Among the other tribes living in the Liberian territory is the Grebo. This tribe occupies the land in the immediate vicinity of Cape Palmas and is the one now threatening that portion of the Republic with a war of extermination.
I mean no disrespect to the people of Great Britain when I say that the British trader on the Coast of Africa is among the most grasping and unscrupulous of men. He has succeeded the Frenchman, the Spaniard, and the Portuguese, those reckless factors in the prosecution of the slave trade, and substituted a trade in rum, tobacco, and gunpowder, a trade not quite so baneful in its immediate results, but as pernicious as it dares to be in the logic of events. These articles the native is eager to buy and the trader anxious to sell. Year by year the British government, yielding to the demand of the British trader, has increased its possessions upon the Coast either by acquisition from the native Kings, or by purchase from foreign Powers, until it owns 1,500 miles of the African shore. Liberia is now bounded on its northern and southern limits by British territory, but the trader, not content with this stealing as it were in the rear of Liberian settlements with his contraband products, is enticing the willing native to trade in violation of the laws of the Republic, and inducing him to believe that if the poor and defenseless Liberian settler can be driven from his home, the trader can sell his goods without restriction and at half the price; hence this war which is now trying the courage and the resources of the Liberians.
These two tribes, the Mandingos and Grebos, both of them intelligent and aggressive, the one crusaders in the name of Mahomet, and the other warriors in the cause of greed and gain, form the most important elements in the internal economy of the Republic. The destiny of Liberia depends on the conquest of these two opposing forces. Will she? Will she? She must meet and conquer morally and physically these antagonistic ideas or see herself swept into the sea; but I have faith that she will conquer in the name of God and with the aid of America. We know that God will not fail them; let us see to it that America does not fold her arms and turn upon these struggling people the cold shoulder of indifference.
The other tribes that come under the jurisdiction of the Government of Liberia are the Veys, the Pessehs, the Barlines, and the Bassas. The Veys are amongst the most intelligent, and thirty years ago made an alphabet for themselves. Mahomedanism is rapidly spreading among them. None of these have any special significance. They constitute, however, the material nearest at hand for the missionary and the philanthropist.
According to my observation among the heathen, conversion to Christianity is not the work of a moment, it is an influence gradually permeating and pervading, until a community finds itself raised to a higher plane, converted to a nobler faith. This I anticipate will, in a measurable period of time, be the result of the moral influence of the Americo-African upon the surrounding mass of barbarism. One by one its dark superstitions will disappear in the everincreasing light, until in the brightness of mid-day the Sun of Righteousness will cast His beneficent rays on the whole area of that broad and benighted land.
I found the climate of Liberia decidedly improved since my first visit. As the land is cleared miasmatic influences become less fatal. To the native-born Liberian it is as healthful as any tropical country. The emigrant takes his risks as any of us do who migrate from a temperate to a torrid zone. The white man has no business in Africa. “Similia similibus curantur.” “Like things are cured by like.” To the black man, the Ethiopian, is given the mission of laboring in the vineyard until he comes to his own again. Time enters largely into this problem of regenerating Africa. But it will be done and find its reward in Eternity. Without conflicting with the theories of the savans, I take it upon myself to say that to the white and black races is given the glorious work of rehabilitating the world, each in its own latitude and in its own way.
The Government of Liberia is apparently stable and well administered. It would be an anomaly in political history to find the off-shoot of a republican country establishing for itself any other than a republican form of government; her constitution therefore is similar to our own, containing one proviso, however, to which I wish to draw your attention.
Liberia came into existence as a nation preceded by no war; she was born of no internecine strife, but in harmony with her mission she declared herself free and independent, and was gracefully acknowledged as such by the Great Powers of the world—the mother country alone hesitating to receive as an equal her neglected child—and in an humble and lowly manner, becoming her color and condition, she peacefully and quietly took her back seat in the family of nations. I say that Liberia has a government apparently stable. Compare it, in the twenty-eight years of its existence, with the government of France in its throes with monarchism, pseudo republicanism, imperialism, and communism—“everything by turns and nothing long”—or with that of Spain in its dynastic revolutions. It seems to me that the people of Liberia are in the hands of a guiding Power, which carries them hither and thither, always safely, to the end that they may become the arbiters of the fate of their race, the peaceful conquerors of a new world. I know it is the fashion to deride such pietistic notions, to sneer at such unscientific theories; but, my friends, as I grow older, as I watch the ebbing and flowing of the human tides, as I read of human destiny moulded to serve Divine ends, I feel how insignificant men are in themselves, how great they are in the hands of God. I say that the government has, in the main, been well administered. The world, so called, i. e., the greed, the superstition, the bigotry, the clannish conservatism, added to the thoughtlessness and the indifference of the world, combine to crush out these abstract notions, these impracticable ideas of the mere philanthropist, to deny the capacity of certain “inferior” races for self-government, to prognosticate failures, to come in with malevolent predictions, to settle the whole matter finally with complacent “I told you so.”
There is no denying that Liberia has had her crisis, that she has trembled on the verge of ruin, that her rulers have made mistakes; but I contend that she has recovered from these shocks with increased stability and without the barbarism of bloodshed. Run your eye over the pages of contemporaneous history, read of the bloody executions, the fusillades in France, count the victims to the garoté in Cuba, number the exiles to Siberia, count the expatriated in New Caledonia—all in the name of order and good government—then turn to the records of our own eventful career or to the modest pages of Liberian history, and tell me which of all the Powers contain within themselves the surest foundations, the best promise of stability and permanence. Like our own, the Government of Liberia is based upon the will of the people, and although sometimes swayed from the path of wisdom by popular clamor, it in the main has been administered for the good of the people. Resting as it is upon education, secular and religious, it possesses a constantly increasing tendency toward perfect excellence and consequent permanence.
I dislike to be considered as a constant apologist, but the Republic of Liberia is on trial, and she needs the services of even so poor a pleader as myself. If we, gentlemen, have real faith in our own institutions, we must also have faith in the institutions of our little sister Republic. And in order to form an unbiased opinion we must lose sight of the question of color. Fortunately for the future of Liberia, the homogeneousness of her population removes one of her greatest dangers. In our own country the question of caste is yet to be fought out, and in my opinion upon its result will depend the permanence of our own Government and the stability of our own institutions.