place retire upon Sundays to the Bullam shore, there to spend the time in revelling amongst black females of a certain description, " and I have seen these women," said an informant, "coming into stores in Freetown upon the Monday morning following, to obtain the payment of their preceding day's services in beads, baft, or articles of dress, according as were required, or that had been agreed upon."

66 The progress of morality," say the Commissioners, page 66, amongst the coloured classes, is not to be estimated by their regular attendance at public worship. In the villages, the clergymen, or teachers who occasionally officiate as such, have generally been also local SUPERINTENDENTS.* It will readily be conceived with what facility an attendance at worship could, under these circumstances, be insured. But, when it is remembered that a great part of those who attend DO NOT

COMPREHEND EVEN THE LANGUAGE

in which they are addressed, it will excite no surprise that they should have derived little benefit from the lessons inculcated. At Freetown, similar results may in part be attributed to the unrestrained ministration of individuals, some of whom, however good their intentions, are more likely to excite enthusiasm than to instil morality. Were the prevalence of the domestic virtues to be judged of by the number of marriages, a comparison of these returns would place Freetown in an UNFAVOURABLE point of view. It is not, however, to be inferred, that the morality of the villagers is therefore of a higher standard. For, when the circumstances of the liberated Africans, and the manner in which marriages are contracted amongst them, are considered, THIS INSTITUTION, SO far as it regards them, will be found a FALLACIOUS CRITERION." Indeed so dreadful is the moral pestilence which is engendered in the Freetown atmosphere, that the Rev. Mr Raban says (page 66), speaking of those liberated Africans who leave the villages to reside th re, "it is much to be feared, they, being freed from the salutary restraint exercised over them in the villages, and SETTLING AMONG THE HEATHEN, have fallen again into those

habits which they seemed to have laid aside. Instead of rising in the scale of moral improvement, or even continuing at the point to which they had been brought in their former secluded situation, THEY SINK nearly to the level of those about them."

Such is the moral state of this capital of British Africa-so horridly vicious and corrupt, that it corrupts, degrades, and debases even the liberated African, who was but yesterday brought from his native wilds, and who is scarcely one degree removed from the most debased and savage state!

It will not be denied, that the African population of Sierra Leone were, nay are, savages, with feeble intellects, and sunk in the lowest state of ignorance and moral debasement. With a knowledge of these facts, it is not necessary that an European should visit the place in order to learn what such a set of savages, supported in idleness, and thrown loose amongst a set of graceless moneyhunting Europeans, would be following and attending to. Common sense would teach us to know, that without forsaking their native superstitions and grovelling immoralities, they would learn, as they do learn, and as they have learned, all the vices of the immoral European, and to practise these as they are practised in Sierra Leone, by these Africans in particular, with their native grovelling bestiality. The European must rank below the meanest schoolboy in knowledge of human nature, who does not appreciate correctly the real state of Sierra Leone, the character and pursuits of its population; and detect the impudent fabrications which are circulated so widely and so profusely over this country concerning it, although such an European had never personally visited the pestilential and vicious spot.

At the risk of some repetition, it is due to you and to my subject to point out a few specimens of the utter ignorance, or unpardonable disregard for truth, which characterises the pages of my Sierra Leone opponent.

The individual, however, who demeans himself so far as to fabricate,

All the rest was made up by Kenneth Macaulay. No such return was published by the House of Commons. I might leave such dishonest and reprehensible proceedings as the above references disclose, to be characterized and estimated by the intelligent reader in the manner which they merit; but I must extend my notice of similar references.

Amongst the list of deaths at Sierra Leone, within a short period I enumerated-Charles Turner, Major-General; Donald Turner, Lieutenant; and Turner, volunteer.

ner," says Mr Macaulay, p. 77, "took out two nieces, TWO NEPHEWS, and two aides-de-camp," &c. Here then we have, by Mr Macaulay's admission, two nephews; and besides these, General Turner took out with him a relation named MARTIN TURNER, who was appointed Superintendent of Kissey town, and who died there. Thus, Mr Macaulay's book refutes Mr Macaulay's preface!

