his tour, with respect to obtaining general evidence, than in any other of the same length; and the probability was, that, as I should continue to move among the same kind of people, my success would be in a similar proportion according to the number visited. These were great encouragements to me to proceed. At length, I arrived at the place of my last hope. On my first day's expedition I boarded forty vessels, but found no one in these, who had been on the coast of Africa in the slave-trade. One or two had been there in king's ships; but they had never been on shore. Things were now drawing near to a close; and, notwithstanding my success as to general evidence in this journey, my heart began to beat. I was restless and uneasy during the night. The next morning, I felt agitated again between the alternate pressure of hope and fear; and in this state I entered my boat. The fiftyseventh vessel, which I boarded in this harbour, was the Melampus frigate. One person belonging to it, on examining him in the captain's cabin, said he had been two voyages to Africa; and I had not long discoursed with him, before I found, to my inexpressible joy, that he was the man. I found, too, that he unravelled the question in dispute precisely as our inferences had determined it. He had been two expeditions up the river Calabar in the canoes of the natives. In the first of these, they came within a certain distance of a village. They then concealed themselves under the bushes, which hung over the water from the banks. In this position they remained during day-light. But at night they went up to it armed; and seized all the inhabitants, who had not time to make their escape. They obtainedforty-five persons in this manner. In the second they were out eight or nine days; when they made a similar attempt, and with nearly similar success. They seized men, women, and children, as they could find them in the huts. They then bound their arms, and drove them before them to the canoes. The name of the person, thus discovered on board the Melampus, was Isaac Parker. On inquiring into his character from the master of the division, I found it highly respectable. I found also afterwards, that he had sailed with Captain Cook; with great credit to himself, round the world. It was also remarkable that my brother, on seeing him in London, when he went to deliver his evidence, recognised him as having served on board the Monarch man-of-war, and as one of the most exemplary men in that ship. "I returned now in triumph, I had been out only three weeks, and I had found out this extraordinary person, and five respectable witnesses besides." No evidence could be more decisive than this, and none was ever given more clearly, circumstantially, and unexceptionably. The plea set up against it was that the planters had produced persons in high life as witnesses, whereas the abolitionists had been obliged to take up with men of the lowest character, and their contrasted with the Admirals on the other side of the question!! "It is the 'glory of the English law, says Mr. Clarkson, that it has no scale of veracity which it adapts to persons according to the station which they may be found to occupy in life. In our courts of law the poor are heard as well as the rich, and if their reputation be fair, and they stand proof against the cross examinations they undergo, both the judge and jury must determine the matter in dispute by their evidence. But the House of Commons were now called upon by our opponents to adopt the preposterous maxim of attaching falsehood to poverty, or of weighing truth by the standard of rank and riches." common seamen was No evidence availed, no elo. resist the artifices and influence of quence, no demonstration could the party who were interested in the continuance of these enormities. In 1794, Clarkson retired from his labours with a constitution which seemed at the time to be utterly destroyed by his unremitting and unparalleled exertions. "As far as I myself was concerned, all exertion was then over. The ner vous system was almost shattered to pieces. Both my memory and hearing failed me. Sudden dizziness seized my head. A confused singing in the ears followed me, wherever I went. On going to bed the very stairs seemed to dance and down under me, so that, up misplacing my foot I sometimes fell. Talking, too, if it continued but half an hour, exhausted me, so that profuse perspirations followed; and the same effect was produced even by an active exertion of the mind for the like time. These disorders had been brought on by degrees in consequence of the severe labours necessarily attached to the promotion of the cause. For seven years I had a correspondence to maintain with four hundred persons with my own hand. I had some book or other annually to write in behalf of the cause. In this time I had travelled more than thirty five thousand miles in search of evidence, and a great part of these journeys in the night. All this time my mind had been on the stretch. It had been bent too to this one subject; for I had not even leisure to attend to my own concerns. The various instances of barbarity, which had come successively to my knowledge within this period, had vexed, harassed, and afflicted it. The wound, which these had produced, was rendered still deeper by those cruel disappointments before related, which arose from the reiterated refusal of persons to give their testimony, after I had travelled hundreds of miles in quest of them. But the severest stroke was that inflicted by the persecution, begun and pursued by persons interested in the continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had been examined against them, and whom, on account of their dependent situation in life, it was most easy to oppress. As I had been the means of bringing these forward on these occasions, they naturally came to me, when thus persecuted, as the author of their miseries and their ruin. From their supplications and wants it would have been ungenerous and ungrateful to have fled. These different circumstances, by acting together, had at length brought me into the situation just mentioned; and I was therefore obliged, though very reluctantly, to be borne out of the field, where I had placed the great honour and glory of my life." The trade went on, motion after motion was made without any immediate effect: meantime the West India merchants began