The colonization of the coast of Africa, in my estimation, is impracticable, from its climate being uncongenial to the constitution of Europeans, and from the system of slavery existing among its inhabitants, without the employment of natives in their present condition.  The requisite authority to establish a system of labour, upon remunerative principles, and with industrious vigour, cannot otherwise be supported; and a misapprehension on this principle has been one of the great causes, as I conceive, of the failure of the Sierra Leone Company in establishing their agricultural objects.  They attempted, in prosecution of their humane project, an agricultural establishment on the Boolam shore, opposite to their colony, where they had a choice of good lands:  they proceeded upon the principles of their declaration, “that the military, personal, and commercial rights of blacks and whites shall be the same, and secured in the same manner,” and in conformity with the act of parliament which incorporated them, more immediately that clause which relates to labour, namely, “not to employ any person or persons in a state of slavery in the service of the said Company;” but they have totally failed; and in one of their reports, among other reasons, it is acknowledged, that for want of authority over the free natives whom they employed, their agricultural establishment on the Boolam shore was unsuccessful.  Let not those worthy and truly respectable characters, whose humanity has induced them to risque an extensive property unhappily expended without effect, here consider that I mean to militate against their views, but rather may they acquiesce in the truth, and devise other expedients to promote their beneficent objects, and to assimilate the natives of the country with their views.  They have not only to lament a nonproductive profusion of their property, but an alienation of the natives, occasioned by a misconception of their character, by distracted councils, and the narrowed ideas of the agents they employed to prosecute their humane endeavours, but also by a desolate waste in their colony, without a regular feature of cultivation in its vicinity.

At Bance Island, where slavery and agriculture were united under one superintendance in conformity with the established laws of the country, the mechanic arts among the natives have arrived at a greater degree of perfection than any situation I have visited upon the Windward Coast; and had the intellectual powers of their minds been more amply considered and cultivated, they would have exhibited an uncontrovertible example of the capacity and intelligence of the African.  Although, as I have previously noticed, a superintendance directed only to the mechanical arts, applied to the local necessities of the Island, has had the most visible effects, yet, in proportion as their privileges have been extended, authority has become more inefficient, and their labour less unproductive in a pecuniary point of view, for want of a previous enlargement of their intellectual powers, and a progressive operation of freedom commensurate thereto.