66

"The circumstances attending the death of the two nephews," says Mr Macaulay, page 77, were these: The two nephews were labouring under consumption (one in the last stage) on their arrival in the colony, and both died of that disease!" My informant, who was acquainted with both in Sierra Leone, and saw them on their death-beds, told me a different tale; and upon inquiry at those, who, alas! must know too well, I state that only one of these nephews was affected with consumption when he arrived in the colony, but not severely; while the other was a fine, stout, healthy young man, totally free from any such complaint. He was cut off by the fever of the place; and I have the authority of the officer under whom the other served, to say, that his death was also accelerated, nay, wholly occasioned, by the fatal Sierra Leone fever!

Mr Macaulay denies that General Turner's agricultural schemes really failed; and he denies that General Turner ever had employed on his farm a man who had been in the West Indies. The cause of the failure, says Mr Macaulay, p. 56, was:-"General Turner lost his first superintendent (a hard-drinking intemperate Scotsman, and not a man acquainted with tropical agriculture, or with the West Indies, as Mr Macqueen UNTRULY ASSERTS), and he soon ascertained that the multifarious duties of his own extensive command left him no time for personal attention to cultivation."

The man to whom I allude as General Turner's overseer, was named JOHN GORDON. He had been nine

years in the West Indies, and enlisted at Chatham into the first company of the Royal African Corps. Since I last had the honour of addressing you, I have had the good fortune to meet with the officer who commanded the company to which this man belonged, and who informs me that upon General Turner's earnest inquiry at him about such a man, for the purpose of superintending the farm, he (the officer) recommended Gordon, on account of his known sobriety! He frequently complained to the officer in question, that he never could get either the Kroomen or the liberated Africans to work. He soon after died.

It is quite impossible that these facts and those individuals could be unknown to a person so well acquainted with Sierra Leone as Mr Macaulay is, or pretends to be; and I leave you and my readers to judge what credit is due to that writer whose ignorance of Sierra Leone is so great, that he did not know these particulars; or of that effrontery, which, acquainted with the details, not only denies them, but brings forward that denial to impugn the veracity of his opponent. The reflection on his country about "the hard-drinking intemperate Scotsman," discloses the work of the pen of some other Macaulay or Cockney associate; but KENNETH MACAULAY was the last Scotsman in Sierra Leone who ought to have put his name to any page conveying such a reproach.

"The dead British soldier," says Mr Macaulay, page 65, "is not buried in his blankets for want of boards to make coffins." I affirm they were so; and the fact is stated upon the authority of brave men, who followed the remains of comrades to their last home, at the foot of the fatal Plum Tree, where they were tumbled into their graves in blankets, because no boards could be had to make coffins for them, from Mr Macaulay's pile being exhausted. The quantity of boards required for coffins, may be estimated from the following facts, communicated to me by a gallant naval officer. Walking out, said he, one evening with a person belonging to Mr Macaulay's establishment, the conversation turned to the subject of the mortality then raging in the place, when the individual alluded to stopped, looked up, and coolly addressed

me thus:-"You see that large pile of boards ?" Yes! "We have sold the fellow to it for coffins since you came to the coast (a period of three months), and we shall sell the remaining pile, before the present sickly season closes, for the same purpose!" What might the magnitude of the pile be? was the next inquiry. It was a square pile, made up with long broad boards, " ABOVE" thirty feet high! said my informant. The profits of this timber-trade must be great ;John Bull pays it!

