25.--At 1 P.M., sailed for the Coast, in company with the Truxton.
It is now fourteen months since our ship first visited Monrovia. Within that period there has been a very perceptible improvement in its condition. The houses are in better repair; the gardens under superior cultivation. There is an abundant supply of cattle, which have been purchased from the natives. More merchant-vessels now make this their port, bringing goods hither, and creating a market for the commodities, live stock, and vegetables, of the colonists. An increased amount of money is in circulation; and the inhabitants find that they can dispose of the products of their industry for something better than the cloth and tobacco, which they were formerly obliged to take in payment. The squadron of United States men-of-war, if it do no other good, will at least have an essential share in promoting the prosperity of Liberia.
After having seen much, and reflected upon the subject even to weariness, I write down my opinion, that Liberia is firmly planted, and is destined to increase and prosper. This it will do, though all further support from the United States be discontinued. A large part of the present population, it is true, are ignorant, and incompetent to place a just estimate on freedom, or even to comprehend what freedom really is. But they are generally improving in this respect; and there is already a sufficient intermixture of intelligent, enterprising and sagacious men, to give the proper tone to the colony, and insure its ultimate success. The great hope, however, is in the generation that will follow these original emigrants. Education is universally diffused among the children; and its advantages, now beginning to be very manifest, will, in a few years, place the destinies of this great enterprise in the hands of men born and bred in Africa. Then, and not till then, will the experiment of African colonization, and of the ability of the colonists for self-support and self-government, have been fairly tried. My belief is firm in a favorable result.
Meantime, it would be wiser in the Colonization Society, and its more zealous members, to moderate their tone, and speak less strongly as to the advantages held out by Liberia. Unquestionably, it is a better country than America, for the colored race. But they will find it very far from a paradise. Men, who expect to become independent and respectable, can only achieve their object here on the same terms as everywhere else. They must cultivate their minds, be willing to exert themselves, and not look for a too easy or too rapid rise of fortune. One thing is certain. People of color have here their fair position in the comparative scale of mankind. The white man, who visits Liberia, be he of what rank he may, and however imbued with the prejudice of hue, associates with the colonists on terms of equality. This would be impossible (speaking not of individuals, but of the general intercourse between the two races) in the United States. The colonist feels his advantage in this respect, and reckons it of greater weight in the balance than all the hardships to which he is obliged to submit, in an unwonted climate and a strange country. He is redeemed from ages of degradation, and rises to the erect stature of humanity. On this soil, sun-parched though it be, he gives the laws; and the white man must obey them. In this point of view--as restoring to him his long-lost birthright of equality--Liberia may indeed be called the black man's paradise.