uniary point
of view, for want of a previous enlargement of their intellectual powers,
and a progressive operation of freedom commensurate thereto.

I can bestow no panegyric adequate to the sense I entertain of that active
goodness which prompted the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company to the
undertaking I have alluded to; but with all due deference I conceive that
they have mistaken the practicable grounds, upon which the seeds of
civilization, and the principles of Christianity, can be effectively
displayed to the African. The Directors had to contend with a peculiar
co-mixture of passions, licentious habits, and hereditary vice; to
eradicate these, and to rescue the natives from their natural state,
alluring and progressive measures were necessary, founded upon an accurate
investigation of their characters and policy, and not by the fulminations
of intemperate zealots, and theoretical speculators. The beneficent views
of the Sierra Leone Company have been unaccountably perverted, and have
been the distorted instruments in prolonging, rather than extirpating, the
barbarism of the African: it is therefore a subject of great regret to the
benevolent supporters of this establishment, that an unprofitable
expenditure of their property is the only existing perpetuity of their
humane interference. Will it be found that the Company's agents have
introduced the arts of civilization among any tribe or nation in Africa,
that they have made any progress in agriculture, although possessing a very
extensive tract of fertile lands, or that they have converted them into any
of the regular features of cultivation? Have they explored or brought into
action any of the attainable and lucrative branches of natural commerce,
abounding in the region they inhabit, or do they employ a single ship in a
regular trade with the mother country? Will it be found that they have
unfolded the doctrines of Christianity, in their native purity and
simplicity, to the unenlightened African, or converted, by their preaching
and example, any tribe or nation among them?--The spacious waste is
destitute of the appearance of domestic industry, or respectable character;
it exhibits only a tissue of indolence, hypocritical grimace, petulant and
assuming manners, and all the consequences of idleness and corrupted
morals. To succeed in this beneficent undertaking, and to expunge the
inveterate nature of the African, his prejudices, and inherent customs,
progres