# The Future of Africa/Chapter 2

THE
DUTY OF A RISING CHRISTIAN STATE
to contribute to the world's well-being and civilization, and the means by which it may perform the same.
Delivered before the Common Council and the Citizens of Monrovia, Liberia, July 26, 1855, being the day of National Independence.
"Even so doth God protect us, if we be
Virtuous and wise. Winds blow, and waters roll,
Strength to the brave, and Power and Deity;
Yet in themselves are nothing! One decree
Spake laws to I hem, and said that by the soul
Only, the Nations shall be great and free."
Wordsworth.
"As men in proportion to their moral advancement learn to enlarge the circle of their regards; as an exclusive affection for our relations, our clan, or our country, is a sure mark of an unimproved mind, so is that narrow and unchristian feeling to be condemned * * * * which cares for no portion of the human race, but that to which itself belongs."—Dr. Arnold.
"No man can, by care-taking, as the Scripture saith, add a cubit to his stature in this little model of a man's body; but in the great frame of kingdoms and commonwealths, it is in the power of princes or estates to add amplitude and greatness to their kingdoms. For by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs as are wise, they may sow greatness to their posterity and successors."
—Lord Bacon.
ORATION.
This day is the festival of our national independence; the day of all the year dedicated to joy, thanksgiving, the sober thought of national responsibility, and the earnest pondering upon future destinies. Let us accept the delights and privileges it proffers us; tempering the elastic joy of youth with the calmer reflection of maturer years, and the sage wisdom of age.
I occupy the position to which you have appointed me with reluctance, and stand here to fulfil its duties with painful diffidence; for the brief period given me by the Committee, has not afforded me time to prepare for the duty of the day, in a manner adapted to the occasion, nor with justice to myself: and, therefore, I am sure there will be no expectation of pleasing oratory here, nor of the high gratification which it affords. Perhaps, however, the simple words and the plain thoughts I may present to you may find rather a more attentive ear, especially from more sober years and minds.
​For you will remember that the first anniversaries of this Republic have passed away: and the warm exuberance of new-born nationality has given place to care, to thought, to the consciousness of burdened duty, the weight of national responsibility, and the heavy cares of citizenship and government. And, therefore, we may more properly, at this time, think about our duties and our obligations, as a Christian State, and ponder the responsible future now coming quickly upon us.
Moreover, this, I should judge, would be the thoughtful tendency of all thinking men among us. The burdens of State are increasing every day. Deep and weighty questions are constantly arising. More and more are we brought into relation with foreign lands. And young as we are, the future begins to loom upon us with import and solemnity.
Such questions have much filled my own mind since my residence in this country. And during the few days which I have sjient in preparing this address, no subject has seemed more deserving of notice than this:—"The duty of a rising Christian State to contribute to the world's well-being and civilization; and the means by which it may perform the same."And this is my subject for the day.
"With respect to this point of obligation, fortunately for the speaker, as well as for the apprehension of his audience, the idea of duty and obligation is one so common and so manifest that it needs but be mentioned to be felt. The truth comes in upon us from different sources, and in divers streams. The simple details of common culture, the inobtrusive ​elements of schooling, the plainest fabrics of constant wear, the enjoyment of the staples of daily life, the facts of commerce, and the observations of travel, however limited by individual observation; all, with clearest tone and manifest significance, bespeak the mutual dependence of the different families of men, as also the obligation of all states and commonwealths and empires to contribute to human well-being and the progress of nations.
Among the diverse evidences and suggestions of this principle, there are some few most prominent. Let me endeavor to prove and illustrate the truth, the fixedness, and the universality of this obligation; for the sake of the benefit and the strength of its repetition, and of the internal refreshing which comes from the "line upon line," "the precept upon precept," and which ever proceeds from the iteration of all prime truths, all great and fundamental ideas, all large and noble principles.
I commence this argument, for which I feel and know myself unfitted, with the remark that, The relations which nations hear to the whole family of man in the aggregate, attest this obligation, and press this duty.
For there is a relation between individual, distinctive, nationalities, and the entire race. There is a significant meaning in that new word just introduced into our language, that is, the "solidarity of nations:" for a nation is a collection of men; not of angels, not of demi-gods, not of indescribable celestials; but of men—men of flesh, and blood, and bone, and muscle; men "of the earth, earthy;" men of the same make, ​and nature, and appetencies, and destiny, as ourselves, and the men of all other nations; and, therefore, a nation is but a section of the great commonwealth of humanity, a phase of the common type of being, and no more.
