Columbia, and Guatemala, the signs and tokens of Negro slavery were obliterated long before the system was abolished in your own western possessions. And although it still exists in Brazil, in the United States, and in Cuba, we have nevertheless some few signs of advancement, some evident indications that it must ere long yield and come to an end: for the commerce of the world is against slavery; the free-trade principle of the age is against it; science in her various developments is against it; the literature of the day is just now being brought to bear, in a most marvellous manner, against it; and the free sentiments of the world are against it, and doom it to an early utter oblivion!
Turning again to the coast of Africa we meet with most cheerful evidences of progress. Along a coast extending some two thousand five hundred miles in length, the slave trade has been entirely uprooted and destroyed; and from "more than three-fourths of the strongholds"[1] once occupied by the traders, they have been driven out, never more to return. Along this region—including some of the richest and most productive portions of the African continent—legitimate trade has sprung up; and instead of a revolting commerce in the "bodies and souls of men," and women, and even babes, we see industrious communities springing up, civilization introduced, and a trade commenced which already has swelled up, in exports alone to Europe and America, to more than two millions of pounds per annum.[2]
