished to a distant region.
An important event, fraught with significance to this colony andto Liberia, took place in the early part of last month. I refer to the arrival of the special embassy to the Governor-in-Chief from the King of Sego. I do not know that any such delegation has ever visited a British Governor on the coast since the days of Sir Charles McCarthy. And it is gratifying to know that prompt measures were taken by the authorities to encourage and develop the relations which their visits ought to establish.
An incident in connection with Sego, published by the great traveller, Mungo Park, ought to make that city an object of special interest to all intelligent Africans. The incident has been repeated for nearly a hundred years, in all parts of the civilised world, as an evidence of the thoughtful hospitality of the African.
It appears that when Mr. Park arrived in the vicinity of Sego, a white man not having been seen there before, he was regarded by the people with fear and astonishment. He had to cross a river before he could get to the king, but no one would cross him; and, moreover, the king had sent word that he could not possibly see the strange traveller until he had learned his object in visiting the country. But let the author recount the story in his own words. He says:--
I was obliged to sit all day without victuals, in the shade of a tree; and the night threatened to be very uncomfortable, for the wind rose, and there was great appearance of rain; and the wild beasts are so very numerous in the neighbourhood that I should have been under the necessity of climbing up the tree and resting among the branches. About sunset, however, as I was preparing to pass the night in this manner, and had turned my horse loose that he might graze at liberty, a woman, returning from the labours of the field, stopped to observe me, and perceiving that I was weary and dejected inquired into my situation, which I briefly explained to her. Having conducted me into her hut, she lighted up a lamp, spread a mat on the floor, and told me I might remain there for the night. Finding that I was very hungry, she said she would procure me something to eat. She accordingly went out, and returned in a short time with a very fine fish, which, having caused to be half-broiled upon some embers, she gave me for supper. The rites of hospitality being thus performed towards a stranger in distress, my worthy benefactress (pointing to the mat, and telling me I might sleep there without apprehension) called to the female part of her family, who had stood gazing on me all the while in fixed astonishment, to resume their task of spinning cotton, in which they continued to employ themselves a great part of the night. They lightened their labour by songs, one of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of it. It was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a sort of chorus. The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words, literally translated, were these:--
The wind roared, and the rain fell.
The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree.
He has no mother to bring him milk; no wife to grind his corn.
CHORUS.
Let us pity the white man;
No mother has he to bring him milk;
No wife to grind his corn.
Trifling as this recital may appear to the reader, adds the author, to a person in my situation the circumstance was affecting in the highest degree. I was oppressed by such unexpected kindness, and sleep fled from my eyes. In the morning I presented my compassionate landlady with two of the four brass buttons which remained on my waistcoat, the only recompense I could make her.[12]
The name of the woman, and the alabaster box of precious ointment; the nameless widow, who, giving only two mites, had given more than all the rich; and this nameless woman of Sego, form a trio of feminine beauty and grandeur of which the sex in all ages may be proud.
An English lady, who was not more distinguished for her rank than for her beauty and accomplishments,[13] to whom this incident was communicated, was so gratified and thought so highly of the improvised song that she made a version of it with her own pen, and caused it to be set to music by an eminent composer.
Her version is as follows:--
The loud wind roar’d, the rain fell fast;
The white man yielded to the blast;
He sat him down beneath our tree,
For weary, sad, and faint was he;
And oh, no wife or mother’s care
For him the milk or corn prepare.
CHORUS.
The white man shall our pity share;
Alas, no wife or mother’s care,
For him the milk or corn prepare.
The storm is o’er, the tempest past,
And mercy’s voice has hush’d the blast;
The wind is heard in whispers low,
The white man far away must go—
But ever in his heart will bear
Remembrance of the Negro’s care.
CHORUS.
Go, white man, go—but with
thee bear
The Negro’s wish, the Negro’s
prayer;
Remembrance of the Negro’s
care.
The following is the description which Mr. Park gives of Sego as it was one hundred years ago:--
Sego, the capital of Bambarra, at which I had now arrived, consists, properly speaking, of four distinct towns; two on the northern bank of the Niger, called Sego Korro and Sego Boo; and two on the southern bank, called Sego Soo Korro, and Sego See Korro.[14] From the best enquiries I could make, I have reason to believe that Sego contains altogether about thirty thousand inhabitants. The view of this extensive city, the numerous canoes upon the river, the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the surrounding country, formed altogether a prospect of civilisation and magnificence which I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa.
It is to be hoped that we shall soon witness regular and uninterrupted intercourse between Sego and this settlement. The recent difficulties with the French have closed up Senegal and Dakar as outlets for the trade of that region of the country, and the.king is anxious that it should take this direction. But the effects of the disorders introduced by the slave trade are still felt in the maritime districts. The feuds created through generations of intertribal wars, the habits engendered, and the tendencies impressed upon the people, still show themselves in the periodical interruptions to trade which so perplex civilised governments on the coast, anxious for the progress of civilisation and the development of commerce. These troubles do not extend further than two hundred miles from the coast. Beyond that, the powerful tribes have the habits of order and of work; they possess valuable property and other interests which cannot be endangered by petty jealousies and rivalries. The ambassadors from Sego, the other day, gave assurance that the only difficulty in the way of an abundant and uninterrupted trade between their country and this part of the coast is that which arises from the wars on this side of the hills. They said if the Government could keep the roads on this side safe, they could manage the difficulties, such as they are, on the other side.
Liberia will also take a part in this work, and share in the results of this new direction of the interior trade. There is not, however, the amount of capital in that little republic which this settlement enjoys, and which is necessary for the attraction and development of the interior trade.
The trade of the colony has seldom, within recent years, presented so encouraging an aspect as during the current season. The influx of “gold and hide strangers” has been almost unprecedented. In the months of January, February, and March, there arrived 3,726 persons with products seeking a market—Mandingoes, Foulahs, Seracoulies, Bundukahs, and Soosoos. From the 1st to the 15th of April, 738 arrived. This number is exclusive of traders from the Limba, Loko, Timneh, and other countries within two hundred miles of the coast. It was, indeed, an inspiring sight a few weeks ago, while walking the streets, to meet those stalwart men, with flowing robes and majestic tread, from every important city in Nigritia for a thousand miles from the sea. The streams poured into the settlement, sometimes hundreds a day, from the golden hills of Bouré, the shining plains of Wasulu, the pasture grounds of Futah, and the populous districts of Bambarra, from Timbuctoo, from Jenne, from Sego, from Kankan. And we heard, on every hand, the same vocal sounds which may be heard in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, of Morocco and of Tunis. This was a proof that the obstructions to trade are being rapidly removed. The Hooboos, those renegade Foulahs, who for thirty years have been a terror to caravans passing through the districts which they infested, have been scattered by the military energy of Samudu, a Mandingo chieftain from the Konia country, due east of Liberia. Abal, the chief of the Hooboos, has been captured and banished to a distant region.
An important event, fraught with significance to this colony andto Liberia, took place in the early part of last month. I refer to the arrival of the special embassy to the Governor-in-Chief from the King of Sego. I do not know that any such delegation has ever visited a British Governor on the coast since the days of Sir Charles McCarthy. And it is gratifying to know that prompt measures were taken by the authorities to encourage and develop the relations which their visits ought to establish.
An incident in connection with Sego, published by the great traveller, Mungo Park, ought to make that city an object of special interest to all intelligent Africans. The incident has been repeated for nearly a hundred years, in all parts of the civilised world, as an evidence of the thoughtful hospitality of the African.
It appears that when Mr. Park arrived in the vicinity of Sego, a white man not having been seen there before, he was regarded by the people with fear and astonishment. He had to cross a river before he could get to the king, but no one would cross him; and, moreover, the king had sent word that he could not possibly see the strange traveller until he had learned his object in visiting the country. But let the author recount the story in his own words. He says:--
I was obliged to sit all day without victuals, in the shade of a tree; and the night threatened to be very uncomfortable, for the wind rose, and there was great appearance of rain; and the wild beasts are so very numerous in the neighbourhood that I should have been under the necessity of climbing up the tree and resting among the branches. About sunset, however, as I was preparing to pass the night in this manner, and had turned my horse loose that he might graze at liberty, a woman, returning from the labours of the field, stopped to observe me, and perceiving that I was weary and dejected inquired into my situation, which I briefly explained to her. Having conducted me into her hut, she lighted up a lamp, spread a mat on the floor, and told me I might remain there for the night. Finding that I was very hungry, she said she would procure me something to eat. She accordingly went out, and returned in a short time with a very fine fish, which, having caused to be half-broiled upon some embers, she gave me for supper. The rites of hospitality being thus performed towards a stranger in distress, my worthy benefactress (pointing to the mat, and telling me I might sleep there without apprehension) called to the female part of her family, who had stood gazing on me all the while in fixed astonishment, to resume their task of spinning cotton, in which they continued to employ themselves a great part of the night. They lightened their labour by songs, one of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of it. It was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a sort of chorus. The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words, literally translated, were these:--
The wind roared, and the rain fell.
The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree.
He has no mother to bring him milk; no wife to grind his corn.
CHORUS.
Let us pity the white man;
No mother has he to bring him milk;
No wife to grind his corn.
Trifling as this recital may appear to the reader, adds the author, to a person in my situation the circumstance was affecting in the highest degree. I was oppressed by such unexpected kindness, and sleep fled from my eyes. In the morning I presented my compassionate landlady with two of the four brass buttons which remained on my waistcoat, the only recompense I could make her.[12]
The name of the woman, and the alabaster box of precious ointment; the nameless widow, who, giving only two mites, had given more than all the rich; and this nameless woman of Sego, form a trio of feminine beauty and grandeur of which the sex in all ages may be proud.
An English lady, who was not more distinguished for her rank than for her beauty and accomplishments,[13] to whom this incident was communicated, was so gratified and thought so highly of the improvised song that she made a version of it with her own pen, and caused it to be set to music by an eminent composer.
Her version is as follows:--
The loud wind roar’d, the rain fell fast;
The white man yielded to the blast;
He sat him down beneath our tree,
For weary, sad, and faint was he;
And oh, no wife or mother’s care
For him the milk or corn prepare.
CHORUS.
The white man shall our pity share;
Alas, no wife or mother’s care,
For him the milk or corn prepare.
The storm is o’er, the tempest past,
And mercy’s voice has hush’d the blast;
The wind is heard in whispers low,
The white man far away must go—
But ever in his heart will bear
Remembrance of the Negro’s care.
CHORUS.
Go, white man, go—but with
thee bear
The Negro’s wish, the Negro’s
prayer;
Remembrance of the Negro’s
care.
The following is the description which Mr. Park gives of Sego as it was one hundred years ago:--
Sego, the capital of Bambarra, at which I had now arrived, consists, properly speaking, of four distinct towns; two on the northern bank of the Niger, called Sego Korro and Sego Boo; and two on the southern bank, called Sego Soo Korro, and Sego See Korro.[14] From the best enquiries I could make, I have reason to believe that Sego contains altogether about thirty thousand inhabitants. The view of this extensive city, the numerous canoes upon the river, the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the surrounding country, formed altogether a prospect of civilisation and magnificence which I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa.
It is to be hoped that we shall soon witness regular and uninterrupted intercourse between Sego and this settlement. The recent difficulties with the French have closed up Senegal and Dakar as outlets for the trade of that region of the country, and the.king is anxious that it should take this direction. But the effects of the disorders introduced by the slave trade are still felt in the maritime districts. The feuds created through generations of intertribal wars, the habits engendered, and the tendencies impressed upon the people, still show themselves in the periodical interruptions to trade which so perplex civilised governments on the coast, anxious for the progress of civilisation and the development of commerce. These troubles do not extend further than two hundred miles from the coast. Beyond that, the powerful tribes have the habits of order and of work; they possess valuable property and other interests which cannot be endangered by petty jealousies and rivalries. The ambassadors from Sego, the other day, gave assurance that the only difficulty in the way of an abundant and uninterrupted trade between their country and this part of the coast is that which arises from the wars on this side of the hills. They said if the Government could keep the roads on this side safe, they could manage the difficulties, such as they are, on the other side.
Liberia will also take a part in this work, and share in the results of this new direction of the interior trade. There is not, however, the amount of capital in that little republic which this settlement enjoys, and which is necessary for the attraction and development of the interior trade.
Footnotes:
12 Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, performed in the years 1795, 1796 and 1797; by Mungo Park, Surgeon (chapter xv).
13 The Duchess of Devonshire.
14 These names are still retained.
12 Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, performed in the years 1795, 1796 and 1797; by Mungo Park, Surgeon (chapter xv).
13 The Duchess of Devonshire.
14 These names are still retained.
There have been, ever since the arrival of the first settlers, at least two immigrations a-year from the United States, averaging 250 a-year; but the people are chiefly mechanics and farmers. Besides being thrown upon their own resources, they suffer the inconvenience of a national policy which restricts the intercourse of foreigners with the country. This has kept away foreign capital and foreign enterprise. The restrictive law was to allow the colony to grow up in keeping with the original idea of its foundation. To prevent the fatal interference with this idea, which must have occurred, had Europeans been allowed to take part in the political arrangements of the country, a similar policy was adopted by the Sierra Leone Company in the early history of the colony, “for they had conceived,” so the Directors say, in their report published in 1795, “the first success of their colony essentially to depend on the exclusion of all Europeans, those alone excepted who, being in the regular pay of the Company, were entirely subject to them.” They were afraid that even a few men from hence (England) of an improper cast, in the situation of independent settlers, might materially prejudice or endanger the undertaking; that they might corrupt the morals of the colony, refuse due obedience to the Government, as well as excite a spirit of general discontent; and if, for any of these causes, they should be excluded from the settlement, that they might then be driven—especially if they had left debts in England— to seek a precarious livelihood, by variousimproper means, among the neighbouring natives, and perhaps even to turn slave-traders.[15]
The reasons that led to the restrictive laws of Liberia could not be better stated. The ideal Liberia has, of course, not yet been realised. The Liberia of the self-denying and courageous pioneers, of the impassioned Lot Cary, and the statesman-like Elijah Johnson, has not yet been quite organised; but the restrictive clause in the constitution has not suffered the raison d’être of the Republic to be lost sight of or obscured. At first, the Liberians, driven by their necessities, generally engaged in trade as yielding quicker results; but, fortunately for them, the soil was fertile, and the country well watered everywhere. They were thus allured to agriculture, and they have, with commendable diligence, improved their advantages. Within the last few years, the production of coffee, sugar, and cocoa is bringing the Republic into American and European markets. Besides these articles, Liberia exports largely palm oil, camwood, ivory, rubber, and palm kernels. Every week the steamers of each of the three English companies touch at the ports of entry of the Republic, of which there are now ten. German steamers call twice a- month, going and returning; and there are American and Dutch sailing vessels engaged in the trade.
In Sierra Leone there are not now any legal enactments restricting the intercourse of foreigners. The law of Nature has put barriers in the way of their multiplication here. The mountains are lofty, the air on their summits salubrious, but the soil is forbidding, in many places as arid as the nether millstone; so that those breezy heights have not, like the mountain slopes of Madeira, invited the establishment of European quintas, and the skilful cultivation of European farmers. The settlement has, therefore, continued to grow as a distinctly Negro colony. According to Koelle, the German missionary, 100 different African tribes were, in 1849, represented here. Mr. Griffith, the Colonial Secretary of the colony, stated in his excellent paper, read before the Royal Colonial Institute, in 1881, that no less than 60 languages were spoken in Freetown. Sierra Leone possesses, in fact, what Liberia possesses in theory and possibility—a Negro nationality. This colony is on a small scale what India is on a large scale—an indigenous nation under a foreign protectorate. As soon as a man, alien to the African, lands here, he finds himself at once a stranger. He looks around, and everywhere he sees men unlike himself:--
Negroes on the right of him;
Negroes on the left of him;
Negroes in front of him;
Negroes in the rear of him;
until the whole land seems to him the very blackness of darkness, and he himself, and all he represents, appear to dwindle into-comparative insignificance. No wonder that in some there is a revulsion of feeling which makes them retaliate by contemptuous utterances about the place and people. This is the revenge which brooding and irregular minds take when suddenly confronted with the inevitable. “I soon discovered,” says Winwood Reade, “that Sierra Leone is a true paradise of blacks.” Captain Ellis begins-one of his glowing paragraphs with the remark, “Sierra Leone is a very nice place—for Negroes.” Not knowing what to say, they swear. “Come, curse me this people,” said Balak to Balaam, when he saw the surging multitudes of Hebrews filling the plains of Moab. Sierra Leone has been over and over again cursed, and the prejudice still continues, owing, mostly, to representations which proceed from persons oppressed by the presence of a strange race and unusual customs.
