"I cannot dismiss these tables without a few remarks relative to some few prominent items they enumerate; I mean the PALM NUT and OIL, COTTON, INDIAN CORN, and SUGAR CANE.

"PALM OIL.-This article, more than any other West African product, shows the rapidity with which legitimate commerce has sprung up on the coast of Africa. A few years ago palm oil was an insignificant item in the coast trade.* Now it is an article which commands whole fleets of sailing vessels, seeks the auxiliary aid of steamers, and effects most powerfully the commerce of England, France, and the United States.

"I сору several items pertaining to this export from a report of a former acquaintance and correspondent, the late Mr. Consul Campbell, of Lagos. The report, as will be seen, includes several other items besides palm oil, and it refers exclusively to Lagos.

"Of the above productions there was shipped from Lagos in the

*In 1808, the quantity imported into England was only 200 (two hundred)

tons.

The export of Oil and Nuts from Sierra Leone, is as follows:

Palm Oil exported from Sierra Leone during the years

Custom House, Sierra Leone, 18th February, 1857.

PORT OF FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE.

Quantity of Palm Nut Kernels exported from the Colony, as follows:

Customs, Sierra Leone, 30th January, 1857.

"I have no reliable information of the amount of oil exported at the present; but I do not think I shall be far from the point of accuracy, if I put it down at 60,000 tons, which, at the probable value of £45 per ton, equals £2,700,000."

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*

Mr. Crummell was informed by Mr. Consul Campbell, that the people of Abbeokuta exported 200,000 country cloths annually, and

that he supposed 200,000 more were consumed at home; so that estimating the weight at 2 pounds to each cloth, 1,000,000 of pounds of cotton are manufactured in one locality (Yoruba) in a single year. From this and other facts, it may be inferred that interior Africa is or will become a vast cotton field: coffee, Indian corn, and palm oil, will supply a rich will engage prudently in African commerce.

The sugar cane,

trade to all who

"And now perhaps you ask-How shall the children of Africa, sojourning in foreign lands, avail themselves of the treasures of this continent?" I answer briefly-In the same way white men do.'

"They have pointed out the way; let us follow in the same track and in the use of the like [legitimate] agencies by which trade is facilitated and money is made by them.

Perhaps this is too general; let me therefore attempt something more specific and distinctive.

66

First, then, I remark that if individuals are unable to enter upon a trading system, they can form associations. If one has not sufficient capital, four or six united can make a good beginning. If a few persons cannot make the venture, then a company can be formed. It was in this way the first attempts at trading were made by the Dutch and the English, both in India and Africa. A few men associated themselves together, and sent out their agent or agents, and started a factory. And from such humble beginnings, in the 17th century, has arisen that magnificent Indian Empire, which has helped to swell the vast wealth, and the cumbrous capital of England, from whose arena have come forth such splendid and colossal characters as Cleve, and Wellington, and Metcalf, and the Laurences, and Havelock; and which has furnished the Church of Christ a field on which to display the Apostolic virtues and the primitive self-sacrifice of Middleton, and Heber, and Wilson, of Henry Martyn, of Fox and Ragland.

"Without doubt God designs as great things as these for Africa, and among the means and agencies He will employ, commercial enterprise is most certainly one. To this end, however, high souls and lofty resolves are necessary, as in any other vocation of life. Of course the timid, the over cautious, the fearful; men in whose constitution FAITH is a needed quality, are not fitted for this service. If ever the epoch of negro civilization is brought about in Africa; whatever external influences may be brought to bear upon this end; whatever foreign agencies and aids, black men themselves are without doubt to be the chief instruments.

*

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*

"In Liberia, we have the noblest opportunities and the greatest advantages. We have a rich and varied soil, inferior, I verily believe, to but few, if any, on the Globe. We have some of the proofs, and many of the indications of varied and vast mineral wealth of the richest qualities. We have a country finely watered in every section by multitudious brooks and streams, and far-reaching rivers.

We

have a climate which needs but be educated and civilized, and tempered by the plastic and curative processes of emigration, clearances, and scientific farming, to be made as fine and as temperate as any land in the tropics can be.

"On this soil have been laid the foundations of Republican Institutions. Our religion is Protestant, with its characteristic tendencies to freedom, progress, and human well-being. We are reaching forward as far as a young and poor nation can, to a system of common schools. Civilization, that is, in its more simple forms, has displaced ancestral paganism in many sections of the land, has taken permanent foothold in our territory, and already extended its roots among our heathen kin. Our heathen population, moreover, in the immediate neighborhood of the settlements, is but small and sparse; thus saving our civilization from too strong an antagonism, and allowing it room, scope, and opportunity for a hardy growth in its more early days. Active industry is now exhibiting unwonted vigor, and begins to tell upon commerce and the foreign market.

*

*

"We need this day for the great work before us, in a region of not less than 500,000 square miles; we need, I say, not less than 50,000 civilized men. We ought to be traveling onward through the land; and to appropriate and modify a remark of De Toquevillésto be 'peopling our vast wilderness at the average rate of at least five miles per annum.' And for the work of civilization and enlightenment among our. aboriginal population, we should have even now, mental power and a moral force working through all our territory, fitted for just such a transformation as has been produced in New Zealand and the Sandwich Islands, in a period of twenty-five years.

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a

"And when that day comes the people of Liberia will cry out :'We have the largest advantages of all our race. We have the noblest field. Ours is the most signal Providence; and our State offers the grandest possibilities of good, the finest opportunities of manly achievement. Why then suffer ourselves to be hindered in working out of manifest destinies' of beneficence to suffering Africa by the narrowness of our aims, or the fewness of our numbers and and means? It is true we have a wide field to enter, and need more and mightier men to enter it. Let us therefore call our skillful and energetic brethren to come to us and share the suffering and the glory of saving Africa. Let us stand on the beach and on the hill-side, and beckon to them in ALL LANDS to come and participate in lofty duty-in painful but saving labor, and to aid in the restoration and enlightenment of a vast continent !"

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"As members of the Church of Christ, the sons of Africa in foreign lands are called upon to bear their part in the vast and sacred work of her Evangelization. I might press this point on the grounds of piety, of compassion, or sympathy, but I choose a higher principle. For next to the grand ideas which pertain to the Infinite, His attributes and perfections, there is none loftier and grander than that of DUTY

"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God.