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free colored men in america to africa.

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such a regenerating influence as to alter character and to implant hope, ambition, thrift, order, and perseverance, where they have never been cultivated.

These anticipations proved correct, save that I found a stronger and a more general disposition to labor than the sad history of our brethren warranted my looking for.^[1] Many things gratified me from the first. Since then Liberia has grown much. Development shows itself on every side. The acquisitive principle manifests itself, and in less than ten years large fortunes will be made, extensive farms spring

↑ The people of Liberia are not lazy, although I am sorry to say, appearances are sometimes against them. The case is this:—Many new men do not know how to labor for themselves! They come, at a mature age, when their habits are fixed, into a new school, the operations of which they are unacquainted with. They go into the "bush," and its formidableness overcomes, and crushes them; they sit down in despair and do nothing, and many perish. "Are not such men lazy?" asks some objector. I say no! and my reason for saying so is this: In the year 1856 there were scores of the class above described on the St. Paul's River, doing nothing. Some four or five farmers commenced the cultivation of sugar cane and the manufacture of sugar. This new effort required large numbers of laborers, and as soon as the need was known, the river was alive with men seeking labor. Who were these men? The hopeless, the despairing men, who eould not see their way through the "bush," and could not improve their own farmsteads. I have seen scores of these men trudging through the rain and mud, in the rainy season, or paddling in fragile canoes, seeking the larger plantations, clamorous for labor; and I have seen the supply so great that a dozen men had to be refused at a time. Why was this? These men had been unaccustomed to self-support. Placed under a proprietor, heart and limb were alive with an industrious impulse. Liberia needs capitalists who can employ this large class of men. Mr. Ruffin, of Virginia, will perhaps claim this as a proof that black men must have masters. Students of "Political Economy" will put it among the facts which show that where capital languishes, men die, both in body and soul.

[1] The people of Liberia are not lazy, although I am sorry to say, appearances are sometimes against them. The case is this:—Many new men do not know how to labor for themselves! They come, at a mature age, when their habits are fixed, into a new school, the operations of which they are unacquainted with. They go into the "bush," and its formidableness overcomes, and crushes them; they sit down in despair and do nothing, and many perish. "Are not such men lazy?" asks some objector. I say no! and my reason for saying so is this: In the year 1856 there were scores of the class above described on the St. Paul's River, doing nothing. Some four or five farmers commenced the cultivation of sugar cane and the manufacture of sugar. This new effort required large numbers of laborers, and as soon as the need was known, the river was alive with men seeking labor. Who were these men? The hopeless, the despairing men, who eould not see their way through the "bush," and could not improve their own farmsteads. I have seen scores of these men trudging through the rain and mud, in the rainy season, or paddling in fragile canoes, seeking the larger plantations, clamorous for labor; and I have seen the supply so great that a dozen men had to be refused at a time. Why was this? These men had been unaccustomed to self-support. Placed under a proprietor, heart and limb were alive with an industrious impulse. Liberia needs capitalists who can employ this large class of men. Mr. Ruffin, of Virginia, will perhaps claim this as a proof that black men must have masters. Students of "Political Economy" will put it among the facts which show that where capital languishes, men die, both in body and soul.

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