But this vituperation of the colony must come to an end, because the English language is limited in its vocabulary. The stock of adjectives in the Queen’s English, though extensive, has yet a limit; and as only a certain percentage of them are uncomplimentary, an end must come to this sort of thing at last. After denouncing a man as an idiot, and a liar, and a villain to begin with, you cannot very well, at a later stage, produce an effect by saying that his conduct is not thoroughly sagacious and moral You have to keep on calling him a fool, a liar, and a rogue, until you become a bore. And this is what we see in the disparaging writings of those who find amusement in abusing the settlement. Reade follows Burton, and Ellis follows Reade, and smaller men follow these. Like a flock of sheep, all tread in the path of their leader. Notwithstanding the love of originality which men possess, yet it would seem that the passion for ridiculing and abusing others is stronger in a certain class of minds than the desire to be original; so that rather than strike out a new line in describing Sierra Leone, which must, of course, be complimentary and respectful, they prefer to ring the changes with dull and tiresome monotony upon those words of contempt and vituperation, of which only a limited number can be found in the English dictionary. If I were to collect instances I could fill this page with adjectives, and even substantives, in the use of which these writers seem to revel, bringing to mind the reputation (I believe the ancient reputation) of Shore-ditch and Billingsgate. It is of course an economy of argument to prove by misrepresentation that the objects of our hatred or contempt are odious or ridiculous. Happily for the race, those who are fond of employing those contemptuous epithets are generally men who from excessively defective training have not a full acquaintance with even the limited vocabulary of vituperative terms. And this we have noticed also, that the men who take pleasure in dilating upon their race superiority, and in emphasising their connection with the ruling race, are not the men who rise into power, or ever have the opportunity of ruling.
Destiny seems to have forbidden the extension of Sierra Leone to the northward, and to have favoured her growth to the southeast, so that now that her territory adjoins that of Liberia, we have a continuous English-speaking Negro State from the Sierra Leone River to the San Pedro River—a distance of over 800 miles. For 200 years, the Portuguese language was spoken along this coast. Villault says when he landed here, at Cape Mount and at Cape Mesurado in .1666, “all the Negroes who came to trade spoke the Portuguese language.” But the English language has everywhere driven it out. The English language and English laws assist and regulate the intercourse of the tribes of this whole region and for hundreds of miles inland. French is confined to the countries north of the Gambia; Portuguese to the region of the Congo. English is, undoubtedly, the most suitable of the European languages for bridging over the numerous gulfs between the tribes caused by the great diversity of languages or dialects among them. It is a composite language, not the product of any one people. It is made up of contributions by Celts, Danes, Normans, Saxons, Greeks and Romans, gathering to itself elements from all peoples, from the Ganges to the Atlantic. In this respect, the Sierra Leone vernacular resembles it. The speech of the Sierra Leone streets cannot be called a patois of English. It is not the pigeon English of China nor the unintelligible lingo of the West Indies. It is not the dialect of Quashee nor the humourous slang of Uncle Remus. It is a transfusion, so to say, of numerous African idioms and phrases. Words from the Timneh, Eboe, Aku, Mandingo, Foulah, Soosoo, and Arabic, are blended with words from the English language, which is itself a mixture—so that the proper designation of the Sierra Leone vernacular would be—mixture of mixtures, all is mixture. It has become something more than the only medium of communication known to the masses. It has acquired a sacredness of its own. There are certain ideas which have been expressed in it—certain images created—which lose their full flavour if rendered into other words.
Mr. Lewis assures me that it has an unwritten but recognised syntax, and he gave me an amusing specimen of verbal inflection by going over the verb “to go” in its various moods and tenses, according to the unwritten grammar of the vernacular.
Its idioms are Oriental. It has grown up of itself. It has had no grammarian to formulate its rules, nor can it be known how the common agreement among the people was attained. But the fact remains that it exists, and it will linger long among them. It is the language of the domestic life, of courtship, of marriage, of death, of intensest joy and deepest grief. The people will not consent to speak of the private matters of the heart—to discuss matters affecting their domestic well-being in any other tongue, any more than they would discuss such things in company with strangers. To those acquainted with it, it has a convenient flexibility and certain picturesque aspects. It is easily acquired by natives from the interior, and forms a convenient bridge from their dialects to the English language. It cannot be used for descriptions of occult causes; but it is by no means unadapted for comparison of physical things, for descriptions of sensations, for parables and proverbs drawn from visible objects. It has no capacity for fine subtleties; but it has sometimes a terse expressiveness, which, in one single sentence, will convey an amount of satire or irony which would require a whole paragraph of English. What can surpass the concentrated contempt of such a question as the following? Referring to the abuse heaped upon Sierra Leone in a recent publication, I asked an acquaintance why there had been no formal reply. He answered, in one of the picturesque metaphors of the vernacular, “Who dat go wase powder pon condo?”[16]
The reasons that led to the restrictive laws of Liberia could not be better stated. The ideal Liberia has, of course, not yet been realised. The Liberia of the self-denying and courageous pioneers, of the impassioned Lot Cary, and the statesman-like Elijah Johnson, has not yet been quite organised; but the restrictive clause in the constitution has not suffered the raison d’être of the Republic to be lost sight of or obscured. At first, the Liberians, driven by their necessities, generally engaged in trade as yielding quicker results; but, fortunately for them, the soil was fertile, and the country well watered everywhere. They were thus allured to agriculture, and they have, with commendable diligence, improved their advantages. Within the last few years, the production of coffee, sugar, and cocoa is bringing the Republic into American and European markets. Besides these articles, Liberia exports largely palm oil, camwood, ivory, rubber, and palm kernels. Every week the steamers of each of the three English companies touch at the ports of entry of the Republic, of which there are now ten. German steamers call twice a- month, going and returning; and there are American and Dutch sailing vessels engaged in the trade.
In Sierra Leone there are not now any legal enactments restricting the intercourse of foreigners. The law of Nature has put barriers in the way of their multiplication here. The mountains are lofty, the air on their summits salubrious, but the soil is forbidding, in many places as arid as the nether millstone; so that those breezy heights have not, like the mountain slopes of Madeira, invited the establishment of European quintas, and the skilful cultivation of European farmers. The settlement has, therefore, continued to grow as a distinctly Negro colony. According to Koelle, the German missionary, 100 different African tribes were, in 1849, represented here. Mr. Griffith, the Colonial Secretary of the colony, stated in his excellent paper, read before the Royal Colonial Institute, in 1881, that no less than 60 languages were spoken in Freetown. Sierra Leone possesses, in fact, what Liberia possesses in theory and possibility—a Negro nationality. This colony is on a small scale what India is on a large scale—an indigenous nation under a foreign protectorate. As soon as a man, alien to the African, lands here, he finds himself at once a stranger. He looks around, and everywhere he sees men unlike himself:--
Negroes on the right of him;
Negroes on the left of him;
Negroes in front of him;
Negroes in the rear of him;
until the whole land seems to him the very blackness of darkness, and he himself, and all he represents, appear to dwindle into-comparative insignificance. No wonder that in some there is a revulsion of feeling which makes them retaliate by contemptuous utterances about the place and people. This is the revenge which brooding and irregular minds take when suddenly confronted with the inevitable. “I soon discovered,” says Winwood Reade, “that Sierra Leone is a true paradise of blacks.” Captain Ellis begins-one of his glowing paragraphs with the remark, “Sierra Leone is a very nice place—for Negroes.” Not knowing what to say, they swear. “Come, curse me this people,” said Balak to Balaam, when he saw the surging multitudes of Hebrews filling the plains of Moab. Sierra Leone has been over and over again cursed, and the prejudice still continues, owing, mostly, to representations which proceed from persons oppressed by the presence of a strange race and unusual customs.
But this vituperation of the colony must come to an end, because the English language is limited in its vocabulary. The stock of adjectives in the Queen’s English, though extensive, has yet a limit; and as only a certain percentage of them are uncomplimentary, an end must come to this sort of thing at last. After denouncing a man as an idiot, and a liar, and a villain to begin with, you cannot very well, at a later stage, produce an effect by saying that his conduct is not thoroughly sagacious and moral You have to keep on calling him a fool, a liar, and a rogue, until you become a bore. And this is what we see in the disparaging writings of those who find amusement in abusing the settlement. Reade follows Burton, and Ellis follows Reade, and smaller men follow these. Like a flock of sheep, all tread in the path of their leader. Notwithstanding the love of originality which men possess, yet it would seem that the passion for ridiculing and abusing others is stronger in a certain class of minds than the desire to be original; so that rather than strike out a new line in describing Sierra Leone, which must, of course, be complimentary and respectful, they prefer to ring the changes with dull and tiresome monotony upon those words of contempt and vituperation, of which only a limited number can be found in the English dictionary. If I were to collect instances I could fill this page with adjectives, and even substantives, in the use of which these writers seem to revel, bringing to mind the reputation (I believe the ancient reputation) of Shore-ditch and Billingsgate. It is of course an economy of argument to prove by misrepresentation that the objects of our hatred or contempt are odious or ridiculous. Happily for the race, those who are fond of employing those contemptuous epithets are generally men who from excessively defective training have not a full acquaintance with even the limited vocabulary of vituperative terms. And this we have noticed also, that the men who take pleasure in dilating upon their race superiority, and in emphasising their connection with the ruling race, are not the men who rise into power, or ever have the opportunity of ruling.
Destiny seems to have forbidden the extension of Sierra Leone to the northward, and to have favoured her growth to the southeast, so that now that her territory adjoins that of Liberia, we have a continuous English-speaking Negro State from the Sierra Leone River to the San Pedro River—a distance of over 800 miles. For 200 years, the Portuguese language was spoken along this coast. Villault says when he landed here, at Cape Mount and at Cape Mesurado in .1666, “all the Negroes who came to trade spoke the Portuguese language.” But the English language has everywhere driven it out. The English language and English laws assist and regulate the intercourse of the tribes of this whole region and for hundreds of miles inland. French is confined to the countries north of the Gambia; Portuguese to the region of the Congo. English is, undoubtedly, the most suitable of the European languages for bridging over the numerous gulfs between the tribes caused by the great diversity of languages or dialects among them. It is a composite language, not the product of any one people. It is made up of contributions by Celts, Danes, Normans, Saxons, Greeks and Romans, gathering to itself elements from all peoples, from the Ganges to the Atlantic. In this respect, the Sierra Leone vernacular resembles it. The speech of the Sierra Leone streets cannot be called a patois of English. It is not the pigeon English of China nor the unintelligible lingo of the West Indies. It is not the dialect of Quashee nor the humourous slang of Uncle Remus. It is a transfusion, so to say, of numerous African idioms and phrases. Words from the Timneh, Eboe, Aku, Mandingo, Foulah, Soosoo, and Arabic, are blended with words from the English language, which is itself a mixture—so that the proper designation of the Sierra Leone vernacular would be—mixture of mixtures, all is mixture. It has become something more than the only medium of communication known to the masses. It has acquired a sacredness of its own. There are certain ideas which have been expressed in it—certain images created—which lose their full flavour if rendered into other words.
Mr. Lewis assures me that it has an unwritten but recognised syntax, and he gave me an amusing specimen of verbal inflection by going over the verb “to go” in its various moods and tenses, according to the unwritten grammar of the vernacular.
Its idioms are Oriental. It has grown up of itself. It has had no grammarian to formulate its rules, nor can it be known how the common agreement among the people was attained. But the fact remains that it exists, and it will linger long among them. It is the language of the domestic life, of courtship, of marriage, of death, of intensest joy and deepest grief. The people will not consent to speak of the private matters of the heart—to discuss matters affecting their domestic well-being in any other tongue, any more than they would discuss such things in company with strangers. To those acquainted with it, it has a convenient flexibility and certain picturesque aspects. It is easily acquired by natives from the interior, and forms a convenient bridge from their dialects to the English language. It cannot be used for descriptions of occult causes; but it is by no means unadapted for comparison of physical things, for descriptions of sensations, for parables and proverbs drawn from visible objects. It has no capacity for fine subtleties; but it has sometimes a terse expressiveness, which, in one single sentence, will convey an amount of satire or irony which would require a whole paragraph of English. What can surpass the concentrated contempt of such a question as the following? Referring to the abuse heaped upon Sierra Leone in a recent publication, I asked an acquaintance why there had been no formal reply. He answered, in one of the picturesque metaphors of the vernacular, “Who dat go wase powder pon condo?”[16]
Footnotes:
15 Report of Directors of the Sierra Leone Company; read May, 1793, pp. 14, 15.
16 “Condo” is the local name for the red-headed lizard.
15 Report of Directors of the Sierra Leone Company; read May, 1793, pp. 14, 15.
16 “Condo” is the local name for the red-headed lizard.
In the political features of their life, Sierra Leone and Liberia seem to have diverged; but the main purpose of that life has not been defeated. Although Sierra Leone continues a colony under a powerful Imperial Government, and Liberia is a nation still struggling with the problems of independent nationality, yet our political institutions have the same origin. The same jurisprudence which contributes to the prosperity and elevation of Sierra Leone, which protects property, maintains order, and punishes crime here, has been adopted by Liberia, upholds the majesty of the law there, and guards us in the exercise and enjoyment of the rights of freemen. The form of government is a mere incident, and does not interfere with the original idea and special work of the colony. Like the great streams of this part of Africa, taking their rise in the same watershed, some flow eastward and some westward, but all contribute to the fertility and wealth of the same vast region. So, if the paths of the two countries seem to be divergent, they diverge only that they may the more effectually perform their work, by taking within the circle of their influence wider interests, and bringing together larger contributions for the upbuilding and honour of the race.
Before the American Civil War, which gave the coup de grace to the transatlantic slave trade, Sierra Leone was kept in a constantly unsettled state, owing to the frequent accessions of individuals of different tribes and languages, who, soon after their arrival, found out the persons belonging to their particular tribe, and, from the convenience which a common language and the same tribal instincts and prejudices afforded, easily formed themselves into separate clans, and gathered around leaders whom they felt to be their natural organs. The chief work of the Government and of missionary societies for years was to infuse into these incoherent masses the unifying ideas of British law and of the Christian religion—to effect the fusion of many disconnected atoms into one organic whole. But the clannish tendencies of the people furnished to adventurers from abroad, who were for the most part only partially allied to the Negro race, but whose superior educational advantages gave them influence over the minds of the uninformed and unsuspecting men, the opportunity to stimulate, whenever their own ends could be subserved thereby, the tribal prejudices and antipathies of the people.
Passing travellers of superficial mental habitudes, looking at this state of things, which, under the circumstances, would have been considered natural in any other country and among any other race, attributed it to the ignorance and dishonesty of the Negro, and fastened upon the jury system as one of the instruments in the political arrangements of the colony which fostered and encouraged the clannishness of the people, in consequence of which, it was alleged, some sections of the community could never obtain justice. Trial by jury in civil cases was—through repeated attacks upon it in newspapers, pamphlets, and books of travel— lost to the settlement. It could hardly have been otherwise. The people at that time had to rely for representation in judicial matters, in cases of public or private grievances, upon aliens or half- aliens, who did not and could not express the will and feelings of the people, and were, in many important respects, misrepre-sentatives. It was evident that the whole arrangement was artificial, unstable and unreliable. Trial by jury in civil cases was abolished; but, in the natural course of events, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the alleged abuses were only temporary, due to the peculiar circumstances of those times.
