5128. Mr. W. Patten.] Did you find when you were at Sierra Leone that the price paid for goods at auctions exceeded or was below the price of goods imported in other ways?—The necessary effect of such large quantities of goods being thrown on the market, and compelled to be sold at any rate to the highest bidder, was of course to lower the price; and I consider that the very cheap rate at which the liberated Africans were able to procure those goods, which, in former times, they could only obtain at a high price, was what formed the advantage which they derived from those sales.
5129. How do you account for it, that the merchants at Sierra Leone do not themselves purchase those goods?—They have not the money; in fact, they have no money at all. There are only one or two men that have any money in the place; they are almost all men who receive their goods from houses in England; they are generally very much in debt to the persons who send goods to them; and the only parties who have money in the colony, with the exception of two gentlemen, are liberated Africans, and many of the latter have very large sums.
5130. Mr. Forster.] Has the trade at Sierra Leone not, in your opinion, been a successful trade for some years?—It has been a successful trade for the liberated Africans.
5131. The question applied to British traders?—I cannot say; I have not been engaged in trade myself during that time; but I should think that the English traders must have suffered by the goods which were thrown on the market from slave vessels, whilst they had goods which were purchased at a much dearer rate to dispose of, and had not the money to purchase the low-priced goods there. But one case I can mention, where a white merchant at Sierra Leone had the funds to go into the market and compete with the liberated Africans; he has made a great deal of money by it, and the more in consequence of his means being so superior to those of the Africans; but that was because he had money: the losses of the others were because they had none.
5132. You have spoken of the advantages to the black population from the sale of those goods, which have led them to become hawkers and pedlars in the neighbouring country; it is the fact that the natives of Africa are very much disposed to that species of employment in preference to agricultural labour?—It certainly is so at Sierra Leone.
5133. Then the advantages derived from the encouragement thus given to them to embark in that species of employment in preference to the fixed pursuits of agriculture may be questionable on that ground?—I think not; I think if the liberated African can get money and can educate his family well, and procure all that he wants by trade, it is just as well as if he procured it by agriculture.
5134. Have you found them practically carrying on any regular system of agriculture voluntarily?—Not for export: there have been some articles cultivated, but to no very great extent: ginger, and pepper, and cassada, but cultivation has not been carried to any great extent for export at Sierra Leone.
5135. How do you account for cultivation and improvement having made so little progress in Sierra Leone after all the efforts of the party in this country, and all the money which has been expended upon it?—I doubt the proposition contained in the question; I think that they have made progress.
5136. Planting and cultivation is carried on there to a great extent?—No, it is not; but the people have other means of procuring what they require.
5137. Have any means been taken, or if taken, have they been successful, for promoting any regular system of agriculture or planting in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone?—No, I think not, and I am very sorry for it; I think more might have been done in the way of premiums upon produce, and giving prizes for successful cultivation.