would be at their own risk, and under no circumstance were they to expect any assistance for carrying on hostile operations against the Natives, nor any aid whatever beyond the subsidy already promised.

The appearance of a ship of war would be necessary, now and again, on the waters of the Gold Coast; but no material aid should be expected to be derived from such presence apart from the simple assurance which it might imply to the Native chiefs, viz. that British interests in that quarter were not lost sight of by the Home Government. Yet the captains of His Majesty's ships would receive strict orders to abstain from all interference in any contests which the merchants might be engaged in on shore with the Natives. The forts and castles were to be considered as mere factories, and not dependencies of Sierra Leone in any sense whatever. The ground rents of the castles, the presents to Native chiefs hitherto defrayed by Government, were to be made chargeable to the merchants who would occupy them after the end of the year 1827. But these were not all; the pensioners of the African Company were also to receive every consideration. Each man was to be discharged by the grant of moderate compensation out of the monies lodged in the Colonial Chest at Cape Coast, and the merchants were to be relieved by the removal of all duties.

Agreeably to these instructions, LieutenantColonel Hugh Lumley, then Acting-Governor of the West African settlements, after the death of Major-General Sir Neil Campbell, fitted out an

expedition under Captain Owen, R.N., for Fernandopo, the new settlement chosen in preference to the Gold Coast, and he himself sailed on the 30th of September, 1827, to carry out His Majesty's Government's instructions.

He arrived at the Gold Coast on the 15th October in the Eden, when the Diadem transport, the Africa steamship, and the Horatio tender sailed for Fernandopo, taking on board, at Cape Coast, a fresh supply of water, a mounted piece of brass ordnance, and such engineer and ordnance stores as were more immediately required for the establishment of the new colony.

Captain Owen in the Eden landed at Accra for a small brass field-piece, a further supply of provision and ammunition.

The expedition took with them a full complement of native mechanics, chiefly those who had been the slaves of the African Company at Cape Coast, a native company of the Royal African Corps, consisting of two officers and eighty rank and file.

With regard to the Public Stores at Cape Coast, a sufficient number of heavy brass guns was secured and taken to Bathurst, Gambia, for mounting the battery, and the rest were taken to England.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

REPORT OF INQUIRY INTO THE STATE OF THE
SETTLEMENT, 1826

HAVING given a brief account of the Gold Coast, we shall now return to Sierra Leone.

A Commission of Inquiry, as has been stated, was appointed in 1825 to inquire into the Colony and report upon the progress made from the transfer of the Colony to the African Institution, in 1808, down to the year 1826. That Commission had arrived on 28th December, 1825, and furnished a report on the Liberated Africans, but the principal report was yet to come. This was ultimately furnished and presented to Parliament in 1827, and was ordered to be printed in two parts in the months of May and June respectively.

The report, however, was not satisfactory; although there were proofs of efforts and progress, yet they were not commensurate with what might otherwise have been expected, and the subject was again brought forward whether Sierra Leone should not be abandoned.

The object of the African Institution had not been attained, It was to watch the execution of the Abolition Act of 1807, to excite an interest in

the subject, and the ambition of the surrounding Native tribes; to diffuse light and knowledge in regions which, as yet, had been grovelling in darkness, superstition and ignorance by the diffusion of light, and by obliterating all traces of a system that at once was disgraceful to the Christian name and derogatory to the character of civilised man; to make the Natives of Africa acquainted with the comforts of social order and useful mechanical arts; to point out the manner and means by which they might avail themselves of the natural products of their country, by substituting an innocent for a guilty traffic, and make the inhabitants of the continent of Africa, in bondage or at home, recognise their position as men possessed of all the natural faculties of man.

How far this has been effected may be seen in these pages. The results, truly, were not adequate to the efforts put forth, and were rather tardy in their advances. The work had reached such a magnitude that must defy all institutions except those of Government and local organisation. The slave trade was still carried on rampant by foreign nations and individual British merchants.

The Act of 1807 had done all it could in the prohibition of the slave trade, but what of slavery? At a meeting of the African Institution held in the Freemasons' Hall, under the presidency of the Duke of Gloucester, Lord Calthorpe, in moving a vote of thanks to the directors of the African Institution for the unremitted attention to the objects of the Institution, said :—

"When we consider the circumstances which had

brought the situation of Africa more particularly under the observation of this country, and within the pale of our strongest sympathies, and, above all, the atrocities which have been committed for centuries against the population of that vast continent by subjects of Great Britain, then indeed it became still more our bounden duty to labour to ameliorate the condition of the African race, not only as an object worthy of the solicitude of philanthropy, and calling for the voluntary display of Christian kindness, but because our past conduct imposed on us a solemn and indispensable obligation to mitigate evils which we had been the principal instruments in inflicting."

Mr. William Wilberforce at the same meeting remarked :

"Only a few years ago they (the African Institution) had consoled themselves with the hope that the abolition of the slave trade was carried, and that the Powers of Europe would co-operate, as they had promised, in completely extinguishing the traffic on the part of their subjects. Unhappily, however, this sanguine and, as they thought, wellformed expectation had been disappointed. They were bound, nevertheless, to proceed onward in their course; they were called by every sacred principle to go on without desponding, acting as they were on principles, and impelled by motives which carried with them their own reward; and which would, in their proper time, be rewarded, even if their efforts had been less successful, or had they not been successful at all."

The results of the efforts of the directors of the Institution then were not adequate to their efforts. They toiled on; they had laboured for full twenty