For more than twenty years, now, there has been no accession of new comers of conflicting tribal characteristics. A new generation is appearing on the stage; and the pecuniary advancement of the people has enabled them to give their children an education suitable to the requirements of an enlightened government. The result is, that the population becoming more and more homogeneous, with one language as the medium of communication, and represented at the bar and in the Legislative Council, in the schools and in the church, by their natural organs, two conditions of social and political confidence have been reached which must obliterate all tribal distinctions and organisations, if any such still exist. An indication of this wholesome tendency in the public feeling is the desire on the part of some of the members of the Native Association to change the descriptive part of their title to one less local and restrictive.
The communication made by Lord Derby a few months ago to the people of Jamaica should be suggestive and instructive to the inhabitants of this colony. His lordship did not give an absolute refusal to the request of the people of that colony for popular suffrage and increased representation, but said that, in the judgment of the Government, the time for these things had not yet arrived, intimating that when the time arrived the Government would not withhold the privileges they craved. It is not the business of a Crown Government to develop the liberties of the people—it is their business to recognise and protect what is established. It is their part to give safety, and quietness, and repose; to inspire confidence in the people, and thus give them time for growth.
The original idea of the colony has been gradually realised under the influence of British law. Notwithstanding the frequent changes in the colonial administration, the tendency of the procedure of the Imperial Government has been in keeping with the original idea—in accordance with a desire to promote the educational, social, moral, and political improvement of the natives. And under that enlightened system of government which protects the rights, the liberty, the life, and the property of every individual, of whatever race or religion, the people have been advanced in civilisation and well- being. They have been educated up to the position, the duties, and the privileges of British citizens; and they have not, as we have seen, been slow to avail themselves of the opportunity for material growth, and for educational advancement. The bulwarks of political strength have thus been provided before their political self-consciousness has been stimulated.
The strong objection to direct taxation does not arise simply from the fact that there was sometimes oppressive, not to say cruel, enforcement of the law —the cause of the opposition lay deeper than that. It was because the people who paid the taxes felt no identification of interests between those who imposed the taxes and themselves. They did not attribute any representative character to those who controlled the proceeds of these taxes. Now, everywhere, taxation without representation is considered tyranny. But even where there is representation, people do not enthusiastically, or even cheerfully, welcome impositions laid upon them by government, though they know that the people must bear the burdens of government, A strong feeling of inborn loyalty is necessary to reconcile men everywhere to the inevitable frictions and burdens of government.
Now, this feeling of inborn loyalty will be secured when a city corporation shall be organised, composed chiefly of natives, and whatever honour or fame they may achieve will carry a thrill of exultation to the hearts of the people. The Government will be their own. They will share in its beneficial results as well as bear the odium of mal-administration. The feeling of responsibility will produce internal and domestic improvements never yet witnessed in the colony. When we look back upon what has been achieved in the colony, we cannot allow ourselves to find any fault, so far, with the action of the Government in details of administration, or even upon what are called constitutional questions.
The question of municipal government now before the people is one of great importance to the stability and prosperity of the institutions of the country; and while great care should be taken at every step of the movement, yet it is evident that a city corporation, with its burdens and responsibilities, its duties and its privileges, is necessary to the proper growth and full development of the people. It is essential to their training in self-reliance and self-respect. In the days of Sir Charles McCarthy, as I gather from the books at Government House, a Municipal Council existed in the colony, with its Mayor, and Aldermen, and Magistrates. It may interest you to hear the following:--
When the Prince Regent lost his only daughter (Princess Charlotte, I think), Sir C. McCarthy forwarded an address of condolence from the people of the colony to His Royal Highness, accompanied by the following note to Earl Bathurst:--
Government House, Sierra Leone, March 4th, 1818,
My Lord,—At the request of the Members of His Majesty’s Council, Mayor and Aldermen, Magistrates, Clergy, Freeholders, and principal inhabitants of the Colony of Sierra Leone, I have the honour to forward herewith enclosed the humble and dutiful Address of Condolence to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I beg leave to solicit your Lordship’s favour to lay the same at the foot of the Throne.
I have, &c,,
To the Right Honourable Earl Bathurst, K.G. (Signed) C. McCARTHY.
But this was before the influx of the heterogeneous tide of un-instructed people which made it the prime function of the Government to deal with the very elements of civilisation and with the rudiments of government, to instruct the consciences of the people, and to superintend the elevation of the whole moral and intellectual standard; and a great deal has been effected when tribal antipathies, narrowness and exclusiveness, which prevented growth, have been broken up. The people are now in a condition to move for themselves as a working social organisation. Their political future is greatly in their own hands; and it is an encouraging sign that young men are rising up who grasp the situation, and are making themselves equal to the necessities of the country. Activity, change, development, aspiration—these are the end of man’s being on earth. Apart from them his destiny is frustrated. Such is the law of progress. Whatever others may do for us, there are some things we must do for ourselves. No outward protection, no friendly intervention, no deed of gift can give those personal virtues—those attributes of manhood— self-reliance and independence, without which all past efforts in behalf of the colony will be in vain; and the Negro’s part in the political future of Sierra Leone will be extremely doubtful. It has been observed with gratification by friendly foreigners that many of the natives show a power and a breadth of capacity in managing their business—a shrewdness and far-sightedness in dealing with the difficulties of trade which prove that they are fitted for the conduct of some of the details of their political life.
At present their whole activity, physical and mental, is absorbed in the business of the shop; and some who have no inconsiderable accumulations, sit down and simply feel the gratification of looking at a golden heap, not even thinking of the methods by which that heap, so industriously and carefully piled up, shall be preserved. It is said that when the boa-constrictor has over-gorged itself, it lies in a state of torpidity or stupefaction; but man’s life on earth was not made to be like that of the boa-constrictor.
It is clear that if in some respects the natives of this colony continue in a position of social or political disadvantage, it is because they choose themselves to acquiesce in it, and to foster those conventional opinions which suspect every attempt to push them a step forward in self-government, and to place upon them the responsibilities which that government involves.
But God has bestowed certain gifts upon the natives of this community, as upon others, and He will not allow those gifts to remain unused. If the talent is laid up in a napkin or buried in the earth, He will resume that talent or give it to those who have power and disposition to use it. The gifts of God are not ours to do as we please with. If we prevent their application or diffusion for the good of others, or for the benefit of our country, He will remove us from them or them from us. We may have our plans for ourselves—for our individual gratification, but God has His plans, which are for the country, for the race, for humanity; and His plans will be carried out. The agents for carrying them out are on every hand, in the air, in the water, in the fire. In the operation of the laws of Providence, “The individual dwindles, while the race is more and more.” And when we have reached a certain stage of progress, and the next step which that degree of progress necessitates is pointed out to us, it is not ours to say, “Let things remain as they are.” There is no such thing as standing still in this life. The law is either forward or backward; if there is no conscious movement forward, there is an unconscious movement backward.
There is no bitterer satire passed upon us, no graver injustice done to the race than by those of its members who assume that they are unfit for higher duties than that which consists in the comparatively unintellectual work of barter. And it is but a refined remnant of the institution of slavery, which we profess so much to dread and abhor, when we attempt to cramp the stature of our people, and to forbid by persecution their advance beyond the narrow limits which we have prescribed for ourselves.
All communities of thinking men naturally divide themselves into two parties—conservative and liberal—the party of stability and the party of movement, as they have been called. We find two such parties in Sierra Leone. We see men who are not sure that what is really exists; who are ever trying to secure the past, to clench the nail that has been driven, rather than attempting to open the future. But there are others who feel a deep, an insatiable thirst for something beyond; who are anxious to open roadways for the people and for themselves where before only unbroken and undisturbed forest existed.
These men are often discouraged by the difficulties in the way raised by a conscientious and dogged conservatism. They sometimes fall into despair, and declare that the problems which they set before themselves cannot be worked, much less solved, under the actual conditions and by the available agencies.
But every now and then some sudden emergency arises and becomes what may be called a dynamic element independent of human control or management, which introduces unexpected movement. Some sudden disaster comes upon the community—an epidemic, a storm, a flood, a fire—which arouses into activity the energies of the most dormant. The liberal influence receives an accession of strength—a momentum—that forces the whole community into new and original directions, and the road is made through the forest, or the causeway thrown up across the swamp.
There is some show of reason on the side of the conservatives. They are apprehensive that any apparent progress will be only apparent, and may lead to a reaction that will be worse than the present state. They fear to act the part of the dog in the fable, who threw away the substance to grasp at the shadow. But these nervous individuals should be reminded that revolutions never go backward. The course of things will rather resemble what one sees when one goes from the alluvial and swampy lands of this coast to the beautiful countries of the interior. On the eastern or north-eastern frontier of the Loko country, the traveller is suddenly confronted with lofty hills, which, if he could, he would avoid by some circuitous route; but there is no other way, the road lies over those rugged mountains. He is, therefore, obliged to nerve himself for the task of ascending; but after toiling up those weary heights, he finds to his surprise that instead of a corresponding declivity on the eastern side, he has reached the level of a grand plateau, where the air is purer and cooler. He has reached an elevated region, which slopes gradually to the rich valley of the Niger. So will it be after the people have climbed the heights of political progress, which look so precipitous and threatening. They will have a wider view and a healthier atmosphere, and the advance will be by easier stages to a well-watered and fertile region of political freedom and self- reliance. But at first the progress must be slow and gradual. “Chi va piano va sano, chi va sano va lontano.”
We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.
But the question of all others upon the solution of which will depend the character of the political future of the colony, is the educational one. We sometimes wonder why the efforts for the higher education of our people on this coast seem to meet with so many drawbacks. But the reasons, if we look below the surface of things, will be clear and satisfactory. Happily, the educational work, both here and in Liberia, has hardly got beyond its initial stage. The people are getting educated first to the life of the country before the education of books comes. It is not without its providential purposes that hindrances have so frequently arisen in the way of the only two colleges on the coast—Fourah Bay College and Liberia College. Had these institutions gone on and succeeded on the line which their founders had marked out for them, numbers of our people would have passed through a course of discipline which would probably have impaired their natural powers, and aroused on the part of foreign observers hopes, or awakened antagonisms, which would have been based upon artificial and unstable phenomena. The drawbacks and interruptions are giving us time to find out the system of regulation and instruction which will best fit us for the work we have to do.
What is needed in the education of the Negro on this continent is not so much a change in the subjects, for everywhere the instruments of culture, in their better forms at least, must be the same, but a change in the whole method is required. In our contact with the Christian world, our teachers have of necessity been Europeans, and they have taught us books too much, and things too little—forms of expression, and very little the importance of thought. The notion, still common among Negroes— educated Negroes I mean—is, that the most important part of knowledge consists in knowing what other men—foreigners—have said about things, and even about Africa and about themselves. They aspire to be familiar, not with what really is, but with what is printed. Very few among us have got past this step. Hence, some of us are found repeating things against ourselves, which are thoroughly false and injurious to us, and only because we read them in books, or have heard them from foreign teachers. The idea never seems to occur to such persons that there are subjects of enquiry, especially in this large and interesting country of theirs, about which the truth is yet to be found out—people and customs and systems about which correct ideas are to be formed. We have neglected to study matters at home because we were trained in books written by foreigners, and for a foreign race, not for us—or for us only so far as in the general characteristics of humanity we resemble that race; and from some of these books we learned that the Negro at home was a degraded being—a Heathen, and worse than a Heathen—a fool; and we were taught everything excellent and praiseworthy about foreigners. Therefore, we turned our backs upon our brethren of the interior as those from whom we could learn nothing to elevate, to enlighten, or to refine. A result of this is that we have not yet acted for ourselves. We have had history written for us, and we have endeavoured to act up to it; whereas, the true order is, that history should be first acted, then written. It is easy to account, then, for the want of genuine life and spontaneous activity in the people.
It would be a melancholy outlook for Africa, with its vast territories and countless tribes, if its development and prosperity were altogether contingent upon the labour of foreigners, or even upon the genius and life of a few natives, educated on foreign models and in foreign ways of thinking, to be produced and brought upon the stage of action by the machinery of an alien people. I say the prospect would indeed be dark if we had no security from the law, by which nations and races are controlled, that the men to lead and guide in the affairs of this race shall appear among the people at the right time and place, and with aptitudes for the needful work.
It is a very interesting fact that the main body of the settlers who planted civilisation on these shores in both colonies were men deeply imbued with the religious spirit. Like the puritans of America, the Bible was their code of laws, for civil and religious life. The following graphic and suggestive description is given by Mr. J. B. Eliott of the circumstances attending the first arrival of the Nova Scotians, on the 28th of March, 1792:
The colony was then quite a forest, thickly populated with wild and ferocious animals, without any passage of approach to the new, beautiful, and principaltown, Freetown. Pioneers, from the number of these Nova Scotians, were despatched on shore to clear or make a roadway for their landing; which being done, they all disembarked and marched towards the thick forest, with the Holy Bible and their preachers (all coloured men) before them, singing the hymn taken from the late Countess’s Hymn Book, commencing--
Awake and sing the song
Of Moses and the Lamb;
Wake! every heart and every tongue
To praise the Saviour’s name.
They proceeded immediately to worship God, thanking Him for His goodness and mercy in bringing them in safety to the land of their forefathers. . . . . They were anxious to procure an altar, or place of worship, for the God of Jacob. This they did. The place fixed upon was under the shade of a large gree- gree tree, then standing in George Street, now one of the most populous in Freetown, containing the Church of England, the Colonial Office, &c. There they continued in social worship of Almighty God, with their brethren of the Methodist and Baptist Societies—who all arrived together from Nova Scotia—until they were able to provide better accommodation. This they lost no time in doing, for each Society was able, after a short time, to build a hut as a chapel for itself.
The Directors of the Sierra Leone Company, in their Report for 1794, bear the following testimony to the character of the settlers:--
From that class of vices which comes less under the cognisance of a public court, the Nova Scotians are in some respects remarkably free; marriage is extremely general among them, and all those evils which more particularly result from its being in disuse, are therefore in a great measure avoided. Drunkenness is by no means common, swearing is hardly ever heard; their attention to the Sabbath is also great; they, on that day, abstain entirely from work, dress themselves in very good (and some of them even in very gay) attire, and repair, together with their children, to church, where their deportment during the service, and their whole appearance, are represented to be such as form a very striking spectacle. There are five or six black preachers among them, raised up from their own body, who are not without a considerable influence; and it is supposed that the discipline which they preserve in their little congregations, has contributed materially to the maintenance of the general morals which have been spoken of.[17]
Before the American Civil War, which gave the coup de grace to the transatlantic slave trade, Sierra Leone was kept in a constantly unsettled state, owing to the frequent accessions of individuals of different tribes and languages, who, soon after their arrival, found out the persons belonging to their particular tribe, and, from the convenience which a common language and the same tribal instincts and prejudices afforded, easily formed themselves into separate clans, and gathered around leaders whom they felt to be their natural organs. The chief work of the Government and of missionary societies for years was to infuse into these incoherent masses the unifying ideas of British law and of the Christian religion—to effect the fusion of many disconnected atoms into one organic whole. But the clannish tendencies of the people furnished to adventurers from abroad, who were for the most part only partially allied to the Negro race, but whose superior educational advantages gave them influence over the minds of the uninformed and unsuspecting men, the opportunity to stimulate, whenever their own ends could be subserved thereby, the tribal prejudices and antipathies of the people.
Passing travellers of superficial mental habitudes, looking at this state of things, which, under the circumstances, would have been considered natural in any other country and among any other race, attributed it to the ignorance and dishonesty of the Negro, and fastened upon the jury system as one of the instruments in the political arrangements of the colony which fostered and encouraged the clannishness of the people, in consequence of which, it was alleged, some sections of the community could never obtain justice. Trial by jury in civil cases was—through repeated attacks upon it in newspapers, pamphlets, and books of travel— lost to the settlement. It could hardly have been otherwise. The people at that time had to rely for representation in judicial matters, in cases of public or private grievances, upon aliens or half- aliens, who did not and could not express the will and feelings of the people, and were, in many important respects, misrepre-sentatives. It was evident that the whole arrangement was artificial, unstable and unreliable. Trial by jury in civil cases was abolished; but, in the natural course of events, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the alleged abuses were only temporary, due to the peculiar circumstances of those times.
