Abbeokuta, I have neither seen nor heard of any Roman
Catholic Missionaries; but the most surprising and startling fact is,
that every slave-trading point on the coast at present (which ports are
mainly situated South and East) where the traffic is carried on, are
either Roman Catholic trading-ports, or native agencies protected by
Roman Catholics; as Canot, formerly at Grand Cape Mount, Pedro Blanco,
and Domingo at Wydah in Dahomi. And still more, it is a remarkable and
very suggestive reality that at all of those places where the Jesuits or
Roman Catholic Missionaries once were stationed, the slave-trade is not
only still carried on in its worst form as far as practicable, but
slaves are held in Africa by these white foreigners at the old
Portuguese settlements along the Southern and Eastern coasts, of Loango
and Mozambique for instance; and although some three years have elapsed
since the King of Portugal proclaimed, or pretended to proclaim "Liberty
to all the people throughout his dominions," yet I will venture an
opinion, that not one in every hundred of native Africans thus held in
bondage on their own soil, are aware of any such "Proclamation." Dr.
Livingstone tells us that he came across many ruins of Roman Catholic
Missionary Stations in his travels--especially those in Loando de St.
Paul, a city of some eighteen or twenty thousand of a population--all
deserted, and the buildings appropriated to other uses, as
store-houses, and the like. Does not this seem as though slavery were
the legitimate successor of Roman Catholicism, or slave-traders and
holders of the Roman Catholic religion and Missionaries? It certainly
has that appearance to me; and a fact still more glaring is, that the
only professing Christian government which in the light of the present
period of human elevation and national reform, has attempted such a
thing, is that of Roman Catholic Spain, (still persisting in holding
Cuba for the wealth accruing from African Slaves stolen from their
native land) which recently expelled every Protestant Missionary from
the African Island of Fernando Po, that they might command it unmolested
by Christian influence, as an export mart for the African Slave-Trade.
To these facts I call the attention of the Christian world, that no one
may murmur when the day of retribution in Africa comes--which come it
must--and is fast hastening, when slave-traders must flee.

Influence of Protestant Religion against Slavery,