to find that they had complaints; that the arguments adduced by their adversaries on the score of policy were but too true, and that it was their interest, especially after the cession of Trinidad, to have the trade aboIsihed. That ministry came into power, which will always be remembered with respect and gratitude for having destroyed this traffic abroad, and introduced the system of limited service into the army at home. Mr. Fox did not live to see this great measure of the abolition accomplished, but it was one of the last acts of his public life to pledge the House of Commons to take effectual measures for it, the hofor Lord Grenville,-never has it nour of effecting it was reserved before him to confer so great a fallen to the lot of any statesman benefit upon mankind. Through life, and in the hour of death, this will be his consolation and his joy; and by this he will be remembered, and for this he will be blest, long after all other actions of his political ference, or be forgotten. career shall be regarded with indif man, to the Quakers as a collective To Mr. Wilberforce as a public body, and to Thomas Clarkson as the prime mover, England and Africa are indebted for this deliverance from this enormous evil. Never let man despair of bringing virtuous undertakings to happy end, however inadequate the means may appear wherewith it is commenced. 149 ART. IX. Report of the Committee of the African Institution, read to the General Meeting on the 15th July, 1807, together with the Rules and Regulations which were then adopted for the Government of the Society. 8vo. pp. 78. AS soon as the great measure of the abolition of the slave trade had been effected, a society calling itself the African Institution, was formed by those persons who had been most instrumental in deliver. ing their country from the guilt and infamy of that detestable traffic. The members professing themselves to be deeply impressed with a sense of the enormous wrongs which the natives of Africa have suffered in their intercourse with Europe, and desirous to repair those wrongs by adopting such measures as are best calculated to promote their civilization and happiness, explain in these words what are the objects for which they have associated. "To prevent misconception concerning the views and measures of the African Institution, it may be proper in the very first instance to declare, that it is the Society's fixed determination not to undertake any religious missions, and not to engage in commercial speculations. The Society is aware that there already exist several most respectable institutions formed for the diffusion of christianity, and means not to encroach on their province. It may also be proper to premise, that it will naturally become the duty and care of this Society, to watch over the execution of the laws, recently enacted in this and other countries, for abolishing the African slavetrade; to endeavour to prevent the infraction of those laws; and from time to time to suggest any means by which they may be rendered more effectual to their objects; and likewise to endeavour, by communicating information, and by other appropriate methods, to promote the abolition of the African slave-trade by foreign powers. "The means which it is proposed to employ for the purpose of promoting civilization and improvement in Africa are of the following kind. "1. To collect and diffuse, throughout this country, accurate information respecting the natural productions of Africa, and, in general, respecting the agricultural and commercial capacities of the African continent, and the intellectual, moral, and political condition of its inhabitants. "2. To promote the instruction of the Africans in letters and in useful knowledge, and to cultivate a friendly connection with the natives of that continent. "3. To endeavour to enlighten the minds of the Africans with respect to their true interests; and to diffuse information amongst them respecting the means whereby they may improve the present opportunity of substituting a beneficial commerce in place of the slave-trade. "4. To introduce amongst them such of the improvements and useful arts of Europe as are suited to their condition. "5. To promote the cultivation of the African soil, not only by exciting and directing the industry of the natives, but by furnishing, where it may appear advantageous to do so, useful seeds and plants, and implements of husbandry. "6. To introduce amongst the inhabitants beneficial medical discoveries. "7. To obain a knowledge of the principal languages of Africa, and, as has already been found to be practicable, to reduce them to writing, with a view to facilitate the diffusion of information among the natives of that country. "8. To employ suitable agents and to establish correspondences as shall appear adviseable, and to encourage and reward individual enterprize and exertion in promoting any of the purposes of the institution." The plan of this Institution neither includes conversion, nor colonization. The first of these important objects may best be left to other societies expressly embodied for the purpose, the other to go vernment. The days of private enterprize of this kind are over for awhile, the disastrous expedition of Bulama, and the loss of capital at Sierra Leone being too fresh in remembrance. Yet it has been clearly shown by Captain Beaver, that the first of these attempts failed only from the grossest mismanage ment and stupidity, and though the capital at Sierra Leone has been lost, the circumstances which proved so ruinous to that colony, could not have been foreseen at its establishment, and are not likely to occur hereafter, and much has actually been effected. "The experience of the Sierra Leone Company presents to us nothing but encouragement. The possibility of introducing agriculture, innocent commerce, and other means of civilization into Africa, if it could reasonably have been doubted before, is established by what that company has actually effected, notwithstanding what it has failed to accomplish. It has shewn that not only provisions, but the various articles of export which we now bring from the West Indies, may be raised on the African coast. It has demonstrated that negroes in a state of freedom may be induced to labour in the field. It has proved that the native chiefs may be made to understand such views as our institution wishes to