For more than twenty years, now, there has been no accession of new comers of conflicting tribal characteristics. A new generation is appearing on the stage; and the pecuniary advancement of the people has enabled them to give their children an education suitable to the requirements of an enlightened government. The result is, that the population becoming more and more homogeneous, with one language as the medium of communication, and represented at the bar and in the Legislative Council, in the schools and in the church, by their natural organs, two conditions of social and political confidence have been reached which must obliterate all tribal distinctions and organisations, if any such still exist. An indication of this wholesome tendency in the public feeling is the desire on the part of some of the members of the Native Association to change the descriptive part of their title to one less local and restrictive.
The communication made by Lord Derby a few months ago to the people of Jamaica should be suggestive and instructive to the inhabitants of this colony. His lordship did not give an absolute refusal to the request of the people of that colony for popular suffrage and increased representation, but said that, in the judgment of the Government, the time for these things had not yet arrived, intimating that when the time arrived the Government would not withhold the privileges they craved. It is not the business of a Crown Government to develop the liberties of the people—it is their business to recognise and protect what is established. It is their part to give safety, and quietness, and repose; to inspire confidence in the people, and thus give them time for growth.
The original idea of the colony has been gradually realised under the influence of British law. Notwithstanding the frequent changes in the colonial administration, the tendency of the procedure of the Imperial Government has been in keeping with the original idea—in accordance with a desire to promote the educational, social, moral, and political improvement of the natives. And under that enlightened system of government which protects the rights, the liberty, the life, and the property of every individual, of whatever race or religion, the people have been advanced in civilisation and well- being. They have been educated up to the position, the duties, and the privileges of British citizens; and they have not, as we have seen, been slow to avail themselves of the opportunity for material growth, and for educational advancement. The bulwarks of political strength have thus been provided before their political self-consciousness has been stimulated.
The strong objection to direct taxation does not arise simply from the fact that there was sometimes oppressive, not to say cruel, enforcement of the law —the cause of the opposition lay deeper than that. It was because the people who paid the taxes felt no identification of interests between those who imposed the taxes and themselves. They did not attribute any representative character to those who controlled the proceeds of these taxes. Now, everywhere, taxation without representation is considered tyranny. But even where there is representation, people do not enthusiastically, or even cheerfully, welcome impositions laid upon them by government, though they know that the people must bear the burdens of government, A strong feeling of inborn loyalty is necessary to reconcile men everywhere to the inevitable frictions and burdens of government.
Now, this feeling of inborn loyalty will be secured when a city corporation shall be organised, composed chiefly of natives, and whatever honour or fame they may achieve will carry a thrill of exultation to the hearts of the people. The Government will be their own. They will share in its beneficial results as well as bear the odium of mal-administration. The feeling of responsibility will produce internal and domestic improvements never yet witnessed in the colony. When we look back upon what has been achieved in the colony, we cannot allow ourselves to find any fault, so far, with the action of the Government in details of administration, or even upon what are called constitutional questions.
The question of municipal government now before the people is one of great importance to the stability and prosperity of the institutions of the country; and while great care should be taken at every step of the movement, yet it is evident that a city corporation, with its burdens and responsibilities, its duties and its privileges, is necessary to the proper growth and full development of the people. It is essential to their training in self-reliance and self-respect. In the days of Sir Charles McCarthy, as I gather from the books at Government House, a Municipal Council existed in the colony, with its Mayor, and Aldermen, and Magistrates. It may interest you to hear the following:--
When the Prince Regent lost his only daughter (Princess Charlotte, I think), Sir C. McCarthy forwarded an address of condolence from the people of the colony to His Royal Highness, accompanied by the following note to Earl Bathurst:--
Government House, Sierra Leone, March 4th, 1818,
My Lord,—At the request of the Members of His Majesty’s Council, Mayor and Aldermen, Magistrates, Clergy, Freeholders, and principal inhabitants of the Colony of Sierra Leone, I have the honour to forward herewith enclosed the humble and dutiful Address of Condolence to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I beg leave to solicit your Lordship’s favour to lay the same at the foot of the Throne.
I have, &c,,
To the Right Honourable Earl Bathurst, K.G. (Signed) C. McCARTHY.
But this was before the influx of the heterogeneous tide of un-instructed people which made it the prime function of the Government to deal with the very elements of civilisation and with the rudiments of government, to instruct the consciences of the people, and to superintend the elevation of the whole moral and intellectual standard; and a great deal has been effected when tribal antipathies, narrowness and exclusiveness, which prevented growth, have been broken up. The people are now in a condition to move for themselves as a working social organisation. Their political future is greatly in their own hands; and it is an encouraging sign that young men are rising up who grasp the situation, and are making themselves equal to the necessities of the country. Activity, change, development, aspiration—these are the end of man’s being on earth. Apart from them his destiny is frustrated. Such is the law of progress. Whatever others may do for us, there are some things we must do for ourselves. No outward protection, no friendly intervention, no deed of gift can give those personal virtues—those attributes of manhood— self-reliance and independence, without which all past efforts in behalf of the colony will be in vain; and the Negro’s part in the political future of Sierra Leone will be extremely doubtful. It has been observed with gratification by friendly foreigners that many of the natives show a power and a breadth of capacity in managing their business—a shrewdness and far-sightedness in dealing with the difficulties of trade which prove that they are fitted for the conduct of some of the details of their political life.
At present their whole activity, physical and mental, is absorbed in the business of the shop; and some who have no inconsiderable accumulations, sit down and simply feel the gratification of looking at a golden heap, not even thinking of the methods by which that heap, so industriously and carefully piled up, shall be preserved. It is said that when the boa-constrictor has over-gorged itself, it lies in a state of torpidity or stupefaction; but man’s life on earth was not made to be like that of the boa-constrictor.
It is clear that if in some respects the natives of this colony continue in a position of social or political disadvantage, it is because they choose themselves to acquiesce in it, and to foster those conventional opinions which suspect every attempt to push them a step forward in self-government, and to place upon them the responsibilities which that government involves.
But God has bestowed certain gifts upon the natives of this community, as upon others, and He will not allow those gifts to remain unused. If the talent is laid up in a napkin or buried in the earth, He will resume that talent or give it to those who have power and disposition to use it. The gifts of God are not ours to do as we please with. If we prevent their application or diffusion for the good of others, or for the benefit of our country, He will remove us from them or them from us. We may have our plans for ourselves—for our individual gratification, but God has His plans, which are for the country, for the race, for humanity; and His plans will be carried out. The agents for carrying them out are on every hand, in the air, in the water, in the fire. In the operation of the laws of Providence, “The individual dwindles, while the race is more and more.” And when we have reached a certain stage of progress, and the next step which that degree of progress necessitates is pointed out to us, it is not ours to say, “Let things remain as they are.” There is no such thing as standing still in this life. The law is either forward or backward; if there is no conscious movement forward, there is an unconscious movement backward.
There is no bitterer satire passed upon us, no graver injustice done to the race than by those of its members who assume that they are unfit for higher duties than that which consists in the comparatively unintellectual work of barter. And it is but a refined remnant of the institution of slavery, which we profess so much to dread and abhor, when we attempt to cramp the stature of our people, and to forbid by persecution their advance beyond the narrow limits which we have prescribed for ourselves.
All communities of thinking men naturally divide themselves into two parties—conservative and liberal—the party of stability and the party of movement, as they have been called. We find two such parties in Sierra Leone. We see men who are not sure that what is really exists; who are ever trying to secure the past, to clench the nail that has been driven, rather than attempting to open the future. But there are others who feel a deep, an insatiable thirst for something beyond; who are anxious to open roadways for the people and for themselves where before only unbroken and undisturbed forest existed.
These men are often discouraged by the difficulties in the way raised by a conscientious and dogged conservatism. They sometimes fall into despair, and declare that the problems which they set before themselves cannot be worked, much less solved, under the actual conditions and by the available agencies.
But every now and then some sudden emergency arises and becomes what may be called a dynamic element independent of human control or management, which introduces unexpected movement. Some sudden disaster comes upon the community—an epidemic, a storm, a flood, a fire—which arouses into activity the energies of the most dormant. The liberal influence receives an accession of strength—a momentum—that forces the whole community into new and original directions, and the road is made through the forest, or the causeway thrown up across the swamp.
There is some show of reason on the side of the conservatives. They are apprehensive that any apparent progress will be only apparent, and may lead to a reaction that will be worse than the present state. They fear to act the part of the dog in the fable, who threw away the substance to grasp at the shadow. But these nervous individuals should be reminded that revolutions never go backward. The course of things will rather resemble what one sees when one goes from the alluvial and swampy lands of this coast to the beautiful countries of the interior. On the eastern or north-eastern frontier of the Loko country, the traveller is suddenly confronted with lofty hills, which, if he could, he would avoid by some circuitous route; but there is no other way, the road lies over those rugged mountains. He is, therefore, obliged to nerve himself for the task of ascending; but after toiling up those weary heights, he finds to his surprise that instead of a corresponding declivity on the eastern side, he has reached the level of a grand plateau, where the air is purer and cooler. He has reached an elevated region, which slopes gradually to the rich valley of the Niger. So will it be after the people have climbed the heights of political progress, which look so precipitous and threatening. They will have a wider view and a healthier atmosphere, and the advance will be by easier stages to a well-watered and fertile region of political freedom and self- reliance. But at first the progress must be slow and gradual. “Chi va piano va sano, chi va sano va lontano.”
We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.
But the question of all others upon the solution of which will depend the character of the political future of the colony, is the educational one. We sometimes wonder why the efforts for the higher education of our people on this coast seem to meet with so many drawbacks. But the reasons, if we look below the surface of things, will be clear and satisfactory. Happily, the educational work, both here and in Liberia, has hardly got beyond its initial stage. The people are getting educated first to the life of the country before the education of books comes. It is not without its providential purposes that hindrances have so frequently arisen in the way of the only two colleges on the coast—Fourah Bay College and Liberia College. Had these institutions gone on and succeeded on the line which their founders had marked out for them, numbers of our people would have passed through a course of discipline which would probably have impaired their natural powers, and aroused on the part of foreign observers hopes, or awakened antagonisms, which would have been based upon artificial and unstable phenomena. The drawbacks and interruptions are giving us time to find out the system of regulation and instruction which will best fit us for the work we have to do.
What is needed in the education of the Negro on this continent is not so much a change in the subjects, for everywhere the instruments of culture, in their better forms at least, must be the same, but a change in the whole method is required. In our contact with the Christian world, our teachers have of necessity been Europeans, and they have taught us books too much, and things too little—forms of expression, and very little the importance of thought. The notion, still common among Negroes— educated Negroes I mean—is, that the most important part of knowledge consists in knowing what other men—foreigners—have said about things, and even about Africa and about themselves. They aspire to be familiar, not with what really is, but with what is printed. Very few among us have got past this step. Hence, some of us are found repeating things against ourselves, which are thoroughly false and injurious to us, and only because we read them in books, or have heard them from foreign teachers. The idea never seems to occur to such persons that there are subjects of enquiry, especially in this large and interesting country of theirs, about which the truth is yet to be found out—people and customs and systems about which correct ideas are to be formed. We have neglected to study matters at home because we were trained in books written by foreigners, and for a foreign race, not for us—or for us only so far as in the general characteristics of humanity we resemble that race; and from some of these books we learned that the Negro at home was a degraded being—a Heathen, and worse than a Heathen—a fool; and we were taught everything excellent and praiseworthy about foreigners. Therefore, we turned our backs upon our brethren of the interior as those from whom we could learn nothing to elevate, to enlighten, or to refine. A result of this is that we have not yet acted for ourselves. We have had history written for us, and we have endeavoured to act up to it; whereas, the true order is, that history should be first acted, then written. It is easy to account, then, for the want of genuine life and spontaneous activity in the people.
It would be a melancholy outlook for Africa, with its vast territories and countless tribes, if its development and prosperity were altogether contingent upon the labour of foreigners, or even upon the genius and life of a few natives, educated on foreign models and in foreign ways of thinking, to be produced and brought upon the stage of action by the machinery of an alien people. I say the prospect would indeed be dark if we had no security from the law, by which nations and races are controlled, that the men to lead and guide in the affairs of this race shall appear among the people at the right time and place, and with aptitudes for the needful work.
It is a very interesting fact that the main body of the settlers who planted civilisation on these shores in both colonies were men deeply imbued with the religious spirit. Like the puritans of America, the Bible was their code of laws, for civil and religious life. The following graphic and suggestive description is given by Mr. J. B. Eliott of the circumstances attending the first arrival of the Nova Scotians, on the 28th of March, 1792:
The colony was then quite a forest, thickly populated with wild and ferocious animals, without any passage of approach to the new, beautiful, and principaltown, Freetown. Pioneers, from the number of these Nova Scotians, were despatched on shore to clear or make a roadway for their landing; which being done, they all disembarked and marched towards the thick forest, with the Holy Bible and their preachers (all coloured men) before them, singing the hymn taken from the late Countess’s Hymn Book, commencing--
Awake and sing the song
Of Moses and the Lamb;
Wake! every heart and every tongue
To praise the Saviour’s name.
They proceeded immediately to worship God, thanking Him for His goodness and mercy in bringing them in safety to the land of their forefathers. . . . . They were anxious to procure an altar, or place of worship, for the God of Jacob. This they did. The place fixed upon was under the shade of a large gree- gree tree, then standing in George Street, now one of the most populous in Freetown, containing the Church of England, the Colonial Office, &c. There they continued in social worship of Almighty God, with their brethren of the Methodist and Baptist Societies—who all arrived together from Nova Scotia—until they were able to provide better accommodation. This they lost no time in doing, for each Society was able, after a short time, to build a hut as a chapel for itself.
The Directors of the Sierra Leone Company, in their Report for 1794, bear the following testimony to the character of the settlers:--
From that class of vices which comes less under the cognisance of a public court, the Nova Scotians are in some respects remarkably free; marriage is extremely general among them, and all those evils which more particularly result from its being in disuse, are therefore in a great measure avoided. Drunkenness is by no means common, swearing is hardly ever heard; their attention to the Sabbath is also great; they, on that day, abstain entirely from work, dress themselves in very good (and some of them even in very gay) attire, and repair, together with their children, to church, where their deportment during the service, and their whole appearance, are represented to be such as form a very striking spectacle. There are five or six black preachers among them, raised up from their own body, who are not without a considerable influence; and it is supposed that the discipline which they preserve in their little congregations, has contributed materially to the maintenance of the general morals which have been spoken of.[17]
Footnotes:
17 Report, pp. 78-80.
17 Report, pp. 78-80.
Thirty years after, Mr. Ashmun, one of the earliest Governors of Liberia, writes of the colonists as follows:--
It deserves record that religion has been the principal agent employed in laying and confirming the foundation of the settlement. To this sentiment— ruling, restraining, and actuating the minds of the colonists—must be referred the whole strength of the civil government.
In Sierra Leone, excepting, perhaps, Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion, there was no regular organisation for religious worship until the plans set on foot by the Church Missionary Society, with the aid of the Government, were carried out in 1817.