At pages 11 and 12, Mr Macaulay charges the excessive military expenditure of Sierra Leone to the account of recruiting Blacks for the Black regiments stationed in the West Indies. On this account, says he, "the expenditure rose from L.25,853:4:33d. in 1810 to L.36,291:13:33d. in 1811; and from L.41,549:9: 1d. in 1812 to L.55,330:3:4d. in 1813; and," continues he, "as the West India recruiting depôts increased, so did the expenses attending them." These false and audacious charges are easily demolished. At page 17, Mr Macaulay, speaking of the disbanded soldiers, tells us that a considerable portion of them, as was the fact, had "ORIGINALLY been purchased as Slaves IN THE WEST INDIES ;" and various Parliamentary returns inform us, that a still greater proportion of these were Africans, captured, liberated, and taken into the army IN the West Indies! Whatever expenses, therefore, were incurred on this account would be, and were, charged against the West Indies, and not against Sierra Leone. The Commissioners also cut down Mr Macaulay's statement; for at page 26 they inform us, that the attempt to recruit in Sierra Leone does not appear "to have been very successful in obtaining voluntary enlistment; the military not being a FAVOURITE SERVICE either with the newly imported Africans, or with those who have been longer resident in the Colony!" Other documents, the authority of which will not be disputed, enable me, clearly and pointedly, to state the number of Blacks recruited in Sierra Leone, both for the regiments stationed in the West Indies and for the African corps STATIONED IN AFRICA, and this too for one period mentioned by Mr Macaulay, even to the exact and the trifling amount. In the 9th Report of the

African Institution, p. 63, we find an account certified by a superintendent or overseer, named Kenneth Macawlay, July 9th, 1814, pointing out the manner in which the Africans liberated in Sierra Leone had been disposed of till that date, from which account I select the following :-

Enlisted or taken into the Army, 1,861 Navy, 107

Total to 9th July, 1814, 1,968 By Par. Pap. No. 362 of 1825, I add, including 68 women and children, from 4th Jan. 1814 to 4th Jan. 1817, Army, Navy, Jan. 4th 1817, to Jan. 4th 1824, None.

954

32

Grand Total at Sierra Leone, 2,954

In the journals of the House of Commons, vol. 69, we find the whole expense paid for recruiting at the Sierra Leone depôt in 1812-1814 to be only L.4,465 18: 6d., instead of a sum of L.14,200, during one of those years, as stated by Mr Macaulay.

With this triumphant exposure I might leave Mr Macaulay's recruiting account; but it is necessary to drag to light some more of his impudent misrepresentations. At p. 13, he asserts, that the military expenditure charged under the head Sierra Leone, was, in 1823 and 1824, increased by an experiment," then commenced, "of forming an African Colonial

Corps out of the refuse of white regiments;" which "experiment," he states, and I believe truly, occasioned a "great mortality;" but both of which mischiefs, he adds, ought to be charged against the authors of the scheme, and not "to the colony of Sierra Leone, or to the African Institution."* Till men can raise the dead from their graves, they cannot recruit white soldiers in Sierra Leone! Those alluded to were recruited in ENGLAND, and consequently, the expense of this recruiting, which, being for Sierra Leone, ought to be charged against it, was, and is, charged in the recruiting expenditure in England,

and not in the "army extraordina ries" drawn for from Sierra Leone, which was all that had been brought forward by me. What I have to do

with is, not against whom the scheme ought to be charged, but against what account is it charged, or in what account is it included?

This recruiting expenditure, however, which cannot be separated by me in the British returns, remains a just and a heavy charge to be brought against Sierra Leone. MR JAMES STEPHEN, in some of his anti-colonial works, estimates the recruiting, outfit, and transport of each soldier sent to our West India Colonies, at L.100 sterling each. The soldiers sent to Sierra Leone cannot cost less, and at this rate, allowing only 7000 European troops, exclusive of Africans,† to have been sent there from first to last, there remains the sum of L.700,000 additional to be charged to my first account of Sierra Leone expenditure!

"Mr Macqueen," says Mr Macaulay, p. 50, "has the hardihood to insinuate, that General Turner was unpopular," and to state, that "the dissatisfied blacks, instigated" by the whites, were about "to transmit a complaint against him to the Colonial Office," shortly before his death. "Never was there a more unfounded, and I may add," says Mr Macaulay, more malignant misrepresentation than this!"

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I do not INSINUATE" these things. They are stated as undeniable facts. They are notorious in Sierra Leone; they are well known in London; and if I am not grievously misinformed, or the Colonial Office most reprehensibly kept in ignorance, you can readily learn the fact. Mr Macaulay, let me tell him, is treading on dangerous ground-provoking an inquiry, and a call for documents, which the influence of his friends and patrons may not always be able to keep back.

In reply to the statement made about the deceptions practised upon this country, with regard to the progress of education in Sierra Leone, Mr Macaulay, p. 32, states as follows: