wisdom in conducting affairs, was appointed Governor; and the Society had no reason to repent their choice. And still further, when it was thus found that the colonists could be safely entrusted with the whole management of affairs, the Society generously gave them their independence — the first instance, perhaps, in all history, of so noble and disinterested a public transaction.
The organization of the Republic as an independent State took place in July, 1847. The Constitution is modeled after that of the United States. The Government consists of a President, a Vice-President, with a Senate and House of Representatives, the number of members in the former being six, and in the latter twenty-eight. The first President, elected under the new Constitution, was the former excellent Governor, Mr. Roberts.
In 1848, President Roberts visited Europe, and was received by the Governments of both England and France, which Powers acknowledged the independence of the new Republic, and negotiated with it treaties of commerce. From an article on Liberia, which appeared in the London Times about the period of President Roberts’s visit, we make the following extract, which presents some interesting particulars: —
"Since its commencement in 1820 [1822], its population, including the aborigines, who have incorporated themselves with the immigrants, has increased to upwards of 80,000, while the land they occupy extends along 320 miles of coast, and reaches on an average about eighty miles into the interior. The proportion of the population born in America, or of American
