The assistance of all friends to Christianity, Freedom, and lawful Commerce, as opposed to the Slave Trade and Slavery, is earnestly solicited.
"Cotton Is KING! In America"
"Cotton Is BREAD! In England"
The free colored people of America are said to be looking forward to their ultimate removal from the United States, and are anxiously seeking for locations suitable for their final settlement in Africa or other intertropical regions; where they may obtain that freedom which is the inherent right of man, and by their industry acquire adequate independence.
The African Aid Society has been formed to assist this movement, and to annihilate the slave trade, by encouraging the development of the resources of those countries inhabited by the African races generally, as well as to cause African free labor to supersede African slavery and degradation.
In Canada West no less than 45,000 colored persons, flying from slavery, have now taken refuge; willing to meet the rigors of the climate, so that they are assured of personal freedom under the aegis of the British flag. From the enactments lately made in some States of the Union, for the purpose of compelling all the free people of color either to leave the country or to be again reduced to a state of slavery, a considerable addition will, no doubt, shortly be made to the number of those who have already found their way to Canada; while, from physical causes, Canada can be looked upon by the colored only as a "City of Refuge."
Great Britain has for half a century been employing physical force for the suppression of the slave trade, which after the expenditure of upwards of forty millions sterling, and the noble sacrifice of the lives of some of the best and bravest of her sons, still exists. It is but just to state that the exportation of slaves from Africa has been reduced from 150,000 to 50,000 per annum, by the persevering effort of those who are opposed to a traffic disgraceful to Christianity.
Is the ultimate object of those who are opposed to this traffic its suppression or its annihilation? The annihilation of the slave trade and slavery in Africa was unquestionably the aim of the philanthropists who originated this great movement.
The experience of half a century has proved that physical force cannot destroy the traffic while there is a demand for slave labor. Diplomacy must be baffled in its well-intentioned efforts to oppose this traffic while the profits for carrying each slave from the continent of Africa to the island of Cuba amount to the enormous return of fourteen hundred percent.
It is a well-attested fact, that the same quality of cotton may be obtained from Africa for twenty millions of money for which Great Britain pays the slaveholders in America thirty millions per annum. If cotton can be sold in the Liverpool market at anything less than 4¾d. per lb., the slaveholders in America will cease to grow what, under altered circumstances, would be unprofitable. Cotton of middling quality (which is in the greatest demand) may be obtained in West and Eastern Africa at 4d. per lb.; and, already, cotton from Western Africa (Liberia) has been sent to Liverpool, there re-shipped, and sold at Boston, in the United States, at a less cost than cotton of a similar quality could be supplied from the Southern States of the Union.