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African Memoranda. 401 To return to my subject. As one of the means that would The cuitiva- • • 11 i .. . -ii -r tionof Africa inevitably tend to the gradual abolition of the slave trade, 1 wouidtendto would recommend the cultivation of Africa, by its free natives; boliffon^of 3 ' in which cultivation none but freemen should be employed. slavery ’ This would, in the first place, tend to diminish the mart of slaves in that place; and it would also tend to lessen the desire of procuring them, at least by force, by fraud, and pre meditated and unprovoked attacks. For what generally is the motive which induces those tribes upon the coast, so barbarously and so frequently to catch and sell each other to Europeans ? The desire of being able to procure rum, tobacco, powder, and other European articles, which they have no other means of acquiring. But if, by. labouring for a week, a month, ora year, they may have it in their power to procure them as the wages of their labour, their minds will be turned from the precarious means of theft and murder, for that purpose, to those of labour and industry, which, in a very few years, would make a wonderful alteration in these people’s notions of the iniquity of the former procedure: besides, they would feel the good effects of such a change of conduct in their own security; for where depredations of that kind are common, every tribe is liable to them; but when they no longer catch slaves, they wdll no longer themselves, be liable to be caught. Now what effect would the cultivation of Africa have upon To the civiii- its inhabitants? The cultivation of the soil, must necessarily natives and to induce commerce, and the intercourse resulting from this ex-^^ change, this barter, this trade, will, and must, soften and civilize and rel ' glon> the most barbarous of the two parties, carrying it on; and will, by degrees, introduce letters, and, in the end, the Christian religion, to that, at present, ill-feted people. . 3F