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they are governed, falsely imagine that in an extension of the popular method of government, as they term it, they shall find a remedy for the evils of which they complain. The present King of France stands exactly in the position of an Italian podesta of the middle ages,-of one of those successful usurpers, who, called in by the people of some state to free them from the oppression, real or fancied, of their governors, cajoled them with the fairest words, and in the end established a tyranny far more corrupt and insupportable than that which he was summoned to remove. The people are more or less of this opinion; and the feelings of the nation for Louis-Philippe vary from cool disaffection to cordial and virulent hatred. He lives with the sword of Damocles over his head, and maintains a hollow and precarious sway over a fickle and dissatisfied people :-it is true, that from a sense of his own interest, and also from a knowledge of the positive weakness of France, the King is averse to war, and is for the maintenance of La paix à tout prix; but let any sudden combination bring the noisy and profligate party into power again, let the infirmities of age, or the more steady aim of a new assassin's hand, affect the existence of Louis-Philippe, and the whole edifice of the present Government of France will come down with a crash and a dust that will surprise the unthinking portion of Europe. There is every reason to expect that a war of aggression on the part of France will then immediately ensue; she will then have her military and republican propensities uncontrolled; and it should be remembered, a military republic is always an aggres sive power. She will commit some act of insult or hostility against one or other of the European states, and will justify them in taking measures for the final abatement of such a nuisance.

The present language of the French press, which is of the most insulting and opprobrious kind towards England in particular, and the other great powers in general; the wild doctrines of universal levelling preached up by the Republican party, with the Abbé de Lamennais at its head, and the noproperty writers at its tail-doctrines which we know to be on the spread, and language which we see is approved rather than reprobated-these show

what Europe will have to expect from a change of dynasty, and almost from a change of ministry in that inflammable country. We have no doubt that the allied powers of the northRussia, Austria, and Prussia, that is to say-will behave with becoming prudence and firmness whenever the day of trial arises; and we most earnestly hope that England will be prepared to act with them, and so consult its best and highest interests, rather than make the same mistake which she did in 1830, and approve of revolutions abroad that may run very near to produce corresponding changes at home. There will be no safety for Europe, no security for her permanent peace, until the aristocratical element is restored in France to its due share of influence and authority; but to effect this, the whole constitution and even the territorial division of the country must be altered. Should such a measure become desirable in the event of a general war, the allied powers will be fully justified in treating France with a high hand, and in taking such ample securities for a better order of things in future as they might and ought to have done in 1815, France must either hasten to become a strictly commercial and agricultural country, laying aside her views of propagandism and foreign aggression-a thing we believe utterly impossible,or else when she next goes to war she must expect, notwithstanding the fortifications of Paris (!) to see her territories roundly clipped, and her politi cal organization remodelled. Meanwhile, since France, to use a common expression, a mis le marché dans nos mains, and since her people are openly manifesting their antipathy for the English not only as a government but as a people, we think that we are fully justified in not coinciding with the babblers about the advantages of a fraternal alliance with the Grande Nation, but rather in strongly urging the propriety of entering into closer and more congenial bonds of friendship with the nations of northern and eastern Europe, between whom and ourselves there already exist strong similarities of habits and feelings, and for one and all of whom the widelytempered forms of aristocratic, religious, and monarchical government are as the sheet-anchor of hope, and the polar star of policy.

AFRICA.

A NEW expedition has been fitted out, to make its way up the Niger, and try once more to open a communication with the interior. To expeditions of this order, and confined to this purpose, we believe that the English nation will cordially give its consent. African civilisation, the hope of giving the advantages of European knowledge, arts, and comforts, to the millions of our fellow men who cover this vast central portion of the world, would be among the most natural, justifiable, and philanthropic purposes that could animate the efforts of a great and humane people. Africa, too, contains what would amply repay our labours; vast mineral wealth, a boundless variety of those products which add to the enjoyments, the food, and the power of man. Immense regions hitherto unexplored, and lying under the very la titudes where natural fertility might have the finest conceivable advantages; all these would amply justify the most lavish national exertion, even if we had no higher objects than pecuniary profit. But the opportu. nity of introducing intellectual light into the primeval place of intellectual darkness; morals into the centre of habitual barbarism; and Christianity, with its social wisdom, its lofty energies, and its imperishable rewards, into the very den of savage passions, and cruel superstitions, would be an object, in itself, nobler and more illustrious, than all that could ever be achieved by human ambition.

