172

Annual Report of the N. Y. State Col. Society.

[June,

We have called Governor Roberts | application for citizenship, and to be idena Christian governor, for such intified with us in laws and government.” the judgment of charity it seems. "These facts, and this testimony of he is. The Corresponding Secre- disinterested persons, which might tary of your Society wrote to Gov-be extended indefinitely, certainly ernor Roberts, inquiring whether he show that Liberia is in a healthful and was a member of any Christian prosperous condition at present, and church, and stating that he, (the Se- that it promises well for the future. cretary,) had received from a gentle- We actually behold what Pitt thought man in Canandaigua, a silver cup, would come to pass, when, thirty to be presented to the church in Li- years ago, in his great speech in Parberia in which Governor Roberts liament on the slave trade, he said: " worshiped. In answer to this, the governor replies as follows:

"We may live to behold the natives of Af rica engaged in the calm occupation of industry, in the pursuits of just and legitimate commerce. We may behold the beams of land, which at some happy period, in still science and philosophy breaking in upon that later times, may blaze with full lustre, and gion, may illuminate and invigorate the joining their influence to that of pure reli

most distant extremities of that immense continent."

"I am happy to be able to inform you that I have long been a member of the M. E. Church, (upwards of 16 years,) and have not failed to find support and consolation in the religion of Christ, and the promises of the Gospel. I beg that you will present my acknowledgments to the donor of the cup to be presented to the church in Liberia in which I worship. It will no doubt be gratefully accepted by the church, and will be to me a remem-results-the triumphant success of brance of my friends in the United States, and remind me of the obligations I am under to God and my fellow men, and that I must give an account to the Great Governor of the universe for my stewardship

here."

In his message to the colonial legislature, when referring to the treaties which he had made with the surrounding tribes during the year, he remarks:

"These treaties will have the effect of bringing the natives into a closer connexion with the colony-cause them to identify our interests with their own, and will no doubt ultimately have the happy effect of drawing them from their present condition of heathenism and idolatry to the blessings of civilization and Christianity. Tribes far beyond us are now making

It is not wonderful that the actual

colonization, should now begin to react with power on the popular mind in this country, and secure the enlightened confidence and liberal patronage of the community.

Apart from this enterprise, have all the interest, excitement and efforts in this country in reference to the colored race effected any thing that will compare with the indisputable results of colonization ?

"What, then, has colonization done? It has laid the foundation of an empire in the commonwealth of Liberia. There it is-on the coast of Africa, a little north of the equator, in the central regions of African barbarism, and of the slave trade. There are four colonies and twelve Christain settlements, dotting a coast of about 300 miles,

extending their domain, by fair negotiation, back into the interior and along the Atlantic shore, the whole incorporated into a federal republic, after the model of our own,

with like institutions, civil, literary, and religious, and composed of Africans and descendants of Africans, most of whom were emancipated from bondage in this country for the purpose, some of whom were recaptured from slave ships, and a small part of whom are adopted natives that have come in to join them. There is Christian civilization and the government of law; there is a civil jurisprudence and polity; there are courts and magistrates, judges and lawyers; there are numerous Christian churches, well supplied with ministers of the gospel; there are schools, public libraries, and a respectable system of public education; there is a public press and two journals, one monthly, and one semi-monthly; there are rising towns and villages; there are the useful trades and mechanic arts, a productive agriculture and increasing commerce; in their harbors are to be found ships trading with Europe and America, and the exports are increasing from year year; and all this the creation of somewhat less than twenty years-an achievement of which there is no parallel in history. Not one of the first settlements of our own country, at the north or south, ever accomplished so much in so short a time;