The English Baptist Missionary Society sent out two missionaries in 1795; but owing to indiscretion on the part of one, and the failure of health on the part of the other, the mission was speedily abandoned. In the following year, an united attempt was made by the Scottish, the Glasgow, and the London Missionary Societies to form a station, but owing to sickness and dissension among the agents, this effort was attended with no better success.[18]
The opening of the present century witnessed the organisation of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East. No Englishman being found to undertake missionary work on this unhealthy coast, the Society sent out in 1804, as their first missionaries, two Germans, Revs. Messrs. Renner and Hartwig. They were, however, appointed not to labour in the colony, but among the Soosoos to the north. It was evident from the beginning that, in view of the state of the country and the character of their machinery, they could not accomplish very much in that direction. In 1816, the Society sent out Rev. Edward Bickersteth to look into their work. His report influenced the committee to turn its attention to Sierra Leone, although Sir Charles McCarthy, two years before, had, without apparent success, suggested to the Society to employ their missionaries in labours among the recaptives. In the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Church Missionary Society they say:--
After Mr. Bickersteth’s return, the committee lost no time in laying the substance of his communication before His Majesty’s ministers. A deputation accompanied his lordship the President in presenting a memorial to Earl Bathurst, in which a plan formed by His Excellency, Governor McCarthy, for dividing the colony of Sierra Leone into parishes, was recognised; and offers were made, on the part of the Society, to assist in bringing that plan into full execution. His lordship received the deputation with his accustomed courtesy, and expressed his cordial wish to support the designs of the Society for the benefit of the colony. By a subsequent communication from his lordship, your committee learnt with pleasure that measures would be immediately taken for the erection of two churches in Freetown, and afterwards churches in the several country parishes of Sierra Leone.
Thus began that series of operations in this colony, conducted by the Church Missionary Society, at first with Government aid, which has given to Africa and the Negro race the Sierra Leone Native Church, with its magnificent institutions of the Native Pastorate and Grammar Schools, whose influence is felt all along the coast and far up the Niger.
Dr. Coke, who has been called the father of the Wesleyan Missions, had devised a scheme in 1769, eighteen years before the arrival of the first settlers sent by Granville Sharp, for missionary work among the Foulahs interior of Sierra Leone; but the undertaking proved an entire failure, chiefly for want of adaptation in the agents employed.
The beginning of Wesleyan work in the settlement dates from 1811, when the Rev. G. Warren and three school teachers were sent out. The results of the self-denying labours of these men are seen on every hand throughout the settlement. Its Training Institution, under a native principal, is giving satisfaction, and furnishing interesting proof of the reality of the work which has been accomplished,
The educational and religious training of the people of Sierra Leone, for fifty years, devolved almost wholly upon the Church Missionary Society and the Wesleyans. The effects of their self-denying labours are visible in the intellectual, moral, and religious progress of the people. Whatever Sierra Leone is, she owes mainly to the fostering care of those two great bodies of Christians.
In 1864 came the Roman Catholic Church, and met with no little difficulty in establishing itself in a town where two strong Protestant bodies and other smaller ones had apparently occupied the whole ground. The Catholic priest, with his mediaeval dress, supposed alien sympathies, and celibate life, was an object of antagonism; but by patience and perseverance they have so far overcome the opposition as to have now in process of erection, to answer their actual demands, a magnificent cathedral, with the prospect of a resident bishop in Freetown. Negroes will prove that among them, as among other races, there are sympathies broad as the variety of the human mind and comprehensive as the diversity of human temperament; that the ecclesiastical landscape among them will be as diversified in appearance as elsewhere.
Whatever may be thought by some of the Roman Catholic Church, there are four things which can be said in its favour, and which it behoves us carefully to consider:--
1. The Romish Church presents an uncompromising front in the warfare against infidelity in all its forms. Evolution, Agnosticism and Positivism find no place within its fold.
2. The Church of Rome has always been and is now a protesting power—a conservative force—against the onslaughts of Socialism—against those attacks upon constituted authority which are now perplexing true patriots and statesmen in Europe and America.
3. Catholicism sets its face, especially in America, against the freeness and facility of divorce. It respects the integrity of the family, and, through the much-abused confessional, it exercises a watchful care over childhood. Catholics are wiser than Protestants as to the children of the Church.
4. The Roman Catholic Church respects races. It holds to the belief that those words of St. Paul, which declare that “God hath made of one all nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth,” are words of inspiration.
They recognise in their calendar Negro saints, and have in their cathedrals the statues and representations of holy men of the African race. In Roman Catholic countries Negroes have always had a fair chance. I have read of Negroes in Brazil, in Peru, and even in Cuba, and I have seen them in Venezuela, occupying civil, military, and social positions to which they aspire in vain in Protestant countries. This, however, it is sometimes said, is owing not so much to the teachings of the religion as to the peculiar disposition of the Celtic races, who are largely Roman Catholics. The caste feeling, it is alleged, is not so strong in Celt as in Anglo-Saxon. I do not know whether that distinguished nobleman, the Marquis of Bute, has Celtic blood in his veins, but he has recently selected a Negro sculptress to execute for him an important piece of artistic work.
These are facts in the history of Roman Catholics—not eulogies of the Church of Rome. They are great truths to be recognised in all the estimates we may form of the relations of that Church to the work to be done on this great continent, and to the race to which we belong. We may say that Romanism has its faults; but Protestantism also has its faults. We may say that the Romish Church has its irregularities; but so has the Protestant Church. We have, in this country, nothing to lose by welcoming all the agencies which have contributed to the civilisation and upbuilding of Europe, Asia, and America.
Now, these two great systems of Christianity—Protestant and Roman Catholic—are endeavouring to extend their operations among the interior tribes, to subvert and supersede Paganism and Mohammedanism. Let us take a brief view of the Paganism and Mohammedanism which have to be confronted and overcome.
We are sometimes discouraged by what appears to us the obstinacy of Paganism—the stubbornness of a hoary superstition; but when we consider how large tribes, both here and in other parts of Africa—Jaloonkas, Korankos, Limbas, Ashantees, Zulus—are kept in subordination, and fulfil many a national function without any knowledge of letters or written revelation, it must appear that there is something in the Paganism of Africa as in the Paganism of other lands—some subtle, indefinable, inappreciable influence which operates upon the people and regulates their life. And this religion of the imagination, or of the fancy, if you like, has had its influence upon some of the greatest minds, whose words or deeds have graced the annals of history. Socrates, with his measured, settled, and logical intellect, in his last moments ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Æsculapius. The ancient Greeks and Romans had their sacred groves and “mysteries”—their Porroh and Bundo rites. There exists a very touching letter from Plutarch to his wife, written at the time he lost his only daughter, and when they were in the deepest affliction and desolation. He writes to his wife, who was away from him at the time, a very kind and loving letter, trying to give her comfort and hope. He says to her, “Remember the beautiful things we have seen together in the Mysteries of Bacchus.” Some people believe that the Mysteries of Bacchus were nothing but drunkenness and disorder; they were something else. They were like the Mysteries of Ceres—the Goddess of Corn—and like the representations, in other cases, of the immortality of the soul. And owing to the hold which these things have upon the minds of those brought up to believe in them, and who get comfort from them, it is impossible suddenly to uproot them. In fact, superstitions are never thoroughly eradicated from any country. In many parts of Europe the rural superstitions of the old mythology are alive to-day. The peasant holds to rites and ideas that his ancestors practised while they were still savages. We must believe that time, and contact with others who have enjoyed superior advantages for information, will remove from the minds of our Pagan brethren many of the objectionable things in their belief.
But in the evangelistic efforts of Christians, as they push to the interior, they will have to meet also the great Mohammedan religion, which has come across the continent from the deserts of Arabia. Between Sierra Leone and Egypt the Mohammedans are the only great intellectual, moral, and commercial power. The tribes intervening have for more than three hundred years been tinder the influence of Islam. It has taken possession of, and has shaped the social, political, and religious life of the most intelligent tribes. Its adherents control the politics and commerce of nearly all Africa north of the Equator. From their great cities on the Niger and the Volta they send caravans to every point of the compass—to Abyssinia and Egypt, Algiers and Morocco, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, Liberia and Cape Coast. No one can travel any distance in the interior from this settlement without finding that Islam is the ruling influence. In my journeys a few years ago to Falaba, the capital of the great Pagan kingdom of Soolimia, I passed through the Timneh, Loko, Limba, and Koranko countries, which are also Pagan states; and when, subsequently, I went to Timbo, the capital of Futah Jallo, a Mohammedan power, I passed again through several Pagan districts; but I did not pass through a single town on the two routes—going and returning— where I did not find Mohammedans taking a leading part, and where I did not hear the name of Mohammed and his mission publicly proclaimed at least once a-day. I observed that no public speech was delivered without being preceded and followed by the words—“Alla humma, Salla ala Mohammadi, wa ala áli Moham-madi;” and the audience responded—“Salla Allàhu alayhi wa sallam.” The meaning is—“O God, bless Mohammed, and the people of Mohammed.” Answer—“God bless him and grant him peace.” This has become, all through the country, not only a religious, but a political formula, like “God save the Queen.” Thus the distinguishing dogma of Islam, that Mohammed is the Apostle of God, is held up and proclaimed every time an assembly meets.
It is sometimes said by some who, anxious not merely to disparage the intellectual influence of Islam upon the mind of the African, but the intellectual capacity of the Negro, that there is no correct knowledge of Arabic possessed by these people. But this is never said by anyone having the slightest knowledge of the language. A hundred years ago, Mungo Park found considerable knowledge of Arabic among the natives in whose country he travelled. He was astonished on perceiving the encouragement which was given to learning. He says that the vessel in which he returned from Africa contained 127 slaves, most of them from the neighbourhood of the coast, but some from the interior of the country; and that out of this number there were seventeen or eighteen who could read and write Arabic fluently; but the master of the ship, he adds, threw the books belonging to the slaves into the sea, for fear a perusal of them “would make them sick at heart.” He calculates that one seventh part of the slaves in the West Indies were, in his day, able to read the Arabic Bible, were it put into their hands. In another place he says:--
The poor Africans, whom we affect to consider as Barbarians, look upon us, I fear, as little better than a race of formidable but ignorant Heathens. When I produced Richardson’s Arabic Grammar to some Slatees (native merchants), on the Gambia, they were astonished to think that any European should understand and write the sacred language of their religion. One of them offered to give me an ass and sixteen bars of goods if I would part with the book.
When on the expedition to Timbo, I spent a day and a-half at the town of Telico, two days’ journey on this side of the Foulah capital. As I sat writing my diary on the evening after my arrival, just after the sunset prayer, having at my side Momodo Waka, who is now the Assistant Government Arabic Interpreter, I heard a melodious voice at the door reciting, in chant-like style, some Arabic verses. I recognised some of the words as from the Makamat of Hariri. I said to Momodo, “Open the door and see who that is, and ask him in.” It was one of the wandering minstrels, or itinerant teachers, who live on the alms of the faithful. These minstrels travel from town to town, and village to village. Crowds gather around and hang on their lips while they recite in glowing terms some episode in the Prophet’s life, or some exploit of one of their own warriors or poets. These men go from Africa and travel through Arabia and Syria, drawing crowds just as eager to listen to them. When I was at Beirut, in 1866, there was a celebrated “rawi,” or minstrel, from the Soudan, of jet black complexion, drawing crowds every evening by the eloquence of his recitals. The object of my visitor on this occasion was to solicit a gift from the stranger. The words he recited were from the Fifth Assembly of Hariri, called ‘Koufa,’ and were the following, according to the late Professor Preston’s translation:--
Inmates of this abode, all hail! all hail!
Long may you live in plenty’s verdant vale!
O grant your aid to one by toil opprest,
Way-worn, benighted, destitute, distrest;
Whose tortured entrails only hunger hold
(For since he tasted food two days are told);
A wretch who finds not where to lay his head,
Though brooding night her dreary wing hath spread,
But roams in anxious hope a friend to meet,
Whose bounty, like a spring of water sweet,
May heal his woes, a friend who straight will say,
“Come in! Tis time thy staff aside to lay;
A welcome and a meal are thine to-day!”
I should like you to hear the words in the original Arabic by a Mandingo native, who is only one of thousands acquainted with the Makamat of Hariri, one of the most difficult of the poems of Arabia. It consists of fifty books, and there are many who have committed to memory the whole. The Arabs have a harsher, or more strongly guttural accent. In general, the Soudanic languages —excepting, perhaps, the dialects of Timbuctoo and Bambarra— are devoid of strong gutturals. The Mandingoes, Foulahs, and the Nigritian tribes generally, who use Arabic, soften the sound of the harsher letters—shin, kha, hha, ghain, ain, gaf; the reason being that they have a softer and more effeminate intonation in their speech, suited to their genius and physical constitution.[19]
There are young men born in Freetown, children of recaptives, who can not only read and write, and with ease and propriety converse, in the language of Arabia, but can translate readily from Arabic into Aku and English, and from English into Arabic and Aku. When I passed here in June last, there was a brilliant Arab youth, from the schools of Bagdad, on a missionary visit to the Mohammedans of the settlement. He called upon me with one of the Sierra Leone Creoles, who astonished me by the fluency with which he could converse with the stranger from the East in the tongue of the Prophet. The other day, when the ambassadors from Sego were leaving, and the Administrator wrote an important letter to the king, it was a creole youth who put it into the Arabic. I have been surprised that while Mohammedan youth are practically acquainted with three languages, which would make them at home in any part of the Soudan, Christian young men content themselves with only one. I am astonished that they have not long since realised the advantages of their contact with this great Oriental language, and with the treasures of its literature, in which the Negro so largely shares.
It is not the part of wisdom to ignore a fact—not only an irrepressible, but an aggressive fact. The Mohammedans must always have a powerful influence in Africa. They have given the initiative of intellectual progress to the tribes of the interior. It is through them that the natives have acquired all they have of knowledge of the outside world, or of past history, sacred or profane. They have given unity to the great tribes of the continent, and have placed millions of Africans—by means of their language, letters, and books
—under the same inspiration. Suppose Africa had been obliged to wait till now for knowledge of letters and books from Europeans, what would have been the condition of things, at this moment, in the interior?
But it is not simply the religion of the Arabs, but the race of the Arabs which has given them such influence over the tendencies of the great tribes. They belong to a cognate race. Before the days of Mohammed, Negroes shared in the learning and politics of Arabia. Herodotus, in those early days, discovered the relationship of the two peoples. He represents them as belonging to the same great race. His description of the country of the Eastern Ethiopians corresponds to Southern Arabia; while his description of the region inhabited by the Western Ethiopians takes in Nigritia as far as Sierra Leona and Liberia.
Before the rise of Islam, it was customary to hold in Arabia, once a-year, a national gathering, at which tribes made up their dissensions, exchanged prisoners of war, and competed with one another in extempore poetic contests. The poems which were successful were transcribed in letters of gold and suspended on the wall of the Kaaba, where they would be seen by every pilgrim who might visit the most sacred place in the country. These poems were honoured with the title of Moâllacat, or “suspended.” Seven of them have been deemed worthy of preservation, and are much admired by European students of Arabic for the beauty of the language and wild richness of the imagery. One of the prize poems was composed by the warrior and poet Antarrah, the son of a negress slave. He was so black that he was nicknamed “Gharab,” crow. When some of the members of his clan, who early embraced Islam, went as deputies to Medina to visit Mohammed, and make profession of faith on the part of their brethren, the prophet told them that the warrior whom he most desired to have seen was the Negro Antarrah.[20]
For twelve centuries the Adzan, or call to prayer, has been sounded five times a-day from every mosque in the Mohammedan world. The traveller from Fourah Bay to North-western China is startled in his sleep at early dawn by Muezzins crying aloud from their various minarets, the words “ Allahu Akbar,” &c. (God is great, &c).
These self-same words are used by Muslims of every nationality. Turks, Persians, Hindoos, Chinese, Foulahs, Mandingoes, Akus, &c., all use the same Arabic words. Now, it ought to be interesting to us to know that these words were first uttered and composed, in part, by a Negro, named Bilal.21 Sir William Muir says, “He was tall, dark, and gaunt, with Negro features and bushy hair.” He was among the earliest converts to Islam. Mohammed distinguished him as “the first-fruits of Africa”; and on account of his physical and moral qualities, appointed him the first Muezzin, or crier to prayer. After crying the Adzan, Bilal would come to the door of Mohammed and rouse him thus: “To prayer, oh, Apostle of God! to salvation.” Then Bilal would take his stand in the first row of worshippers, who used strictly to follow his example in the prayers and genuflexions.[22]
So that the forms of daily worship now used throughout the Mohammedan world were fixed by a Negro.
