Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/126

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112
A CHAPTER ON SLAVERY.

effective, means for putting a stop to that trade, is the return of the exiled Africans themselves (or a large portion of them), civilized and Christianized, to their native shore, and so settling the coast with an enlightened population. Thus wonderful are the workings of Divine Providence. He makes the evil the instrument of its own repression: — He makes the disease its own cure, after it has performed the good work of purging and purifying the system. The Africans, carried away in suffering and distress from a land which, though their native country, and therefore dear to them, was nevertheless itself a land of darkness and wide-spread slavery, return at length — they or their descendants — free, enlightened, spiritualized, to break the shackles of their kindred, to proclaim liberty and light throughout the country of their ancestors; to "give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death," — "to let the oppressed go free." And while doing this good work, they turn at the same time to the slave-trader, and say with a stern look, "Come no more here — your work is done, your day is past: you need carry away no more of our people to be either re-enslaved or enlightened in a foreign land: light and liberty are brought now to our own doors: we can stay at home and have the blessing of Christianity besides: go! let us see your face no more."[1]

  1. "Cape Mesurado was an extensive slave-market, before the settlement of Monrovia. Two thousand slaves were exported annually from the single points of Cape Mesurado and Cape Mount. In 1834, before the settlement of the Pennsylvania Colony at Bassa cove, 500 slaves were shipped from that place in a single month. 'Wherever tho influence of the colony extends,’ says a British naval officer, ‘the