impress upon them. And above all it has shewn, that the grand obstacle to their heartily embracing those views has been the continuance of the slave-trade. "The colony of Sierra Leone can also attest, that free negroes are capable of being governed by mild laws, and require neither whips nor chains to inforce their submission to civil authority. If a spirit of insubordination appeared for a time in that colony, it was under circum stances which would in more polished societies have produced much stronger effects. The government was long des titute even of any lawful authority to punish crimes, and never possessed a military force which could overawe the turbulent. Yet if the course of events at Sierra Leone be compared with the con duct of the first European settlers in the Antilles and on the American continent, whether English, French, or Spaniards, the result will be highly advantageous to the African character. "Nor has the Sierra Leone company furnished us with matter of encouragement alone, but also with highly important means for the execution of our purposes. In their colony, now about to be taken under the immediate care of government, there is a basis upon which we may proceed at once to build. In that centrical part of the great African continent, schools may be maintained, useful arts may be taught, and an emporium of commerce be established, by those whom our patronage may animate, or our information enable, to engage in such undertakings. There, native agents may be found, and the African languages acquired. From thence, travellers may diverge on their journeys of discovery, and there the scattered rays of informa tion from the interior may be collected. Nor is it a small advance towards our ultimate purpose to have a secure and convenient station already provided on the coast, with copious means both of defence and subsistence. But a still higher advantage, deriv. ed from the labours of the Sierra Leone Company is, that the principles upon which we proceed, and the objects which we aim to accomplish, will not, in that important part of Africa, excite either surprize or distrust. The greatest of all obstacles perhaps to the civilization of the natives of Africa by European means, would be the diffidence in our intentions which they might reasonably entertain. A poor negro might well conceive that a white man could have no other design, in courting his acquaintance, than to make a slave of him, and carry him from the coast. But the experience of fifteen years has now convinced the inhabitants of at least that part of the continent which is in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, that benevolence and good faith may really reside under a white complexion; that there are Englishmen who abhor the slave-trade, and who, far from kidnapping the merchant or labourer who puts himself in their power, desire nothing but his improvement and happiness. "Nor can it be supposed that the nowledge of this surprizing fact is confined to the immediate vicinity of Sierra Leone. Its novelty has no doubt caused it to be known in more distant countries so that Englishmen who may now solicit a commercial intercourse, even with a people of a country considerably remote from that settlement, may gain credit for their real purpose, and not be suspected of meditating violence and fraud under the mask of fair professions. "It is probable that no experience, much short of that term which has elapsed since the settlement of Sierra Leone, would have sufficed to produce this consequence; and the progress of conviction may have been aided even by the perseverance of the company under its misfortunes. "Your committee, when it adds this last important advantage to the rest, is inclined to hope, that the losses of the company may yet be largely compensated to the feelings of the proprietors, by the permanent good effects of their la bours. They have laid, it may be hoped, a deep and necessary foundation, which the wisdom of government and parliament will preserve, and on which, when the slave-trade ceases, the benevolence and the commercial industry of individuals will find it easy to build." Here the society have resolved to engage teachers of the Arabic and Susoo languages, to institute periodical examinations, and to distribute medals or other honorary rewards in cases of extraordinary proficiency. The Susoo is spoken very generally on the coast for about 150 miles to the northward of Sierra Leone; it is understood by a great part of the Foulah and Mandingo nations, and is the vernacular tongue of the country of Jalonkadoo, a large kingdom in the moun tains of which the Niger is supposed to rise. The language therefore is spoken over a space of eight hundred or a thousand square miles. Mr. Brunton the missionary, has reduced it to writing, he resided for some years among the Susoos, and was assisted in his task by some youths of that nation, who had been and easy. duly instructed in this, in Arabic and in English, say the society, might be employed as schoolmas ters in the native towns, and knowledge and improvement be thus rapidly extended. The motives of this society are those of the truest philanthropy, and the measures which they have adopted unexceptionable. There is nothing but unmixed good in the means which they pursue, and in the end at which they aim. No body of men has ever yet been associated for purposes so pure and so remote from all views of selfinterest; when one thinks of the evils of nature and the evils of society which have crowded upon us, had commenced, when one rememas if the pouring out of the vials bers the yellow fever and the inrican apple-blight, and the United come tax, the Hessian fly, the AneColonists, Bonaparte and Sir Hew Dalrymple, our danger, and tenfold worse our disgrace, it is consolatory such men among us as to call to mind that we have yet prime movers of this association, are the that disinterested goodness is yet to be found, and that something is to be attempted towards bettering the condition of mankind. Is it desirable that government should form settlements in this part of West Africa? Captain Beaver recommends it; his main argument is that if we do not, the French will, and that this wide field of commerce must either be occupied by us or by our enemies. The argument is unanswerable, and England will commit commercial interests if the oppor a gross error as to her |