The endless migrations, the strange wanderings, the multitudinous progenitures, and the colonial formations which have originated the nations of earth, eschew the idea of isolation, and show that all are but fragments, separate, broken, detached, from some large parent form, itself of like origin, which has spread itself out, on every side, the common mother of nations and races.
For such is the light which shines even from the gloom of history: from one single pair and parentage—a race; from the dawn of time to the days of Noah. From the deluge, three distinct forms of race and family, which have again budded into life and energy divers nationalities, of immortal renown, of boundless influence, and commanding name, through all the tracks of time. And then, again, since the days of our Lord Christ, and especially since the Reformation, how the Scandinavian and the Norman races have streamed out from their crowded homes or hives in the far north and formed those great and mighty nations; which, notwithstanding the semi-barbarism of ages, and their brutal love of fight, have mastered the world by law, and genius, and learning, and science, and the genial outgrowings of art; and have blessed mankind by the religion Avhich has ever tempered their rudeness! Nor yet is it Europe only that feels the tread of their feet and the might of their ​presence and their influence. They have gone out in commerce, in trades, in corporations, and in missions;—streaming along the banks of both sides of the North American continent, and leaving, as their footprints, on those mighty shores, cities, and states, and commonwealths, and empires; filling the archipelagoes of both the eastern and western hemispheres with their offspring, their laws, their letters, and religion; dipping down into the far south seas, and sowing the seeds of European civilization among the scattered remnants of the Malayan race, far off in the wide, wide ocean; reproducing their restless energy, their creative intellect, and their vital faith, on the shores of Africa and India; aiming thence to bear them across the steppes of the Altai and to the central regions of this vast continent.
But view this mutual interdependence of nations in other aspects. Look out upon the broad and chequered field of universal history, and mark some few of its more prominent events which illustrate the truth we are now considering. We go back some 4,000 years in time. We tread the sedgy banks of the Nile; and a princely maiden, while taking her morning bath, discovers among the bulrushes an ark of flags, bearing as its precious burden a tender Jewish babe. The infant boy is carried to the Royal Palace of the Pharaohs; and from that palace comes forth, in time, that superior man, the leader of that immortal race so distinguished in the destinies of man, and in the economy of God,—the man Moses; in whose one single name is gathered and included, statesman, lawgiver, general, and prophet. And here we see the ​rise of that wondrous code of laws, that system of equity, order, and justice, that prolific, as well as mysterious, ecclesiastical polity, which makes the Jewish race the most singular and prominent; but which has ever since influenced the destinies of man in every way. more than any other cause in human history. We pass on to a later stage: and from the eastern side of the ^Egean we see the movement of small communities across its beautiful waters, to seat themselves on the fair shores of Greece; whither flowed the streams, now deep, now shallow, of all the world's high thought, its culture and refinement: and Greece stands forth in all history the central point of intellectual greatness, taste, and wisdom. But these existed not for Greece alone: all civilized Europe through the ages, civilizing and expanding Americans, Hindoos, Indians, and regenerated Africans; all men of thought throughout the earth, seize upon, and ponder, and strive to master these fine creations of the Grecian mind, as the great teachers of thought and genius.
The strong, active, energetic Roman rises before its with a fabulous origin, strangely contrasting with the real, actual life and bearing, which mark his strong hand and his iron sway for centuries. But though Roman history is the story of the mastery of might over right, of the abeyance of individual freedom, of the crushing out of national life, of splendid, but barbaric brute force; yet Rome has transmitted the legacy of two valuable principles to man—invincible energy, and that of law and government.
The Jew. the Greek, the Roman—types of re​ligion, of intellect, and power; they have vanished and departed. But still their spirit remains; for that spirit forms the elements of our faith, of our culture, and of our national rule and State polity. The religion which we profess, the modes of reasoning we adopt, the intellectual methods we employ, the elements of our youthful instruction, our modes of government, the authority and the forms of law, the simplest types of architecture, and some of the commonest modes of manners and refinement, all link the present with the past, and clearly show the unity of the race.
