hat it was further
inquired after, and the total amount now imported into England ranges
from 25,000 to 30,000 tons annually. The exportation of ground nuts is
even larger; but, owing to our excise on soap, they had heretofore
gone principally to France---to Marseilles especially.

"Of these two articles, it is to be observed, the Western Coast of
Africa appears to have a monopoly; and with respect to palm oil, it is
further to be remarked, that it is exactly behind those ports and up
those rivers, which were formerly the great nests of the slave trade,
that its production is largest; and just as the slave trade there has
been crushed, a commerce in palm oil has sprung up and replaced it.
There are men alive who recollect the slave trade flourishing on the
Gold Coast; it has long been extinct there, and palm oil is now
largely exported. It is but a very few years ago since that traffic
appeared to be irrepressible at the mouths of the Niger: it is now
expelled, and thence Liverpool obtains, instead, its supplies of palm
oil. So also, later still, at Whydah, and the other ports of the
kingdom of Dahomy, and along the Lagoon, which connects Dahomy with
the Benin River, there the Spanish slave dealers are themselves
inaugurating a commerce in palm oil. Already the trade in that quarter
is considerable, and it would have extended much more rapidly than it
has done, were it not that disorder and warfare in the interior have
been promoted and prolonged by the indiscreet zeal of some of our own
naval officers and by the desire of some of our missionaries to rule
at Abeeokutu, at Lagos, and at Badagray. When, however, order and
tranquillity are restored, a most important trade will undoubtedly
arise there. A generation ago, when palm oil was merely an article of
food, there was, we have said, no property in palm trees. Since,
however, a large foreign demand has arisen for this oil, the
plantations, as already they are called, begin to be cared for; and
lately the title to some of them has been disputed in our courts on
the Gold Coast: a contention which constitutes the first evidence we
have received of the value of land, not actually under their own
cultivation, being recognised by the natives. Thus the feeling of
property and the desire for accumulation are springing up out of the
palm oil trade; and they are everywhere the germs of nascent
civilisation. It is no light question, therefore, thus involved in an
increased deman