To put down the foreign slave-trade, without first devising honest occupation for a dense, idle, and mischievous population of Africa, would seal the death-warrant of every captive who, under the present system, is preserved as saleable booty. Hence it must be admitted, that to inculcate industry and to extend cultivation by voluntary labour, are indispensable stepping-stones towards the ultimate amelioration of a people who do not at present possess the elements for extended commerce. To create these would be to change the destinies of the Negro, by including him within the league of the rights of man; and habits of industry must rapidly raise him from savage ignorance to that state of improvement which is essential to fit him for the privileges of a freeman.
The present very limited exports of this immensely populous continent, which do not amount in value to those of Cuba, with only twelve hundred thousand inhabitants, must be reckoned among the chief causes of her misery and thraldom. Few, if any, of the commodities bartered with other nations are the production of capital, labour, or industry, and in the minds of the whole population the ideas of prosperity and of a slave-trade are inseparable. But if all that is coveted could be placed within honest reach, in exchange for the produce of the soil, the hands which should cultivate it will never afterwards be sold.
“Legitimate commerce,” writes Sir Fowell Buxton, “would put down the slave-trade, by demonstrating the superior value of man as a labourer on the soil, to man as an object of merchandise. If conducted on wise and equitable principles, it might be the precursor, or rather the attendant, of civilisation, peace, and Christianity to the unenlightened, warlike, and heathen tribes, who now so fearfully prey upon each other to support the slave-markets of the New World; and a commercial system upon just, liberal, and comprehensive principles, which guarded the native on the one hand, and secured protection to the honest trader on the other, would therefore confer the richest blessings on a country so long desolated and degraded by its intercourse with the basest and most iniquitous portion of mankind.”
The average cost of a seasoned slave in Cuba is 120 pounds sterling; but it has been seen that in Enárea and other parts of the interior he may be purchased for ten pieces of salt, equivalent to two shillings and a penny—for a pair of Birmingham scissors, or even for a few ells of blue calico. Hence it may be inferred that the hire of the freeman would be in the same ratio; and if so, it is obvious that this cheap labour, applied to a soil as productive as any in the world, would ensure to African tropical produce the superiority in every market to which it might be introduced.
Able advocates of the cause of humanity have upon these grounds clearly demonstrated, that, in order to suppress completely the foreign traffic in human flesh, it is only necessary to raise, in any accessible point affording the readiest outlet, sugar, coffee, and cotton, and to throw these yearly into the market of the world, already fully supplied by expensive slave labour. The creation of this cheap additional produce would so depress the price current in every other quarter, that the external slave-trade would no longer be profitable, and would therefore cease to exist.
The baneful climate of Africa is the obstacle which has hitherto opposed the introduction of agriculture, and the chief object in seeking geographical information has been to discover some point whence the object may be accomplished with safety. That point is presented in the north-eastern coast, where, from no great distance inland to an unknown extent, the spontaneous gifts of nature are transcendently abundant—the people are prepared by misfortune to welcome civilised assistance—the soil is fertile and productive, and the climate, alpine and salubrious, is highly congenial to the European constitution.
All these countries are believed to be accessible from the Juba, more commonly called the Govind, which is said to rise in Abyssinia, and to be navigable in boats for three months from its mouth. Its embouchure is in the territories of the friendly sheikhs of Brava, seven in number, the hereditary representatives of seven Arab brothers, who were first induced to settle on that part of the coast by the lucrative trade in grain, gold, ambergris, ivory, rhinoceros’ horns, and hippopotamus’ teeth. They were formerly under the protection of Portugal; but even the remembrance of that state of things has nearly passed away from the present generation. From Mombás, which is the most northern possession of Syyud Syyud, the Imam of Muscat, the coast as far as the equator is in occupation of the Sowáhili, a quiet and intelligent race of Moorish origin, and thence to Zeyla, which is now in the hands of Sheikh Ali Shermárki, the entire population is Somauli. The climate, even so far south as Mombás, is notoriously good; and the government affords a striking contrast to that of the western coast, where the regions in corresponding latitudes are subject to bloody despotism, such as is submitted to by none but the ignorant savage.
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