None can more willingly give credit to the intentions of the first advocates of African freedom than ourselves. The trade was a national crime; though its horrors had long been so little known, that its criminality was not felt by the nation. It is to the infinite honour of England, that the actual condition of this dreadful traffic was no sooner fairly brought be fore the national eye, than they were met by the national reprobation. But the topic was too tempting to Whiggism, sectarianism, and to the bitter restlessness of religious and political schisms of all shapes, to be adopted in the spirit of real reformation. It flourished in fiery harangues, it rounded the paragraphs of declaimers

against all authority, it served as a new and showy bait for popularity among the worn-out or the desperate contrivances of parties of every origin, of every shade of discording principle, and every project of national evil. Wilberforce, an honest man, and sincere in his labours, must have often been astonished to find himself followed by the rabble who figured in the early days of the controversy. He doubtless shrank from their personal intercourse. But it is a notorious fact, that in England every revolutionist instantly adopted the clamour of a 66 negro advocate" as a part of his profession, and that in France, the Assembly, stained with the king's blood, had no language too strong for their abhorrence of" negro sufferings." Marat, Danton, Robespierre, the whole generation of those half fiends, whose only maxim of political regeneration was massacre, were "abolitionists;" and the whole tribe of their admirers in England followed their example. That many manly and pure minds were among the early abolitionists, is fully acknowledged; but that the question was seized on by others, who regarded it merely as a cheap display of humanity, a dashing exhibition of feelings that cost them nothing but words; and a lucky opportunity of lavishing insult on all monarchies, the British included, is as perfectly clear as any other matter of history. the sectaries raised general chorus. Every sanctified cobbler who longed for an easier trade than shoemending, harangued on the "Slave Trade." The tabernacle resounded; the tub groaned forth; every little disturber in a village, longing to find his obscure nonsense in a newspaper, instantly got up an address; and every profligate politician, eager to work his way into Parliament through the sewers of faction, made it the theme of his rabble oratory.

All

We now have the most public declarations, that all the old abuses are at this moment in action fiftyfold; that the sea is covered with slave ships; and that the wretched beings who have fallen into the hands of those sons of Mammon who traffic in human flesh and blood, are subject

to miseries more startling than ever. But what is the remedy proposed by those persons? A new establishment, or set of them, on the African coast. In fact, a repetition on a larger, and therefore a more destructive scale than those which have already failed. There are to be factories, and of course governors, and secretaries, and all the other paraphernalia of colonial governments. We do not charge the proposers of those happy inventions with intending to manage their patronage. Of their intentions we know nothing, though of their machinery we know much. But we are fully convinced that no such scheme will ever succeed in civilizing Africa. The attempt has been made for almost a couple of centuries; surely a sufficiently long time for an experiment. Sierra Leone, that latest, most systematic of trials, has been an acknowledged sepulchre of European life. The obvious fact is, that no settlement on the coast of Western Africa, where the pestilence of the hot and humid soil has not more corrupted the air than the habits of the slave trade have corrupted the people, offers a rational hope of success. It is clear that every enterprise in that quarter must be abortive; and we again assert that nothing but the most desperate rashness or the most reckless disre

gard of that wise economy which ought to superintend the great revenue of Christian benevolence, can longer urge the public to efforts which carry in their nature the seeds of national misfortune.

But we are not left to the authority of rumour. The Parliamentary returns settle the question. As if the fiat of nature, as well as the laws of morality, stamped the slave trade with an especial abhorrence, and found for the traffic of fiends a spot not unworthy of them, the whole slave coast is perhaps the most deadly of all the swamps of the globe. A return presented to Parliament no further back than February last, and which has been republished in the Times, gives the following detail of those wretched settlements. Nothing can be more frightful:

"The existing British settlements in Western Africa are scattered over a line of coast, which, from St Mary's on the Gambia west, to Fernando Po eastward (situate beyond the mouths of the Niger)

is about 2000 miles in extent, and consequently presents considerable diversity in. climate, soil, surface, and geological structure; but every where exhibits the same remarkable hostility to the European constitution. The most uniform and charac< teristic feature of the climate is its exces< sive humidity, which may be estimated from the fact, that more rain fell at Sierra Leone on two successive days (the 22d and 23d of August) in 1828, than falls in Britain, upon an average of years, throughout the whole year."

A remittent fever, which seizes every body here, soon settles the question to most, and the remainder are probably invalids for life. follows a melancholy bill of mortality:

Then

"The whole number of white troops employed at the various settlements on this coast, from 1822 to 1830 inclusively, was 1685. Of these no less than 1298 fell a sacrifice to the climate, and died in Africa during those eight years. The re. maining 387 were invalided to England in various stages of the disease; 17 of them died on the passage home; 137 were discharged as unfit for further service on account of disorders; 180 more were dis charged as unfit except for garrison duty; and 33 only, out of the whole original number of 1685, were reported as capable of doing further service.-The impossibility of maintaining white troops in such a climate being thus demonstrated, the garrisons have, since the end of 1829, consisted entirely of blacks, with the exception of a few European sergeants."

We now shift the scene to another station, which is but another wholesale sepulchre

"Of all the settlements, the most northwesterly, and, in point of situation, the most insalubrious, is that upon the river Gambia. The town lies on a low, marahy island, covered with rank vegetation, which in the hot season produces offensive eflluvia. Of 199 men sent to this deadly swamp in 1825, in two detachments, the earliest of which arrived at the latter end of May, 160 were dead before the 21st of December. In the next year, 200 more Europeans were to supply their places; and of these 116 perished, and 33 were disabled for life within the first six months.

sent

"Cape Coast Castle, the principal station upon the Gold coast, might have been expected to be more healthy; it is situated upon a rock overlooking the sea, with a valley and hills covered with forest behind it, but without any swamps in the

neighbourhood. Yet here, on the average of four years, from 1823 to 1826 inclusive, two-thirds of the white troops died annually, and few lived to complete an entire year in the settlement. In 1824 the deaths nearly equalled the mean strength of the garrison."

Now comes the chosen spot of the "philanthropists ;"- the settlement which was to relieve Africa from the scandal of insalubrity, and exhibit to Europe the unanswerable proof that the slave-trade was to be vanquished in its centre, by the cargoes of civilization annually sent out by the party

here:

"The position of Sierra Leone is, to all appearance, advantageous. Within the limits of the colony itself there is nothing to account for its insalubrity; it is a mountainous peninsula, with a gravelly soil, and seems to be protected by nature from all extraneous sources of disease, except in one direction. As far back as 1792 the annual mortality among the white colonists and soldiers averaged a fourth of their number. This continued to be the proportion among the European troops during the nine years previous to 1819. During the eighteen years, from 1819 to 1836 (both inclusive) the annual loss was, upon the very lowest estimate, more than one-third of the garrison. When the mortality was at its highest, in 1825 and 1826, more than three-fourths perished."

Nor is there any refuge in the supposition that this mortality was caused by the reckless habits of the soldiery, (chiefly convicts.) Of course, recklessness and dissipation, stimulated by hopelessness of escaping the diseases of the place, might increase mortality. But it appears that the blow was nearly alike on all, be their character or care what it might :

"Out of twelve sergeants sent to the coast in 1822, who were selected for promotion from detachments in the Isle of Wight, on account of their good conduct and character, and six more who followed them in 1823 (making together eighteen) only one survived in 1824. Upon an average of seventeen years, down to 1836 inclusive, the number of commissioned officers who died annually were as 209, and of those who were invalided as 197 to 1000. On an average of twenty-one years, previous to August 1825, the mortality among the church missionaries at Sierra Leone (a class of persons whose habits may be supposed to have been peculiarly favourable to health,) was annually in the ratio of ten per cent."

So much for the land-we now come to the sea. The islands are found as deadly as the continent:—

"At the Isles de Loss every circumstance which could warrant a reasonable hope of exemption from the deadliness of the climate, happened to concur. The islands are lofty, rocky, free from swamps, destitute of vegetation, and from three to eight miles distant from the land. A detachment, consisting of 103 recruits, voluntar'y enlisted at Chatham, were located here in 1825. They are described' (we quote the words of the report) as being generally men of good character, exemplary conduct, and with little inclination to inebriety; in which, however, had they been ever so much inclined, they had no opportunity of indulging, as spirits could not be procured in the island Had there been a possibility of Europeans enjoying health on this coast, this was the station and these were the circumstances under which it was most likely to be attained. The following record shows how miserably eighteen months had elapsed, sixty-two of that expectation was disappointed.' Before these Chatham recruits were dead, and twenty-one more invalided, leaving only twenty of the whole detachment in Africa.

