This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
248
the relations and duties of

up, ships bo built on our rivers and sail to Europe and America. There is every sign, too, that the springs of trade will shortly, through our own direct influence, be started through all our native population, for 200 miles in the interior, and that this trade will be our own, and that it will originate a commerce excelling that of Sierra Leone. I believe verily that the great principles of industry, of thrift, and expansion are daily taking root deeper in the soil; and that ultimately they will outgrow and exclude all the weeds of lazy self-content, inflated and exaggerated vanity, unthrift and extravagance. Of course we have here stupid obstructives, men who cling tenaciously to the "dead past"; a few millinered and epauletted gentry,

"———Neat and trimly dressed,
And fresh as bridegrooms,"

who would civilize our heathen neighbors with powder and shot; and a few unthinking, unreasoning men, who verily believe that the foundations of all great states have been laid in barter and pelf. But these are, by no means, the representative men of the land. If they were, I should despair of any future for Liberia, and depart.

We have another, a larger class than these; a class which comprises awakened old men and generous and ardent youth; the minds whose great object in life is not mere gain or comfort, but who feel that they have a great work to accomplish for their children, for their race, and for God; wio feel that they have been called to this mission, and who wish to spend themselves in the expansion and compacting