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Mr. Chairman, Ladles, and Gentlemen:–

Though conscious of my inability to do justice to the subject now before us, as it deserves to be handled, yet I shall consider my feeble efforts as having been amply rewarded if my poor country, Africa, derives any benefit, or the cause of God be more extended, by any suggestion that I may advance.

In treating of the future hope of a country or a nation, it necessary that one should be acquainted with its past history and its present progress. The past history of the Sherbro country, as it is with the past history of the whole of Africa, is written in characters of blood.

As early as the year 1740 the whole of the Sherbro country was one extensive mart, whence Europeans exchanged beads, spirits, and tobacco for cargoes of human beings. John Newton, the cruel slave-dealer, afterward the evangelical Newton of England, had at that time his principal slave factory at the Plantation Island, where the ruins of his slave-pen can still be seen, and also a branch factory at Dublin, on the Bananas Island,–then belonging to Sherbro,–where a lime-fence, planted by him when engaged in his nefarious traffic, is still standing, as a monument of the sufferings of our fathers.

The Portuguese, the French, and the Spaniards rushed into the country, obtaining the sons and daughters of Africa for foreign goods and Spanish gold, spreading wars, rapine, and murder in all her borders.