Captain Canot | Page 2

anchorite went forth from the marshes of Gallinas, laden with gold. I do not think this story is likely to seduce or educate a race of slavers!
The frankness of Canot's disclosures may surprise the more reserved and timid classes of society; but I am of opinion that there is an ethnographic value in the account of his visit to the Mandingoes and Fullahs, and especially in his narrative of the wars, jugglery, cruelty, superstition, and crime, by which one sixth of Africa subjects the remaining five sixths to servitude.
As the reader peruses these characteristic anecdotes, he will ask himself how,--in the progress of mankind,--such a people is to be approached and dealt with? Will the Mahometanism of the North which is winning its way southward, and infusing itself among the crowds of central Africa, so as, in some degree, to modify their barbarism, prepare the primitive tribes to receive a civilization and faith which are as true as they are divine? Will our colonial fringe spread its fibres from the coast to the interior, and, like veins of refreshing blood, pour new currents into the mummy's heart? Is there hope for a nation which, in three thousand years, has hardly turned in its sleep? The identical types of race, servitude, occupation, and character that are now extant in Africa, may be found on the Egyptian monuments built forty centuries ago; while a Latin poem, attributed to Virgil, describes a menial negress who might unquestionably pass for a slave of our Southern plantations:
"Interdum clamat Cybalen; erat unica custos; Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura; Torta comam, labroque tumens, et fusca colorem; Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo, Cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta; Continuis rimis calcanea scissa rigebant."[1]
It will be seen from these hints that our memoir has nothing to do with slavery as a North American institution, except so far as it is an inheritance from the system it describes; yet, in proportion as the details exhibit an innate or acquired inferiority of the negro race in its own land, they must appeal to every generous heart in behalf of the benighted continent.
It has lately become common to assert that Providence permits an exodus through slavery, in order that the liberated negro may in time return, and, with foreign acquirements, become the pioneer of African civilization. It is attempted to reconcile us to this "good from evil," by stopping inquiry with the "inscrutability of God's ways!" But we should not suffer ourselves to be deceived by such imaginary irreverence; for, in God's ways, there is nothing less inscrutable than his law of right. That law is never qualified in this world. It moves with the irresistible certainty of organized nature, and, while it makes man free, in order that his responsibility may be unquestionable, it leaves mercy, even, for the judgment hereafter. Such a system of divine law can never palliate the African slave trade, and, in fact, it is the basis of that human legislation which converts the slaver into a pirate, and awards him a felon's doom.
For these reasons, we should discountenance schemes like those proposed not long ago in England, and sanctioned by the British government, for the encouragement of spontaneous emigration from Africa under the charge of contractors. The plan was viewed with fear by the colonial authorities, and President Roberts at once issued a proclamation to guard the natives. No one, I think, will read this book without a conviction that the idea of voluntary expatriation has not dawned on the African mind, and, consequently, what might begin in laudable philanthropy would be likely to end in practical servitude.
Intercourse, trade, and colonization, in slow but steadfast growth, are the providences intrusted to us for the noble task of civilization. They who are practically acquainted with the colored race of our country, have long believed that gradual colonization was the only remedy for Africa as well as America. The repugnance of the free blacks to emigration from our shores has produced a tardy movement, and thus the African population has been thrown back grain by grain, and not wave by wave. Every one conversant with the state of our colonies, knows how beneficial this languid accretion has been. It moved many of the most enterprising, thrifty, and independent. It established a social nucleus from the best classes of American colored people. Like human growth, it allowed the frame to mature in muscular solidity. It gave immigrants time to test the climate; to learn the habit of government in states as well as in families; to acquire the bearing of freemen; to abandon their imitation of the whites among whom they had lived; and thus, by degrees, to consolidate a social and political system which may expand into independent and lasting nationality. Instead, therefore, of lamenting the slowness