Page:The future of Africa.djvu/87

Rh learning and scholarship, pure speech, noble ideas, and sacred principles—the order and moral dignity of the family—man's moral strength, woman's winning beauty, her stainless purity, her exalted excellence and piety,—and the simplicity of youth,—let these be the agencies we use in forming and compacting the main and master instrument for the fulfilment of a nation's mission—! The results that will proceed from such high endeavor are clear and certain. We shall raise up on these shores a race of men, a stock of mannood, and a growth of manners, which shall confuse and mystify all the past chronicles of time pertaining to our race. We shall falsify all the lying utterances of the speculative ethnographies and the pseudo-philosophies which have spawned from the press of modern days against us. And we shall bring about such an expansion of mind and such a development of character, that the report thereof shall bring to our shores curious travellers to behold here the mature outgrowth and the grateful vision of a manly, noble, and complete African nationality!

And now, having fit and capable men for the beneficent work of a nation, we may turn to other means and agencies by which it may work out its end and mission. One of these is —perhaps the foremost. All men can see at a glance how one nation blesses another by the interchange of commodities: for this is our experience, and in many ways our blessing. And were it not for trade and commerce, how sad and miserable would be the condition of vast masses of the human family—how 4*