to

extinction of the slave trade was never so apparent nor so promising as at the present time. In his last letter Gov. Roberts 1emarks:-" Nothing particularly interesting has occurred since my return from the U.S. excepting that a few weeks ago I succeeded in breaking up a slave establishment near little Cape Mount and liberated four slaves, lads from 12 to 15years of age, who have been placed in the families of colonists." And if he has succeeded, as we suppose he has, in purchasing the territory of New Sesters, then the slave trade is completely annihilated between the two extremes of colonial jurisdiction! It is striking to observe how the popular mind both in this country and Great Britain is losing confidence in the efficiency of armed squadrons traffic. The British and foreign antion the seas to suppress this infamous slavery society has petitioned Parliament to discontinue an armed force for the suppression of the slave trade, on the well ascertained ground that the evils and horrors of transporting slaves are greatly increased by it,while the numbers annually transported are by no means diminished. Capt. Harris, who was sent to Africa and charged especially by the British government to investigate the matter and report the best method of extinguishing the slave trade, gives it as his deliberate conviction and his matured, decided opinion, that the remedy lies not in armed squadrons on the seas, but must be one of a kind that can be applied to Africa herself. He The bearing of colonization on the declares, in the most unequivocal

not one of them that did not suffer more in

its early history by sickness, and famine, and war, and other disasters incident to colonization. In a word, they constitute the germ of a rising and prosperous, and peradventure, of a mighty empire. And, though last, yet not least, they have done more for the suppression of the slave trade than Great Britain with her Spanish treaty, and all the world put together. They have done much in this cause; they began the right way; while all else that has been done, by all the world, is literally worse than nothing. And these deeds are the product-the work of the American Cofonization Society."

terms, that the slave trade can never be abolished while the barbarous and pagan spirit of Africa herself is in its favor. The only remedy which he thinks at all adapted to remove the evil is the civilization and Christianization of the native Africans themselves! The very work which colonization is not only adapted to effect but is now actually and rapidly effecting.

great remedy for the slave trade, the barbarism and all the overgrown, gigantic evils that have so long burnt in their curses on seared and bleeding Africa.

And now may we not in conclusion, in view of the actual results and unask whether the friends of colonizaparalleled success of the enterprise, tion have ever had so great reason as at present to congratulate themselves, that through discouragements, opposition and conflict, they have steadily

Some of the British journals are entering warmly into Capt. Harris's views on this subject, and are show-adhered to this cause and labored and ing the enormous expenditure of sustaining a squadron on the African coast, and its utter incapability of effecting the object contemplated. The conviction is growing, even in the minds of irreligious men, that if Africa is to be saved from the ravages and perpetual desolations of slavery and the slave trade, it must be by pervading her with the institutions of civilization and Christianity. The benefits of these institutions our colonies at Liberia have not only conferred on some fifteen or twenty thousand of the natives contiguous to them, but have extended some knowledge of them, and waked up a spirit of inquiry and a desire for improvement through a distance of more than two hundred miles into the interior. It requires no prophetic gift to predict that the time is not far distant when the enlightened patriots, philanthropists and Christians of all countries will direct their attention to colonization in connection with Christian missions as the

prayed for its promotion? Their most sanguine hopes respecting it are this day more than realized. It is no matter of surprise that the confidence and patronage of an enlightened community are returning and increasing upon this enterprise. Without instituting any invidious comparison, may we not ask whether there is any benevolent scheme of the age so comprehensive of good, and so multiform in its benign relations and bearings on the best interests of aggrieved and oppressed humanity? It furnishes the proscribed, disfranchised colored man of this country, an asylum where he enjoys the social equality, the civil immunities, and the political rights and privileges of a citizen in a wise and well-ordered republican government, and where he has all those appliances for the development of his intellect, and all those lures to his hopes of eminence and distinction, which, under God, have made such men as Gov. Roberts, Judge Bene

[Reported for the African Repository.]

Annual Meeting of the New York Colonization Society.
THE thirteenth anniversary of the New || Rev. Dr. Cone read the 35th chapter of
York Colonization Society was held on
Wednesday evening, May 7, in the Rev.
Dr. Mason's Church, Bleeker street, N. Y.