The race, in the aggregate, is to go forward and upward. This is the destiny which God has incorporated in the very elements of our moral being. The failure of this type, or the destruction of that form, is no prevention of nature's upward reaching. They are as the falling of the leaves in a foreign autumn, in consequence of which, in spring-time, the forest appears, apparelled in beauty, and gorgeously laden with masses of foliage. And to this advancement all the sections of the race are to add their contributions, and to send in their quota of gift and influence. And thus we see that all the preceding generations of mankind, and all the various nations, have lived for every successive generation, and all have been the workers for, and the benefactors of, this age in which we live, and of this land which we call our country and our home. And so there is no isolation; no absolute disseverance of individual nations; for blood and lineage, and ancient manners, and religion, and letters, all tend to combine nation​alities and link tlieiu in indissoluble bonds, despite all the lapses of time. In this manner, therefore, we are taught that the Hebrew polity, so wise, so just, and so sacred, was not local in its bearings and intents; but that, in its ultimate ends and aims, it was our polity, and the polity of all Christendom, ay, and of all the world. For us, moreover, Greece was raised up with her unrivalled eloquence, matchless wisdom, and fine ideas and forms of beauty. And Rome—imperial Home—stands before us, immortal! in practical wisdom, in stirring energy, and in her matchless capability of rule!
Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that our life, our culture, and our civilization are but the result of the ceaseless energy of mind and body of all past nations. And of all these nations, if we are grateful men, we are bound to turn to Palestine, Greece, and Italy, with beaming eyes; and, to use the words of Arnold, "draw near with reverence" to them, "as those higher causes which, proceeding directly from the inscrutable will of our Maker, seemed designed to humble the presumption of fancying ourselves the arbiters of our own destiny;" "and, if I may add my own words to his profundity and insight,—seemed designed also to teach us, as a nation, that we are not to live merely for ourselves, but to bless the present generation of nations, and to send down the beneficence of our regards, of our activities, and our virtues to other peoples, and to future times!
I go on to show the obligation of nations to contribute to the well-being and civilization of man, ​from a consideration of the moral ends and duties of nations.
The primary ends of civil government are the conservation of men's lives, bodies, and goods. But there are also remote and ultimate ends, which pertain to Morals, Duty, Obligations, and Justice.
For moral character is an idea—as true, exact, and absolute, applied to a nation as to a man. A moral system which claims authority only in its private, persona], application to men, but withdraws from them so soon as the individual is merged in the association or the body politic, is nothing but vagueness, darkness, and confusion. "Nations and individuals," says Channing, "are subjected to one law. The moral principle is the life of communities." Under no moral code can the individual eschew truth and justice. Neither can the nation throw them aside, and perform its functions, treating right, and truth, and principle as matters of indifference: for the magistrate and the lawgiver meet the august presence of Truth alike in all the details of administrative law, and in the commonest minutiae of civil regulation.
We cannot, indeed, speak of the conscience of a nation; for conscience is so personal a quality, that it is only by a strong figure of speech that we can apply it to nations. But all those moral qualities which are subsidiary to conscience are so manifestly brought out and recognized in all, even the minutest, acts and offices of government, that it is but a bare, distinct verity, and no metaphor, to speak of the moral duties and obligations of nations.
​The internal moral obligations of nations are plain and evident: cultivation of religion, the maintenance of justice, the progress of education, the upholding of law and order, and national growth. All these arise from the paternal relation of government: a doctrine as old as it is true, and recognized by heathen nations, as well as by the Hebrew writers.
But now we are led to ask, "Are there not external moral duties resting upon nations?" Moral law applies to them in relation to their citizens and subjects; but does it not also apply to them with respect to bodies outside of their own rule and power? Do not nations owe duty and obligation to other nations? Such, Ave cannot doubt, is the common consent of mankind and the teaching of all national history; though dimmed and obscured in olden times by cruel barbarism and savage wars. We catch a glimpse of this in the leagues, compacts, and alliances of Pagan nations. The treaties they formed for the promotion of commerce, the mutual obligation for aid and succor in times of danger, bespeak a sense of national obligation to benefit and bless. They showed the presence of these principles, in the very article of war, by beautiful displays of equity, of honor, and of clemency. When the thirty tyrants at Athens drove out the very flower of that city, and forbade the other cities of Greece to show them hospitality or to give them succor; the people of Thebes humanely received them, and, by laAv, threatened those of their own citizens Avho might refuse to assist these unprotected refugees. "War has its rights as well as ​peace," said Camillus, the Roman Dictator, struck with horror and disgust at the treachery of one of the Falisci, against whom he was warring. Indeed, warlike and domineerine; as the Eonians were, they frequently exhibited honor, magnanimity, and justice. Their common practice of siding with the oppressed and of defending the weak may haye been policy, but it was also the teaching and the instinct of generosity and high-mindedness. And the equity and the faithfulness with which they generally carried out their promises to the yanquished, show the presence, even in their darkened state, of those large and noble principles of humanity which now are part of the law of nations; and they also teach that which I am endeayoring to elucidate—that is, that it is the moral duty of nations to adyance human well-being and the civilization of the race.