"Similar details are given of other stasions, as Acera and Fernando Po, which, from the deceitful promise of the external face of the country, or from difference of geographical situation, (Fernando Po being a mountainous island, of moderate size, separated from the continent by a strait twenty miles broad,) had raised an expectation that Europeans might settle there with comparative safety. Every thing conspires irresistibly to establish the conclusion, that the universal climate of those parts of Africa where the slave trade is carried on, is, by an insuperable law of nature, fatally deleterious to all European constitutions; and so far from there being a presumption that it would prove less so upon advancing further into the interior, all the experience we have goes to show the contrary."

But now comes the question, which the philanthropist-politicians are constantly ringing in our ears-" Is Africa to be left to perpetual slaughter and We distinctly say-no. slavery?" But we as distinctly say, that we do not expect its rescue from either by the hands of this party. We think that all their principles have been blunders, that all their experiments have been ignorant, and that their failure was not a fatality, but a natu ral consequence. To men capable of being taught by experience, it would be seen that Africa is not to be civilized

by beginning with the corrupt, desperate, and ferocious villains who line the western coast, and live by the traffic of slaves for gin and gunpow. der. The reformer who begins by preaching to the jail, begins at the wrong end. The only salutary change on the coast must come from the centre of the country, and that centre must be purified and stimulated, not by the suggestions of factors and traders, nor even of itinerant sectaries, but by the calm and irresistible conviction of the Africans themselves, arising from infallible facts. It is with high gratification that we see such a teaching already in progress. The settlements of England, in South Africa, offer to the whole population an evidence of the value of English habits, laws, morals, and industry, which will in coming times form the great source of solid African civilization. Of course, we admit that this great work is not to be done in a day. There are many features, even in those settlements, which require extensive amelioration; but it is there alone that the change of Africa from evil to good must be established. Our colonists there are spreading over a vast extent of country, and every where are changing the desert into a garden-every where spreading comforts unknown before-every where filling the solitary hills and valleys with the fertility, the arts, and the enjoyments of Europe. In fifty years more, the Cape colony will be one of the noblest appendages of the British crown; in a century, it will be a mighty empire; and whether dependent or separate, it will be an object on which even the debased and fallen mind of the African cannot look without as tonishment-without a sense of the causes which have raised this magnificent fabric of dominion; nor without an involuntary, and therefore in vincible, approach to its civilization.

Again and again we must protest against all attempts to proceed by establishments on the western coast. There is a palpable prohibition of nature meeting them in the teeth; they are obviously fatal to European existence. The experiment has been made in all directions; and wherever it has begun, it has suddenly finished in the churchyard. Pestilence is the solemn and terrible barrier of the shore. But even if the experiment were shifted to the central regions of

Africa, we should find that the means proposed by those London coteries are wholly unsuitable to their object. They propose to proceed by trading factories; those factories to be attended by schools for the young, and missionaries for the mature. We pronounce unhesitatingly, that these instruments, valuable as they are in civilized intercourse, are not merely inadequate, but injurious, where they are to be brought into direct collision with barbarism. Trade, the most powerful human means of sustaining established civilisation, is singularly hazardous to it in its infancy. All that the savage desires from trade is gin to make him drunk, and gun. powder to make him powerful. No matter what else it may offer; those are all that the savage will take; those are all that the native slave-dealer on the African coast has ever taken in a traffic of a couple of hundred years. Of course we do not speak of a few trifles of European finery, a scarlet coat, or a bale of linen. But his demands are, "What muskets have you got? And what liquors can I get for my cargo of slaves?" The character of the Europeans in general who will eventually be employed, (for the first embarkation may be orderly,) will undoubtedly exhibit but little of that moral excellence which recommends virtue in person. And so it has always been in the intercourse of the mere trader with the savage. What was the civilization effected by the French traders among the American Indians? The Indians barbarized the traders. What were the favourite commodities? Rum and gunpowder. Thus it was, and thus it will be, so long as the appetites of the savage are to be the profit of the trader. Lessons of virtue will be laughed at where the black merchant and the sailor have more pressing matters to settle; and all that we shall derive from new attempts at colonization will be the loss of valuable lives, tempted away from England by their own dreams of cheap land, or worked upon by the arts of landjobbers, the whole resulting in that melancholy suffering which we should scarcely regret if it fell upon the heads of the deluders alone.

We do not doubt the sincerity of many among those who have made themselves prominent in those speculations. But we have no faith in their common sense. We assert that

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