This distinguished man, like many other Moslem warriors, was granted landed property at Damascus, where he died, A, H, 20, aged 60 years; and where his tomb is still shown. There is not a Christian country governed by Europeans where the tomb of any Negro, whatever his merit, has been preserved for even a hundred years. The Negro came into contact with Christianity as a slave and a follower at a distance. He came into contact with Mohammedanism as a man, and often as a leader. Whatever men of other races may do, can the Negro turn contemptuously upon a religion in which he has had a part, and listen without protest to the statement of those who, while bringing him Christianity, tell him that his past has been “ blank and hopeless? “
Mohammed not only loved the Negro, but regarded Africa with peculiar interest and affection. He never spoke of any curse hanging over the country or people. When in the early years of his reform, his followers were persecuted and could get no protection in Arabia, he advised them to seek an asylum in Africa. “Yonder,” he said, pointing towards this country, “yonder lieth a country wherein no man is wronged—a land of righteousness. Depart thither; and remain until it pleaseth the Lord to open your way before you.”[23] This recalls to us Homer’s “blameless Ethiopians,” and the words of the Angel to Joseph: “Arise and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word again.”
It deserves record that religion has been the principal agent employed in laying and confirming the foundation of the settlement. To this sentiment— ruling, restraining, and actuating the minds of the colonists—must be referred the whole strength of the civil government.
In Sierra Leone, excepting, perhaps, Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion, there was no regular organisation for religious worship until the plans set on foot by the Church Missionary Society, with the aid of the Government, were carried out in 1817.
The English Baptist Missionary Society sent out two missionaries in 1795; but owing to indiscretion on the part of one, and the failure of health on the part of the other, the mission was speedily abandoned. In the following year, an united attempt was made by the Scottish, the Glasgow, and the London Missionary Societies to form a station, but owing to sickness and dissension among the agents, this effort was attended with no better success.[18]
The opening of the present century witnessed the organisation of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East. No Englishman being found to undertake missionary work on this unhealthy coast, the Society sent out in 1804, as their first missionaries, two Germans, Revs. Messrs. Renner and Hartwig. They were, however, appointed not to labour in the colony, but among the Soosoos to the north. It was evident from the beginning that, in view of the state of the country and the character of their machinery, they could not accomplish very much in that direction. In 1816, the Society sent out Rev. Edward Bickersteth to look into their work. His report influenced the committee to turn its attention to Sierra Leone, although Sir Charles McCarthy, two years before, had, without apparent success, suggested to the Society to employ their missionaries in labours among the recaptives. In the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Church Missionary Society they say:--
After Mr. Bickersteth’s return, the committee lost no time in laying the substance of his communication before His Majesty’s ministers. A deputation accompanied his lordship the President in presenting a memorial to Earl Bathurst, in which a plan formed by His Excellency, Governor McCarthy, for dividing the colony of Sierra Leone into parishes, was recognised; and offers were made, on the part of the Society, to assist in bringing that plan into full execution. His lordship received the deputation with his accustomed courtesy, and expressed his cordial wish to support the designs of the Society for the benefit of the colony. By a subsequent communication from his lordship, your committee learnt with pleasure that measures would be immediately taken for the erection of two churches in Freetown, and afterwards churches in the several country parishes of Sierra Leone.
Thus began that series of operations in this colony, conducted by the Church Missionary Society, at first with Government aid, which has given to Africa and the Negro race the Sierra Leone Native Church, with its magnificent institutions of the Native Pastorate and Grammar Schools, whose influence is felt all along the coast and far up the Niger.
Dr. Coke, who has been called the father of the Wesleyan Missions, had devised a scheme in 1769, eighteen years before the arrival of the first settlers sent by Granville Sharp, for missionary work among the Foulahs interior of Sierra Leone; but the undertaking proved an entire failure, chiefly for want of adaptation in the agents employed.
The beginning of Wesleyan work in the settlement dates from 1811, when the Rev. G. Warren and three school teachers were sent out. The results of the self-denying labours of these men are seen on every hand throughout the settlement. Its Training Institution, under a native principal, is giving satisfaction, and furnishing interesting proof of the reality of the work which has been accomplished,
The educational and religious training of the people of Sierra Leone, for fifty years, devolved almost wholly upon the Church Missionary Society and the Wesleyans. The effects of their self-denying labours are visible in the intellectual, moral, and religious progress of the people. Whatever Sierra Leone is, she owes mainly to the fostering care of those two great bodies of Christians.
In 1864 came the Roman Catholic Church, and met with no little difficulty in establishing itself in a town where two strong Protestant bodies and other smaller ones had apparently occupied the whole ground. The Catholic priest, with his mediaeval dress, supposed alien sympathies, and celibate life, was an object of antagonism; but by patience and perseverance they have so far overcome the opposition as to have now in process of erection, to answer their actual demands, a magnificent cathedral, with the prospect of a resident bishop in Freetown. Negroes will prove that among them, as among other races, there are sympathies broad as the variety of the human mind and comprehensive as the diversity of human temperament; that the ecclesiastical landscape among them will be as diversified in appearance as elsewhere.
Whatever may be thought by some of the Roman Catholic Church, there are four things which can be said in its favour, and which it behoves us carefully to consider:--
1. The Romish Church presents an uncompromising front in the warfare against infidelity in all its forms. Evolution, Agnosticism and Positivism find no place within its fold.
2. The Church of Rome has always been and is now a protesting power—a conservative force—against the onslaughts of Socialism—against those attacks upon constituted authority which are now perplexing true patriots and statesmen in Europe and America.
3. Catholicism sets its face, especially in America, against the freeness and facility of divorce. It respects the integrity of the family, and, through the much-abused confessional, it exercises a watchful care over childhood. Catholics are wiser than Protestants as to the children of the Church.
4. The Roman Catholic Church respects races. It holds to the belief that those words of St. Paul, which declare that “God hath made of one all nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth,” are words of inspiration.
They recognise in their calendar Negro saints, and have in their cathedrals the statues and representations of holy men of the African race. In Roman Catholic countries Negroes have always had a fair chance. I have read of Negroes in Brazil, in Peru, and even in Cuba, and I have seen them in Venezuela, occupying civil, military, and social positions to which they aspire in vain in Protestant countries. This, however, it is sometimes said, is owing not so much to the teachings of the religion as to the peculiar disposition of the Celtic races, who are largely Roman Catholics. The caste feeling, it is alleged, is not so strong in Celt as in Anglo-Saxon. I do not know whether that distinguished nobleman, the Marquis of Bute, has Celtic blood in his veins, but he has recently selected a Negro sculptress to execute for him an important piece of artistic work.
These are facts in the history of Roman Catholics—not eulogies of the Church of Rome. They are great truths to be recognised in all the estimates we may form of the relations of that Church to the work to be done on this great continent, and to the race to which we belong. We may say that Romanism has its faults; but Protestantism also has its faults. We may say that the Romish Church has its irregularities; but so has the Protestant Church. We have, in this country, nothing to lose by welcoming all the agencies which have contributed to the civilisation and upbuilding of Europe, Asia, and America.
Now, these two great systems of Christianity—Protestant and Roman Catholic—are endeavouring to extend their operations among the interior tribes, to subvert and supersede Paganism and Mohammedanism. Let us take a brief view of the Paganism and Mohammedanism which have to be confronted and overcome.
We are sometimes discouraged by what appears to us the obstinacy of Paganism—the stubbornness of a hoary superstition; but when we consider how large tribes, both here and in other parts of Africa—Jaloonkas, Korankos, Limbas, Ashantees, Zulus—are kept in subordination, and fulfil many a national function without any knowledge of letters or written revelation, it must appear that there is something in the Paganism of Africa as in the Paganism of other lands—some subtle, indefinable, inappreciable influence which operates upon the people and regulates their life. And this religion of the imagination, or of the fancy, if you like, has had its influence upon some of the greatest minds, whose words or deeds have graced the annals of history. Socrates, with his measured, settled, and logical intellect, in his last moments ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Æsculapius. The ancient Greeks and Romans had their sacred groves and “mysteries”—their Porroh and Bundo rites. There exists a very touching letter from Plutarch to his wife, written at the time he lost his only daughter, and when they were in the deepest affliction and desolation. He writes to his wife, who was away from him at the time, a very kind and loving letter, trying to give her comfort and hope. He says to her, “Remember the beautiful things we have seen together in the Mysteries of Bacchus.” Some people believe that the Mysteries of Bacchus were nothing but drunkenness and disorder; they were something else. They were like the Mysteries of Ceres—the Goddess of Corn—and like the representations, in other cases, of the immortality of the soul. And owing to the hold which these things have upon the minds of those brought up to believe in them, and who get comfort from them, it is impossible suddenly to uproot them. In fact, superstitions are never thoroughly eradicated from any country. In many parts of Europe the rural superstitions of the old mythology are alive to-day. The peasant holds to rites and ideas that his ancestors practised while they were still savages. We must believe that time, and contact with others who have enjoyed superior advantages for information, will remove from the minds of our Pagan brethren many of the objectionable things in their belief.
But in the evangelistic efforts of Christians, as they push to the interior, they will have to meet also the great Mohammedan religion, which has come across the continent from the deserts of Arabia. Between Sierra Leone and Egypt the Mohammedans are the only great intellectual, moral, and commercial power. The tribes intervening have for more than three hundred years been tinder the influence of Islam. It has taken possession of, and has shaped the social, political, and religious life of the most intelligent tribes. Its adherents control the politics and commerce of nearly all Africa north of the Equator. From their great cities on the Niger and the Volta they send caravans to every point of the compass—to Abyssinia and Egypt, Algiers and Morocco, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, Liberia and Cape Coast. No one can travel any distance in the interior from this settlement without finding that Islam is the ruling influence. In my journeys a few years ago to Falaba, the capital of the great Pagan kingdom of Soolimia, I passed through the Timneh, Loko, Limba, and Koranko countries, which are also Pagan states; and when, subsequently, I went to Timbo, the capital of Futah Jallo, a Mohammedan power, I passed again through several Pagan districts; but I did not pass through a single town on the two routes—going and returning— where I did not find Mohammedans taking a leading part, and where I did not hear the name of Mohammed and his mission publicly proclaimed at least once a-day. I observed that no public speech was delivered without being preceded and followed by the words—“Alla humma, Salla ala Mohammadi, wa ala áli Moham-madi;” and the audience responded—“Salla Allàhu alayhi wa sallam.” The meaning is—“O God, bless Mohammed, and the people of Mohammed.” Answer—“God bless him and grant him peace.” This has become, all through the country, not only a religious, but a political formula, like “God save the Queen.” Thus the distinguishing dogma of Islam, that Mohammed is the Apostle of God, is held up and proclaimed every time an assembly meets.
It is sometimes said by some who, anxious not merely to disparage the intellectual influence of Islam upon the mind of the African, but the intellectual capacity of the Negro, that there is no correct knowledge of Arabic possessed by these people. But this is never said by anyone having the slightest knowledge of the language. A hundred years ago, Mungo Park found considerable knowledge of Arabic among the natives in whose country he travelled. He was astonished on perceiving the encouragement which was given to learning. He says that the vessel in which he returned from Africa contained 127 slaves, most of them from the neighbourhood of the coast, but some from the interior of the country; and that out of this number there were seventeen or eighteen who could read and write Arabic fluently; but the master of the ship, he adds, threw the books belonging to the slaves into the sea, for fear a perusal of them “would make them sick at heart.” He calculates that one seventh part of the slaves in the West Indies were, in his day, able to read the Arabic Bible, were it put into their hands. In another place he says:--
The poor Africans, whom we affect to consider as Barbarians, look upon us, I fear, as little better than a race of formidable but ignorant Heathens. When I produced Richardson’s Arabic Grammar to some Slatees (native merchants), on the Gambia, they were astonished to think that any European should understand and write the sacred language of their religion. One of them offered to give me an ass and sixteen bars of goods if I would part with the book.
When on the expedition to Timbo, I spent a day and a-half at the town of Telico, two days’ journey on this side of the Foulah capital. As I sat writing my diary on the evening after my arrival, just after the sunset prayer, having at my side Momodo Waka, who is now the Assistant Government Arabic Interpreter, I heard a melodious voice at the door reciting, in chant-like style, some Arabic verses. I recognised some of the words as from the Makamat of Hariri. I said to Momodo, “Open the door and see who that is, and ask him in.” It was one of the wandering minstrels, or itinerant teachers, who live on the alms of the faithful. These minstrels travel from town to town, and village to village. Crowds gather around and hang on their lips while they recite in glowing terms some episode in the Prophet’s life, or some exploit of one of their own warriors or poets. These men go from Africa and travel through Arabia and Syria, drawing crowds just as eager to listen to them. When I was at Beirut, in 1866, there was a celebrated “rawi,” or minstrel, from the Soudan, of jet black complexion, drawing crowds every evening by the eloquence of his recitals. The object of my visitor on this occasion was to solicit a gift from the stranger. The words he recited were from the Fifth Assembly of Hariri, called ‘Koufa,’ and were the following, according to the late Professor Preston’s translation:--
Inmates of this abode, all hail! all hail!
Long may you live in plenty’s verdant vale!
O grant your aid to one by toil opprest,
Way-worn, benighted, destitute, distrest;
Whose tortured entrails only hunger hold
(For since he tasted food two days are told);
A wretch who finds not where to lay his head,
Though brooding night her dreary wing hath spread,
But roams in anxious hope a friend to meet,
Whose bounty, like a spring of water sweet,
May heal his woes, a friend who straight will say,
“Come in! Tis time thy staff aside to lay;
A welcome and a meal are thine to-day!”
I should like you to hear the words in the original Arabic by a Mandingo native, who is only one of thousands acquainted with the Makamat of Hariri, one of the most difficult of the poems of Arabia. It consists of fifty books, and there are many who have committed to memory the whole. The Arabs have a harsher, or more strongly guttural accent. In general, the Soudanic languages —excepting, perhaps, the dialects of Timbuctoo and Bambarra— are devoid of strong gutturals. The Mandingoes, Foulahs, and the Nigritian tribes generally, who use Arabic, soften the sound of the harsher letters—shin, kha, hha, ghain, ain, gaf; the reason being that they have a softer and more effeminate intonation in their speech, suited to their genius and physical constitution.[19]
There are young men born in Freetown, children of recaptives, who can not only read and write, and with ease and propriety converse, in the language of Arabia, but can translate readily from Arabic into Aku and English, and from English into Arabic and Aku. When I passed here in June last, there was a brilliant Arab youth, from the schools of Bagdad, on a missionary visit to the Mohammedans of the settlement. He called upon me with one of the Sierra Leone Creoles, who astonished me by the fluency with which he could converse with the stranger from the East in the tongue of the Prophet. The other day, when the ambassadors from Sego were leaving, and the Administrator wrote an important letter to the king, it was a creole youth who put it into the Arabic. I have been surprised that while Mohammedan youth are practically acquainted with three languages, which would make them at home in any part of the Soudan, Christian young men content themselves with only one. I am astonished that they have not long since realised the advantages of their contact with this great Oriental language, and with the treasures of its literature, in which the Negro so largely shares.
It is not the part of wisdom to ignore a fact—not only an irrepressible, but an aggressive fact. The Mohammedans must always have a powerful influence in Africa. They have given the initiative of intellectual progress to the tribes of the interior. It is through them that the natives have acquired all they have of knowledge of the outside world, or of past history, sacred or profane. They have given unity to the great tribes of the continent, and have placed millions of Africans—by means of their language, letters, and books
—under the same inspiration. Suppose Africa had been obliged to wait till now for knowledge of letters and books from Europeans, what would have been the condition of things, at this moment, in the interior?
But it is not simply the religion of the Arabs, but the race of the Arabs which has given them such influence over the tendencies of the great tribes. They belong to a cognate race. Before the days of Mohammed, Negroes shared in the learning and politics of Arabia. Herodotus, in those early days, discovered the relationship of the two peoples. He represents them as belonging to the same great race. His description of the country of the Eastern Ethiopians corresponds to Southern Arabia; while his description of the region inhabited by the Western Ethiopians takes in Nigritia as far as Sierra Leona and Liberia.
