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The paged version of this document contained the following header content in the margin: Natives have Industry and Spirit of Commerce sufficient for a new Trade.
being paid. They were always industrious, says Dalrymple, where there was a demand. Bowman believes they would have put more land into cultivation than they did when he was there, had a greater supply of rice been wanted by the shipping—they told him that they should like to trade more in their own produce; and Falconbridge is so sure, that, if properly encouraged, they would make any change the Europeans pleased, that he is himself going again to Africa to make the experiment.
Mr. Kiernan speaks. in the same terms. They cultivate, says he, cotton, indigo, and tobacco, but this they do for themselves only; for though they are never backward when encouraged, yet the Europeans have encouraged them only to raise provisions, and never the other articles.
It is evident then, from the above accounts, that the want of encouragement is at least one reason why the natives of Africa do not establish a trade in the productions of their own country, as enumerated in the last chapter. Now this want of encouragement we trace from Wadstrom finally to proceed from the trade in slaves, for such constant encouragement he observes is given by the merchants to the slave trade, and the minds of the natives are in consequence so wholly occupied in it, that little or no encouragement remains for the other.
Sir George Young, and Lieutenant Storey, both come to the same conclusion; and Lieutenant Simpson avers, that on repeatedly asking the black traders what they would do if the slave trade were abolished, he was repeatedly answered that they would soon find out another trade.
Mr. Wadstrom also mentions the slave trade as an impediment to a trade in the natural productions of the country, not only because it diminishes the encouragement of the latter, as just explained, but because it subjects the natives, who might be willing to follow it, to be made slaves, for, as he observes, they dare never go out into the fields unless well armed.