Under the influence of Christianity, the idea of brotherhood has been gaining influence and authority; so, likewise, the principle of national good-will has kept pace with the moral progress of the age. Ruthless brute force, unreasoning domination, no longer decide the fate of inferior nations. Moral considerations have now a decided influence in regulating national intercourse. So strong is this influence, that "international law; ' has become a distinctive branch, commanding the life-long attention of distinguished minds. So pure, humane, and genial is its spirit, that one great authority declares its purpose to be, "to insure the obseryance of justice and good faith in that intercourse which must frequently occur between ​two or more nations." A great moralist of our own day declares that "'international law' is capable of progressive standards; that it must acknowledge the authority of morality, and must, in order to conform to the moral nature of man, become constantly more and more moral." One remarkable evidence of this genial progress of moral law among nations is the fact that the chief states of Christendom have concertedly, and without the desire of advantage, but from principles of humanity, discouraged and condemned the slave trade. So, likewise, the cause of peace, which once was the scoff of wits, and which elicited the sneer of the great, has now lost all its supposed littleness. For, at this day, gray-haired veterans in states-craft recognize with clearness the binding tie of humanity, and esteem it the highest statesmanlike wisdom, and the noblest achievement of diplomacy, to stay the effusion of blood, and to bind in concord the families of nations. I verily believe that Russell the statesman, would rather have won. a peace at Vienna, than have been the hero of Alma, of Balaklava, or of Inkermann; and to gain power, as a Minister of England, that thereby he may stanch the wounds of bleeding nations, is, I feel, a higher object of ambition to the mercurial Disraeli than all the boast of military renown; and this not merely from considerations of policy or from motives of gain, but because the civilization of England is interpenetrated by the Faith of England, and her large-minded statesmen recognize the obligation of morality in all the machi​nery of statesmanship. And thus the Christian sentiment of the world forces itself upon states, and diplomacies, and policies, and fixes the noble sentiment that a nation, even as the personal being, cannot hold itself back from the law of moral responsibility. For, as no individual man can draw himself off from his fellow-man, and proclaim, "I am distinct from the mass of humanity," so no nation can set itself off, unconcerned, from the rest of the race. "No man liveth to himself," is a truth as positive in its application to a nation as to a man; a truth recognized everywhere, and in all history; anticipated, long centuries before its sacred utterance, as truly veritable as on the day when the inspired penman wrote it. For the words of the heathen Terence—
"Homo sum; humani nihil a me aliennm puto"—
contain just the same spirit as the sentiment of Shakspeare—
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
Once more, I would further add that, if related humanity and moral law teach beneficence as the duty of nations, so, likewise, the commerce of nations. For this seems the clear mandate of Heaven: "The nations that will not hold intercourse with other peoples, in trade and barterings, and thus bless the world, they shall suffer and shall die!"
A non-commercial spirit and practice has always stifled the life of nations, or laid them low in ruins. In the history of the "Decline and Fall" of nations, this will yet be shown to have been one of the most potent agencies of national decay; for among the ele​ments of the life of nations some of the chiefest are the commodities of foreign lands, the infused blood of foreign people, the freshening influence of foreign thought and sentiment, and the quickening power of foreign enterprise and activity. We see, in different quarters of the globe, the scattered, broken relics of divers nations. Some, like the inhabitants of the isles of the sea, remained, untold centuries, apart from the world's civilization, until some venturesome navigation brought them into contact with cultivated man; and then they went down at once to speedy decay and swift destruction, the very atmosphere of cultivated life proving too strong for their emasculated natures. It is said that no enlightenment, no cultivation, not even Christianity, can save the Sandwich Islanders; the degeneracy of heathenism, their long isolation from the human family for so many centuries, have so lessened their vitality and vitiated their blood, that there is no hojae for them, and they must die out! With their partial civilization, the Chinese stood still for centuries, refusing commercial intercourse with the nations; and God's providence brought forth the penal fruits of their national pride and misanthropy; for, first, they were made to experience that saddest of all national ills save death, a wrested, stunted growth, the reversion of that great law of being, the law of progress and expansion—and next, turning fierce upon humanity, and refusing that interchange of thought, and sentiment, and trade, which aids the life of both men and nations, humanity rose up in the person of Britain, and inflicted upon her sore and humbling chastisement.
