herto reckoned only slaves. Why then do you hesitate to prepare a new
order of things, to anticipate events, which time, whose march you cannot
arrest, brings every day nearer and nearer? Reason, your own interest, the
force of circumstances, the advantages of nature, the richness of the soil,
every thing tells you that it is to Africa, that you must carry culture and
civilization.

Without entering into the question, whether the Government should reserve
to itself, exclusively, the right of founding colonies on that continent,
or whether it ought to encourage colonial companies, and depend on the
efforts of private interest suitably directed, let us be permitted to offer
some views, on the prudent and temperate course which ought to be laid
down, to arrive at a satisfactory result, not only in respect to the
civilization of the blacks, but even relatively to the commercial
advantages which the colonist must naturally have in view.

Though the abolition of the slave trade has been proclaimed, yet the
present slaves must be led to liberty only in a progressive manner. The
whites who are possessed of negroes, should not be allowed to prolong their
possession and their dominion over them, beyond the space of ten years, and
without being permitted to resell them during that period. During these ten
years, the negroes should be prepared for their new condition as well by
instruction as by the successive amelioration of their situation; it would
be necessary gradually to relax the chain of slavery; and by affording them
means to lay up a part of the produce of their labour, inspire them with
the desire, and the necessity of possessing something of their own.

After these ten years, which may be called a Noviciate, it is to be
presumed, that if lands were granted to them upon advantageous conditions,
fixed before hand, if they were furnished in case of need, with the
agricultural instruments, the use of which they would have learned, they
would become excellent cultivators: it is needless to remark that the man
who cultivates the soil, and whose labour the soil rewards, by its produce,
becomes strongly attached to the land, which supplies both his wants and
his enjoyments, and is soon led by family affections to the love of social
order, and to the sentiments which constitute a good citizen.

The blacks have been too long encouraged to sell their fellow-creatures,
for us to depend upon their soon forgetting this deplorable tr