Before the rise of Islam, it was customary to hold in Arabia, once a-year, a national gathering, at which tribes made up their dissensions, exchanged prisoners of war, and competed with one another in extempore poetic contests. The poems which were successful were transcribed in letters of gold and suspended on the wall of the Kaaba, where they would be seen by every pilgrim who might visit the most sacred place in the country. These poems were honoured with the title of Moâllacat, or “suspended.” Seven of them have been deemed worthy of preservation, and are much admired by European students of Arabic for the beauty of the language and wild richness of the imagery. One of the prize poems was composed by the warrior and poet Antarrah, the son of a negress slave. He was so black that he was nicknamed “Gharab,” crow. When some of the members of his clan, who early embraced Islam, went as deputies to Medina to visit Mohammed, and make profession of faith on the part of their brethren, the prophet told them that the warrior whom he most desired to have seen was the Negro Antarrah.[20]
For twelve centuries the Adzan, or call to prayer, has been sounded five times a-day from every mosque in the Mohammedan world. The traveller from Fourah Bay to North-western China is startled in his sleep at early dawn by Muezzins crying aloud from their various minarets, the words “ Allahu Akbar,” &c. (God is great, &c).
These self-same words are used by Muslims of every nationality. Turks, Persians, Hindoos, Chinese, Foulahs, Mandingoes, Akus, &c., all use the same Arabic words. Now, it ought to be interesting to us to know that these words were first uttered and composed, in part, by a Negro, named Bilal.21 Sir William Muir says, “He was tall, dark, and gaunt, with Negro features and bushy hair.” He was among the earliest converts to Islam. Mohammed distinguished him as “the first-fruits of Africa”; and on account of his physical and moral qualities, appointed him the first Muezzin, or crier to prayer. After crying the Adzan, Bilal would come to the door of Mohammed and rouse him thus: “To prayer, oh, Apostle of God! to salvation.” Then Bilal would take his stand in the first row of worshippers, who used strictly to follow his example in the prayers and genuflexions.[22]
So that the forms of daily worship now used throughout the Mohammedan world were fixed by a Negro.
This distinguished man, like many other Moslem warriors, was granted landed property at Damascus, where he died, A, H, 20, aged 60 years; and where his tomb is still shown. There is not a Christian country governed by Europeans where the tomb of any Negro, whatever his merit, has been preserved for even a hundred years. The Negro came into contact with Christianity as a slave and a follower at a distance. He came into contact with Mohammedanism as a man, and often as a leader. Whatever men of other races may do, can the Negro turn contemptuously upon a religion in which he has had a part, and listen without protest to the statement of those who, while bringing him Christianity, tell him that his past has been “ blank and hopeless? “
Mohammed not only loved the Negro, but regarded Africa with peculiar interest and affection. He never spoke of any curse hanging over the country or people. When in the early years of his reform, his followers were persecuted and could get no protection in Arabia, he advised them to seek an asylum in Africa. “Yonder,” he said, pointing towards this country, “yonder lieth a country wherein no man is wronged—a land of righteousness. Depart thither; and remain until it pleaseth the Lord to open your way before you.”[23] This recalls to us Homer’s “blameless Ethiopians,” and the words of the Angel to Joseph: “Arise and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word again.”
Footnotes:
18 Moister’s Africa and the West Indies, p. 93.
19 See Observations on the Touarick Alphabet, by James Richardson.—London 1847.
20 The words, “Prayer is better than sleep,” were introduced by Bilal.
21 Chenery’s Assemblies of Hariri, vol, i, p. 318.
22 Muir’s Life of Mahomet.
23 Muir's Life of Mahomet, p. 74.
18 Moister’s Africa and the West Indies, p. 93.
19 See Observations on the Touarick Alphabet, by James Richardson.—London 1847.
20 The words, “Prayer is better than sleep,” were introduced by Bilal.
21 Chenery’s Assemblies of Hariri, vol, i, p. 318.
22 Muir’s Life of Mahomet.
23 Muir's Life of Mahomet, p. 74.
You can understand why it is then that Islam has such a hold upon the African tribes who have embraced it. They gather under the beams of the Crescent not only for religious, but for patriotic reasons; till they are not only swayed with one idea, but act as one individual. The faith becomes a part of their nationality, and is entwined with their affections. Arguments from outsiders have no weight with them. There are names and phrases which have such effect upon their minds, and so thrill them as to supersede and transcend all argument: and many of these names and phrases are names and phrases held in reverence by Christians. All the great tribes are held under the same inspiration. Europeans who speak to them speak as outsiders. They listen with the consciousness that they know things altogether hidden from the European propagandist of the Christian religion. It is impossible to ignore, even in religious matters, the fundamental distinctions of race. That theory which attributes the success of Islam in Africa to what are frequently denounced as the sensual aspects of the religion is based upon ignorance, not only of the system, but of the elementary facts of human nature. No religion could exert so powerful a sway over two hundred millions of people—of all races and climes—for more than a thousand years, which appealed chiefly to the lower passions. But in our discussion of the Mohammedan question we do not consider the theology of the system, but its anthropology: those practical features of it which affect man—the natural man, and especially the African man. And in viewing it in this manner, as we become acquainted with its history and literature, we cannot but feel a deep personal interest in the system.
Notwithstanding the copiousness of the Arabic language and its exhaustless fertility, it has no forms of expression to describe any race, which are contemptuous or insulting.
The late Professor Palmer, Arabic Professor at Cambridge, made a translation of the beautiful poems of Beha-ed-din into English, in which he ventured to degrade the language and idea of the original Arabic by using the word “Nigger” to represent the respectable and harmless word “aswad” used by the poet, which simply means “black.” These are the things in English literature which repel the Negro student. If, in modern English poetry, the word “Nigger” is the most suitable phrase by which to describe the Negro, I for one must eliminate modern English poetry from the subjects taught to Negro youth.
There is now in one of the adjoining Mohammedan villages a work in manuscript, composed in Egypt or Nubia, describing the exploits of distinguished Negroes in the early history of Mohammedanism; so that the Mohammedan youth, from the books they read, have a far better opportunity of becoming acquainted with the great men of their race than the Christian youth, and therefore of acquiring deeper self-respect, and an earnest attachment to a religion in which their own people have performed such achievements.
It is interesting to feel that the religion of Isaac and the religion of Ishmael, both having their root in Abraham, confront each other on this continent. Japheth introducing Isaac, and Shem bringing Ishmael, Ham will receive both. The moonlight of the Crescent, and the sunlight of the Cross, will dispel the darkness which has so long covered the land. The “Dark Continent “will no longer be a name of reproach for this vast peninsula, for there shall be no darkness here. Where the light from the Cross ceases to stream upon the gloom, there the beams of the Orescent will give illumination; and as the glorious orb of Christianity rises, the twilight of Islam will be lost in the greater light of the Sun of Righteousness. Thus Isaac and Ishmael will be united, and rejoice together in the faith of their common progenitor—Ibrahim Khalil Allah—Abraham, the Friend of God.
Let us now enquire what are the advantages of the Colony and the Republic over each other? Perhaps it may be well to review briefly here their financial status. I regret that I have not at present accessible the financial statistics of Liberia; but, through the kindness of the Governor-in-Chief, I am able to furnish a few facts with regard to Sierra Leone.
It is interesting and instructive to contrast the present position of Sierra Leone, as a contributor to the world’s well-being, with its position a hundred years ago, when the chief articles of export were human beings.
Notwithstanding the copiousness of the Arabic language and its exhaustless fertility, it has no forms of expression to describe any race, which are contemptuous or insulting.
The late Professor Palmer, Arabic Professor at Cambridge, made a translation of the beautiful poems of Beha-ed-din into English, in which he ventured to degrade the language and idea of the original Arabic by using the word “Nigger” to represent the respectable and harmless word “aswad” used by the poet, which simply means “black.” These are the things in English literature which repel the Negro student. If, in modern English poetry, the word “Nigger” is the most suitable phrase by which to describe the Negro, I for one must eliminate modern English poetry from the subjects taught to Negro youth.
There is now in one of the adjoining Mohammedan villages a work in manuscript, composed in Egypt or Nubia, describing the exploits of distinguished Negroes in the early history of Mohammedanism; so that the Mohammedan youth, from the books they read, have a far better opportunity of becoming acquainted with the great men of their race than the Christian youth, and therefore of acquiring deeper self-respect, and an earnest attachment to a religion in which their own people have performed such achievements.
It is interesting to feel that the religion of Isaac and the religion of Ishmael, both having their root in Abraham, confront each other on this continent. Japheth introducing Isaac, and Shem bringing Ishmael, Ham will receive both. The moonlight of the Crescent, and the sunlight of the Cross, will dispel the darkness which has so long covered the land. The “Dark Continent “will no longer be a name of reproach for this vast peninsula, for there shall be no darkness here. Where the light from the Cross ceases to stream upon the gloom, there the beams of the Orescent will give illumination; and as the glorious orb of Christianity rises, the twilight of Islam will be lost in the greater light of the Sun of Righteousness. Thus Isaac and Ishmael will be united, and rejoice together in the faith of their common progenitor—Ibrahim Khalil Allah—Abraham, the Friend of God.
Let us now enquire what are the advantages of the Colony and the Republic over each other? Perhaps it may be well to review briefly here their financial status. I regret that I have not at present accessible the financial statistics of Liberia; but, through the kindness of the Governor-in-Chief, I am able to furnish a few facts with regard to Sierra Leone.
It is interesting and instructive to contrast the present position of Sierra Leone, as a contributor to the world’s well-being, with its position a hundred years ago, when the chief articles of export were human beings.
I have mentioned the chief places out of Africa which carry on trade with Sierra Leone, and you will notice that Anglo-Saxon influence largely predominates. England and the United States together send articles to the value of £223,556 17s. 2d., while France and Germany together send only £36,430 2s. 7d., just a little over what America alone sends. Sierra Leone supplies France with produce to the value of £77,861 2s. lld., and receives in return £15,790 3s. Id.
It may be, however, that a large portion of the articles going to and coming from France and Germany are shipped via Liverpool and London; and yet there are steamers going direct from here to Hamburg and Marseilles.
Let us look now at the traffic between Sierra Leone and places on the coast.
It may be, however, that a large portion of the articles going to and coming from France and Germany are shipped via Liverpool and London; and yet there are steamers going direct from here to Hamburg and Marseilles.
Let us look now at the traffic between Sierra Leone and places on the coast.
The balance was made up from licenses and other local impositions.
The revenue for 1883 was £62,282 8s. lld., less than the revenue of the preceding year by about £3,000. The average monthly income of the colony is about £5,000. I was surprised to find that, while the revenue for January and February, 1883, was £5,658 14s. lld. and £6,359 4s. 3d. respectively, the revenue for the month of August, which is considered one of the dullest months of the year, was £7,948 3s. 7d. Only one month last year yielded less than £4,000, and that was the month of March, when the revenue was £3,969 1s. The months of January, February, May, August and December, yielded each over £5,000.
The impression to be gathered from this statement I take to be that there is a regular and steady improvement in the trade of the colony; and now, with the prospect of open roads and enlarged intercourse with the distant interior, we may safely predict that, within a comparatively brief period, the colony will be able not only to pay off its debts, but to carry on with ease many much-needed internal improvements.
The average annual expenditure for the Civil Service may be set down at about £60,000. A similar amount may be laid down as the expenditure for the Military Service. I find from the Blue Book for 1882 that the expenditure for the military was £33,829 2s. 9d. But this amount did not include--
1. The value of provisions, clothing, accoutrements, arms, ammunition and stores sent out from England.
2. The pay of regimental officers, which is paid in England.
3. The pay of departmental officers on leave.
4. The cost of passages of officers to and from England.
5. Transport of troops to and from the West Indies.
6. The whole proportionate expense of the naval squadron.
7. The Imperial grant in aid of the Colonial steamer, Prince of Wales.
The colony contributes nothing on account of its military defence.
The idea of a local force for the defence of the colony is not altogether lost sight of by the Government. Colonel Ord, the Commissioner of Inquiry on the West Coast of Africa, sent out in 1865, in his recommendations on this subject, made the following remark:--
Protected as the West Coast Settlements have been hitherto by a body of regular troops, it would not be expedient to make suddenly the experiment of confiding their security entirely to a local force, but as a sufficient number of Haussas can be organised, a reduction may be effected in the strength of the garrisons, especially of the minor settlements.
In the trade of the colony of Sierra Leone there is a large consumption of European manufactures. The most sanguine anticipations of Clarkson and Wilberforce as to the beneficial results of abolishing the slave trade have been more than realised. In the days of the slave trade England exported £1,000,000 to the whole of Africa. Now she exports one-fifth of that amount to Sierra Leone alone. For the first three years after she had abolished the slave trade, British exports for lawful trade to Africa, the Cape of Good Hope included, averaged £88,000 annually,[24] less than one-half the value of her present exports to Sierra Leone. And, even as late as 1840, the total value of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported from the United Kingdom to Sierra Leone and the coast, from the River Gambia inclusive to the River Mesurado, was only £93,640.[25]
The annual revenue of Liberia may be stated at £25,000. The sources of this revenue are—customs, import and export duties; tax on real estate one- half per cent, on the assessed value; poll-tax on all the inhabitants of one dollar per head; military fines.
Liberia, of course, makes no pretensions to defend herself against any foreign power; but she has been able, by her simple military arrangement, which is only a militia system, not only to hold her own against aboriginal aggression, but to exercise, from half-a-dozen effective settlements, along five hundred miles of coast and a considerable distance inland, a very wholesome influence. In the days of the slave trade, that little Republic succeeded in completely suppressing the external operations of that nefarious traffic.
She exercises a useful jurisdiction among the neighbouring tribes, and affords facilities for safe and peaceful traffic between the interior and the coast.
Only a few weeks ago hordes of predatory Kossohs were expelled from the region of Little Cape Mount, and their chief captured by the Liberian forces. This great warrior is now in confinement at Monrovia, awaiting trial. The actual material advantages of Sierra Leone over Liberia are that it possesses the finest harbour on the coast; that by means of the large rivers in its neighbourhood it has great facilities of intercourse with the interior; that it is protected and upheld by a strong government; that its extensive trade gives it a large revenue, and puts money in circulation. On the other hand, the advantages of Liberia are a larger area of territory; a soil of far greater fertility, and adapted to the production of every tropical article demanded by commerce; a population thrown, in the earlier stages of their growth, upon their own resources, and therefore possessed of greater self-reliance and individual independence. If Sierra Leone can count more English sovereigns, Liberia can count broader acres. If Sierra Leone can boast of a more extensive commerce, Liberia may be proud of its larger agriculture. It is, perhaps, natural that those who are able to entertain such angels as are stamped at the Royal Mint should have a good opinion of themselves; but they must not be surprised if those who are able to sit under the vine and fig- tree of their own planting are disposed to think rather highly of their own advantages.
In the moral, and even political, possibilities of the two countries, I do not see that one has any advantage over the other. The possibilities of Sierra Leone, in one direction, may be limited and defined by the regulations for Crown Colonies; in another, those possibilities are boundless. The limitations imposed in one direction need not be dwelt upon, when we consider that the possible achievements in the other case are, as I have pointed out, real ethnic or race independence and commercial ascendancy in this part of the continent. There need not be, between the Sierra Leoneans and Liberians, any present or prospective jealousy. That community of the two, will, in the long run, rule more widely which rules more wisely; and superior energy, enterprise and skill will carry off the advantages of trade, and draw the prizes from the interior.
The true policy of Liberia is to direct its energies to the improvement of internal administration, both of the country and general governments, to the extension of education, and to the development of the vast natural resources. The same, mutatis mutandis, seems to be the proper policy of Sierra Leone. The slow growth of capital is the great drawback of Liberia; the drawback of Sierra Leone is the frequent changing of rulers, which it seems the necessities of the colonial service, not to say the perils of this climate, require.
Now, what guarantee have we that these two countries will bo allowed to grow and develop on their own line?
