in houses, merchandise, and cash, upward of
fifteen hundred pounds.) _Third_, the extent of their
mercantile credits. I am well acquainted with an individual
of this grade who is much courted and caressed by every
European merchant in the colony, who has transactions in
trade with all of them, and whose name, shortly before my
departure from the colony, stood on the debtor side of the
books of one of the principal merchants to the amount of
nineteen hundred pounds, to which sum it had been reduced
from three thousand pounds during the preceding two months.
A highly respectable female has now, and has had for several
years, the government contract for the supplying of fresh
beef to the troops and the naval squadron; and I have not
heard that on a single occasion there has been cause of
complaint for negligence or non-fulfilment of the terms of
the contract. _Fourth_, many of them at the present moment
have their children being educated in England at their own
expense. There is at Sierra Leone a very fine regiment of
colonial militia, more than eight-tenths of which are
liberated Africans. The amount of property which they have
acquired is ample guaranty for their loyalty, should that
ever be called in question. They turn out with great
alacrity and cheerfulness on all occasions for periodical
drill. But perhaps the most interesting point of view in
which the liberated Africans are to be seen, and that which
will render their moral condition most intelligible to those
at a distance, is where they sit at the Quarter Sessions as
petty, grand, and special jurors. They constitute a
considerable part of the jury at every session, and I have
repeatedly heard the highest legal authority in the colony
express his satisfaction with their decisions."

But this account was written at the early sunrise of civilization in
Sierra Leone. Now civilization is at its noonday tide, and the hopes
of the most sanguine friends of the liberated Negro have been more
than realized. How grateful this renewed spot on the edge of the Dark
Continent would be to the weary and battle-dimmed vision of
Wilberforce, Sharp, and other friends of the colony! And if they still
lived, beholding the wonderful results, would they not gladly say,
"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to th