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 pec