It has been predicted that the Negro race will die out of Africa. Within three hundred years, we have been told, there will not be a Negro left. The suggestion has been made to supersede them by Chinese. Winwood Reade, in closing his book on Savage Africa, draws a brilliant picture of the future of this country when Europeans, or their descendants, shall occupy the great centres of the Niger. In the amiable task of spreading civilisation over Africa, the natives may be exterminated.
But (says Mr. Reade) a grateful posterity will cherish their memories. When the cockneys of Timbuctoo have their tea-gardens in the oases of the Sahara; when hotels and guide-books are established at the sources of the Nile; when it becomes fashionable to go yachting on the lakes of the Great Plateau; when noblemen, building seats in Central Africa, will have their elephant parks and their hippopotami waters; young ladies on camp stool, under palm-trees, will read with tears—The Last of the Negroes; and the Niger will become as romantic a river as the Rhine.[26]
It is a curious thing that, notwithstanding the experience of thousands of years, men seem so slow to learn that in forming plans for carrying out their theories as regards countries and races —especially as regards this country and this race—there are certain invisible barriers that confront them like the angel in the path of Balaam, which cannot be descried by the most piercing sagacity, and which therefore cannot be taken into their most careful calculations. It was a solemn and suggestive piece of advice that one of the Roman rulers, in his last moments, gave when he warned his people against attempting the invasion of Africa.
No earnest effort yet made by foreigners to take possession of this continent has ever met with permanent success. Something has always happened to divert them from their purpose. Persians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans, have all tried, and failed. Alexander the Great, conqueror of Europe and a great part of Asia, sat down, in a fit of despondency, and wept for worlds to conquer.
But here was Africa, with her vast territory and teeming population. He tried his energy and skill in a small section of the country. But after his famous journey to the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, he looked only askance at this magnificent field for military exploits--
Nor felt the joy that warriors feel
In foemen worthy of their steel.
When, in modern times, Portugal had magnificent schemes for the colonisation and occupation of Africa, and had built up extensive establishments, her attention was called away by the discovery of America and the demand for labour in that new country. The spirit, strength, and influence of her African enterprises received a check from which she has never since recovered. Her extensive colonies were lost, and dwindled into marts for carrying on the slave trade.
The desire of the French to own large possessions in Africa, is no new idea born of the teachings or inspired by the discoveries of Livingstone and Stanley. No; near the close of the last century, or in the beginning of this, France had large plans for possessing Africa. The plan of Talleyrand and of the first Napoleon was to make Africa the great field for cultivating tropical produce, and this cultivation was to be carried on by means of the native population. But the ambition of Napoleon diverted his energies to European wars, and finally he was confined a prisoner to an African island—sorry ending this of his magnificent schemes of occupation. Instead of holding Africa, a small sea-girt rock near Africa held him till his death. But his plans are not yet lost sight of by the French. They have vast schemes for taking charge of Senegambia, and controlling the trade of the Upper Niger, and have made large expenditure in that direction; but, after years of preparation and effort, their energies are at this moment diverted to other regions. And I have not the slightest doubt, judging from the past, that when the efforts now making on the Congo become serious and really threatening to the true interests of the people., some unseen emergency—some distant or neighbouring complications—will draw them off, and another generation will have to-wrestle anew with the African problem. It may be said that the facts I have referred to are mere accident, and that it is superstitious to base conclusions upon fortuitous circumstances. Well, African students of history must be excused—in view of the hard lot of the race—if they are disposed to attach significance to any event, or concourse of events, which indicates the future preservation of their people.
But besides the invisible agencies, there is another guarantee against future oppression of the tribes of this country by foreigners, and that lies in the progress of liberal sentiments in Europe. England, which, in the extent and power of her sway, resembles the Roman Empire, is careful of her proceedings in dealing with Africa. The rising elements of power in that great country are transferring their political homage from tradition to principles, from men or families to rights and duties, from the privileges of the few to universal justice and right. “Rescue and retire” is the modern principle of intervention. And this will be the motto in future of all England’s operations in Africa. It should be, and no doubt ere long will be, inscribed upon the banners of all organisations, whether political or philanthropic, at work in Africa.
In conclusion, I may remark that these two countries may be said to represent the true principle or method by which civilisation is to be introduced into Africa. There is no part of West Africa where the openings and opportunities for introducing civilisation and Christianity into this continent are greater than these contiguous states present. The attractions which they offer to the efforts of the philanthropist and African Colonisationist (in the American sense of that phrase) are not without just grounds. For whether we look to the origin and purpose of these settlements, or to their bearing upon the future civil and religious condition of these tribes, or to the influence they have already exerted upon thousands, it is scarcely possible to estimate too highly their importance to the continent as inlets of wholesome impressions from without, or to Europe and America as outlets of a valuable commerce. While they will gather—when the proper policy is pursued by the respective governments—into their bosom, as into a capacious gulf, the main streams, and even the lesser tributaries, of a commerce which only for want of proper facilities has poured its treasures into other regions, they will send up those streams by the returning tide the lessons and principles of order and law, of religion and liberty, of science, literature, and art. And it is not difficult to predict the effect of all this upon the general interests of civilisation, upon the welfare of the Negro race, and upon the great cause of humanity.
The revenue for 1883 was £62,282 8s. lld., less than the revenue of the preceding year by about £3,000. The average monthly income of the colony is about £5,000. I was surprised to find that, while the revenue for January and February, 1883, was £5,658 14s. lld. and £6,359 4s. 3d. respectively, the revenue for the month of August, which is considered one of the dullest months of the year, was £7,948 3s. 7d. Only one month last year yielded less than £4,000, and that was the month of March, when the revenue was £3,969 1s. The months of January, February, May, August and December, yielded each over £5,000.
The impression to be gathered from this statement I take to be that there is a regular and steady improvement in the trade of the colony; and now, with the prospect of open roads and enlarged intercourse with the distant interior, we may safely predict that, within a comparatively brief period, the colony will be able not only to pay off its debts, but to carry on with ease many much-needed internal improvements.
The average annual expenditure for the Civil Service may be set down at about £60,000. A similar amount may be laid down as the expenditure for the Military Service. I find from the Blue Book for 1882 that the expenditure for the military was £33,829 2s. 9d. But this amount did not include--
1. The value of provisions, clothing, accoutrements, arms, ammunition and stores sent out from England.
2. The pay of regimental officers, which is paid in England.
3. The pay of departmental officers on leave.
4. The cost of passages of officers to and from England.
5. Transport of troops to and from the West Indies.
6. The whole proportionate expense of the naval squadron.
7. The Imperial grant in aid of the Colonial steamer, Prince of Wales.
The colony contributes nothing on account of its military defence.
The idea of a local force for the defence of the colony is not altogether lost sight of by the Government. Colonel Ord, the Commissioner of Inquiry on the West Coast of Africa, sent out in 1865, in his recommendations on this subject, made the following remark:--
Protected as the West Coast Settlements have been hitherto by a body of regular troops, it would not be expedient to make suddenly the experiment of confiding their security entirely to a local force, but as a sufficient number of Haussas can be organised, a reduction may be effected in the strength of the garrisons, especially of the minor settlements.
In the trade of the colony of Sierra Leone there is a large consumption of European manufactures. The most sanguine anticipations of Clarkson and Wilberforce as to the beneficial results of abolishing the slave trade have been more than realised. In the days of the slave trade England exported £1,000,000 to the whole of Africa. Now she exports one-fifth of that amount to Sierra Leone alone. For the first three years after she had abolished the slave trade, British exports for lawful trade to Africa, the Cape of Good Hope included, averaged £88,000 annually,[24] less than one-half the value of her present exports to Sierra Leone. And, even as late as 1840, the total value of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported from the United Kingdom to Sierra Leone and the coast, from the River Gambia inclusive to the River Mesurado, was only £93,640.[25]
The annual revenue of Liberia may be stated at £25,000. The sources of this revenue are—customs, import and export duties; tax on real estate one- half per cent, on the assessed value; poll-tax on all the inhabitants of one dollar per head; military fines.
Liberia, of course, makes no pretensions to defend herself against any foreign power; but she has been able, by her simple military arrangement, which is only a militia system, not only to hold her own against aboriginal aggression, but to exercise, from half-a-dozen effective settlements, along five hundred miles of coast and a considerable distance inland, a very wholesome influence. In the days of the slave trade, that little Republic succeeded in completely suppressing the external operations of that nefarious traffic.
She exercises a useful jurisdiction among the neighbouring tribes, and affords facilities for safe and peaceful traffic between the interior and the coast.
Only a few weeks ago hordes of predatory Kossohs were expelled from the region of Little Cape Mount, and their chief captured by the Liberian forces. This great warrior is now in confinement at Monrovia, awaiting trial. The actual material advantages of Sierra Leone over Liberia are that it possesses the finest harbour on the coast; that by means of the large rivers in its neighbourhood it has great facilities of intercourse with the interior; that it is protected and upheld by a strong government; that its extensive trade gives it a large revenue, and puts money in circulation. On the other hand, the advantages of Liberia are a larger area of territory; a soil of far greater fertility, and adapted to the production of every tropical article demanded by commerce; a population thrown, in the earlier stages of their growth, upon their own resources, and therefore possessed of greater self-reliance and individual independence. If Sierra Leone can count more English sovereigns, Liberia can count broader acres. If Sierra Leone can boast of a more extensive commerce, Liberia may be proud of its larger agriculture. It is, perhaps, natural that those who are able to entertain such angels as are stamped at the Royal Mint should have a good opinion of themselves; but they must not be surprised if those who are able to sit under the vine and fig- tree of their own planting are disposed to think rather highly of their own advantages.
In the moral, and even political, possibilities of the two countries, I do not see that one has any advantage over the other. The possibilities of Sierra Leone, in one direction, may be limited and defined by the regulations for Crown Colonies; in another, those possibilities are boundless. The limitations imposed in one direction need not be dwelt upon, when we consider that the possible achievements in the other case are, as I have pointed out, real ethnic or race independence and commercial ascendancy in this part of the continent. There need not be, between the Sierra Leoneans and Liberians, any present or prospective jealousy. That community of the two, will, in the long run, rule more widely which rules more wisely; and superior energy, enterprise and skill will carry off the advantages of trade, and draw the prizes from the interior.
The true policy of Liberia is to direct its energies to the improvement of internal administration, both of the country and general governments, to the extension of education, and to the development of the vast natural resources. The same, mutatis mutandis, seems to be the proper policy of Sierra Leone. The slow growth of capital is the great drawback of Liberia; the drawback of Sierra Leone is the frequent changing of rulers, which it seems the necessities of the colonial service, not to say the perils of this climate, require.
Now, what guarantee have we that these two countries will bo allowed to grow and develop on their own line?
It has been predicted that the Negro race will die out of Africa. Within three hundred years, we have been told, there will not be a Negro left. The suggestion has been made to supersede them by Chinese. Winwood Reade, in closing his book on Savage Africa, draws a brilliant picture of the future of this country when Europeans, or their descendants, shall occupy the great centres of the Niger. In the amiable task of spreading civilisation over Africa, the natives may be exterminated.
But (says Mr. Reade) a grateful posterity will cherish their memories. When the cockneys of Timbuctoo have their tea-gardens in the oases of the Sahara; when hotels and guide-books are established at the sources of the Nile; when it becomes fashionable to go yachting on the lakes of the Great Plateau; when noblemen, building seats in Central Africa, will have their elephant parks and their hippopotami waters; young ladies on camp stool, under palm-trees, will read with tears—The Last of the Negroes; and the Niger will become as romantic a river as the Rhine.[26]
It is a curious thing that, notwithstanding the experience of thousands of years, men seem so slow to learn that in forming plans for carrying out their theories as regards countries and races —especially as regards this country and this race—there are certain invisible barriers that confront them like the angel in the path of Balaam, which cannot be descried by the most piercing sagacity, and which therefore cannot be taken into their most careful calculations. It was a solemn and suggestive piece of advice that one of the Roman rulers, in his last moments, gave when he warned his people against attempting the invasion of Africa.
No earnest effort yet made by foreigners to take possession of this continent has ever met with permanent success. Something has always happened to divert them from their purpose. Persians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans, have all tried, and failed. Alexander the Great, conqueror of Europe and a great part of Asia, sat down, in a fit of despondency, and wept for worlds to conquer.
But here was Africa, with her vast territory and teeming population. He tried his energy and skill in a small section of the country. But after his famous journey to the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, he looked only askance at this magnificent field for military exploits--
Nor felt the joy that warriors feel
In foemen worthy of their steel.
When, in modern times, Portugal had magnificent schemes for the colonisation and occupation of Africa, and had built up extensive establishments, her attention was called away by the discovery of America and the demand for labour in that new country. The spirit, strength, and influence of her African enterprises received a check from which she has never since recovered. Her extensive colonies were lost, and dwindled into marts for carrying on the slave trade.
The desire of the French to own large possessions in Africa, is no new idea born of the teachings or inspired by the discoveries of Livingstone and Stanley. No; near the close of the last century, or in the beginning of this, France had large plans for possessing Africa. The plan of Talleyrand and of the first Napoleon was to make Africa the great field for cultivating tropical produce, and this cultivation was to be carried on by means of the native population. But the ambition of Napoleon diverted his energies to European wars, and finally he was confined a prisoner to an African island—sorry ending this of his magnificent schemes of occupation. Instead of holding Africa, a small sea-girt rock near Africa held him till his death. But his plans are not yet lost sight of by the French. They have vast schemes for taking charge of Senegambia, and controlling the trade of the Upper Niger, and have made large expenditure in that direction; but, after years of preparation and effort, their energies are at this moment diverted to other regions. And I have not the slightest doubt, judging from the past, that when the efforts now making on the Congo become serious and really threatening to the true interests of the people., some unseen emergency—some distant or neighbouring complications—will draw them off, and another generation will have to-wrestle anew with the African problem. It may be said that the facts I have referred to are mere accident, and that it is superstitious to base conclusions upon fortuitous circumstances. Well, African students of history must be excused—in view of the hard lot of the race—if they are disposed to attach significance to any event, or concourse of events, which indicates the future preservation of their people.
But besides the invisible agencies, there is another guarantee against future oppression of the tribes of this country by foreigners, and that lies in the progress of liberal sentiments in Europe. England, which, in the extent and power of her sway, resembles the Roman Empire, is careful of her proceedings in dealing with Africa. The rising elements of power in that great country are transferring their political homage from tradition to principles, from men or families to rights and duties, from the privileges of the few to universal justice and right. “Rescue and retire” is the modern principle of intervention. And this will be the motto in future of all England’s operations in Africa. It should be, and no doubt ere long will be, inscribed upon the banners of all organisations, whether political or philanthropic, at work in Africa.
In conclusion, I may remark that these two countries may be said to represent the true principle or method by which civilisation is to be introduced into Africa. There is no part of West Africa where the openings and opportunities for introducing civilisation and Christianity into this continent are greater than these contiguous states present. The attractions which they offer to the efforts of the philanthropist and African Colonisationist (in the American sense of that phrase) are not without just grounds. For whether we look to the origin and purpose of these settlements, or to their bearing upon the future civil and religious condition of these tribes, or to the influence they have already exerted upon thousands, it is scarcely possible to estimate too highly their importance to the continent as inlets of wholesome impressions from without, or to Europe and America as outlets of a valuable commerce. While they will gather—when the proper policy is pursued by the respective governments—into their bosom, as into a capacious gulf, the main streams, and even the lesser tributaries, of a commerce which only for want of proper facilities has poured its treasures into other regions, they will send up those streams by the returning tide the lessons and principles of order and law, of religion and liberty, of science, literature, and art. And it is not difficult to predict the effect of all this upon the general interests of civilisation, upon the welfare of the Negro race, and upon the great cause of humanity.
Footnotes:
24 McQueen’s Commercial View of Africa.
25 Report from the Select Parliamentary Committee on the West Coast of Africa, 1842; part ii, p.
509.
26 Reade’s Savage Africa, p. 587.
24 McQueen’s Commercial View of Africa.
25 Report from the Select Parliamentary Committee on the West Coast of Africa, 1842; part ii, p.
509.
26 Reade’s Savage Africa, p. 587.
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