THE REMEDY, BY THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, ESQ. Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES & SONS, STAMFORD STREET. This Edition is not to be Published. THE REMEDY. It has been no very difficult task to collect materials for a description of the varied and intense miseries with which Africa is afflicted. Every person who visits that country,-whether his motive be merchandise or curiosity, geographical science or missionary labour,-brings back a copious collection. of details calculated to excite pity, disgust, and horror. Happy would it be if it were as easy to point out the remedy as to explore the disease. To this task I now address myself: difficult in the highest degree, from the magnitude of the evil,-from the vast and complicated interests involved, and from the paucity of our information. For, while the miseries of Africa are such as meet the eye of the most casual traveller,--her crimes and woes are such as no one can overlook ;-the sources from whence we must hope for the remedy lie much deeper and far more hidden from our view. We know so little really of the interior of Africa,-her geography, her history, her soil, climate, and productions,―so little of the true condition and qualifications of her inhabitants, that it is with very great B diffidence indeed, that I venture, having collected all the information within my reach, to put forth what appears to me to be the principles which must rescue Africa, and the steps which we, as a nation, and as individuals, are called upon to take, to put those principles into operation. In one respect, I apprehend no liability to error. With all confidence we may affirm, that nothing permanent will be effected, unless we raise the native mind. It is possible to conceive such an application of force as shall blockade the whole coast, and sweep away every slaver. But should that effort relax, the trade in man would revive. Compulsion, so long as it lasts, may restrain the act, but it will not eradicate the motive. The African will not have ceased to desire, and vehemently to crave, the spirits, the ammunition, and the articles of finery and commerce which Europe alone can supply: these he can obtain by the Slave Trade, and by the Slave Trade only, while he remains what he is. The pursuit of man, therefore, after any interval of constrained abstinence, will be, not a matter of choice and selection, but of necessity: it must be the business of his life. But, when the African nations shall emerge from their present state of darkness and debasement, they will require no arguments from us, to convince them of the monstrous impolicy of the Slave Trade. They will not be content to see their remaining territories a wilderness, themselves in penury, their villages exposed day after day to havoc and conflagration, their children kidnapped and slaughtered,—for the purpose of gaining a paltry supply of the most inferior and pernicious articles of Europe. They will perceive, that their effective strength may be applied to other, and more lucrative purposes. And as their intellect advances, it is not too much to hope that their morals will improve, and that they will awaken to the enormous wickedness, as well as folly, of this cruel system. "Europe, therefore," (to use the words of one of the most distinguished of African travellers,) "will have done little for the Blacks, if the abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade is not followed up by some wise and grand plan for the civilization of the continent. None presents a fairer prospect than the education of the sons of Africa in their own country, and by their own countrymen, previously educated by Europeans." We may assume, and with almost equal confidence, that Africa can never be delivered, till we have called forth the rich productiveness of her soil. She derives, it must be confessed, some pecuniary advantage from the Slave Trade. Happily, however, it is the smallest possible amount of revenue from the largest possible amount of cost. The strength of our case, and the foundation of our hope, lie in the assurance,-I am tempted rather to call it, the indisputable certainty,-that the soil will yield a far more generous requital. Grant that the chieftains *Burckhardt's Travels in Nubia, p. 344. |