​How strongly contrasted is the beneficial influence of commerce! How prolific the favors and the fruits it everywhere begets! How numerous the blessings it scatters abroad on every side! It is a remark of Dr. Arnold, "Well, indeed, might the policy of the old priest-nobles of Egypt and India endeavor to divert their people from becoming familiar with the sea, and represent the occupation of a seaman as incompatible with the purity of the highest castes. The sea deserved to be hated by the old aristocracies, inasmuch as it had been the mightiest instrument in the civilization of mankind." The page of history proves this. There are few secular agencies so life-giving, so humane, and so civilizing, as is commerce. Let a nation sleep the sleep of a century's dulness, and then some propitious providence draw towards it the needs and desires of the nations; and up it starts to life and vigor. Long, long eras had passed away, vast generations of men had gone down to the slumbers of the sod; and all the while, from the world's infant days, the wild waters of the Pacific had laved the banks of California, undisturbed by the fluttering sails and the flying wheels of commerce. But the report of its gold encircled the globe, and all the world, civilized and heathen, sends its representatives to her shores; civilization crowns and adorns her valleys and her hills; and religion and enlightenment set up their standard along the Pacific shores of America for all future times.
Equally apparent is the elevating and civilizing influence of commerce. Contact and acquaintance ​of nation with nation soften asperities and angularities of character, introduce the better and superior manners of each into the other, and cause the mutual communication and introduction of new, original, and noble ideas.
Its bearing upon system, order, morals, is manifest. The Carthaginian and the Roman merchants were noted for their sterling honesty and their love of justice. People who arc uncommercial are given to dissimulation, fraud, and trickery. No class of men who have the true commercial spirit are so; for the more commercial they become, the more honest are they in their dealings, and the more exact and trustworthy.
And thus, from these few hints, we can easily see what a civilizer is commerce; how it binds men and nations to each other; how it promotes good-will, and builds up sterling character. And the consideration of the whole of this particular topic serves to show how, by the order of nature and the will of God, nations are bound to contribute to the well-being and civilization of the great family of man.
II. I pass, now, to the second topic into which my remarks are distributed, and shall attempt to answer the question,—"How, and by what means and agencies, shall we, as a rising Christian State, meet the obligation to contribute to human well-being and the world's civilization?"
I could not stand here, and, with self-respect, tell this audience that the great powers of the earth wait, with deep concern and breathless expectation, our offerings and our gifts. Bombast such as this tends ​to the mortification of great minds at home, to our disadvantage abroad, and to that inertness and lack of enterprise which all false ideas are prone to create. We are but a small nation, as yet hardly productive, certainly not self-supporting; but we have nationality, and also the duties and responsibilities which are of twin birth with it. Our nationality is to be carefully guarded and cherished as a most precious jewel; but the obligations which are connected with it are of equal worth, and demand equal interest, and earnest zeal, for their preservation. I have already shown the obligation of nations to contribute to the world's well-being. As an humble member of the great sisterhood of nations, this obligation rests upon us. How shall we meet this obligation and answer the call of this duty?
Now, I have no doubt that while speaking of blessing and benefiting mankind nationally, some here have thought of the material agencies, of trade and commerce, as the means to be pointed out, inasmuch as they seem the chief instrumentalities by which one nation comes in contact with and influences others; and I shall not fail to notice these means of good to man. But in exhibiting the main modes and measures whereby we may fulfil our national obligation to the human race, I would urge and insist, primarily, and as of the vastest importance, that we must cultivate to the highest bent, to the nicest coloring of honor,—we must cultivate men! This ​mode of expression may, perchance, appear singular; but there is, in reality, nothing extravagant in it. "Cultivate men!" It is a correct expression, and a real thing. Men cultivate fields; they cultivate cattle, and trees, and birds, and fish; so, too, they can cultivate men.
The old Romans understood something about this; with an iron hand the Spartans tried their skill at it; so, too, still more and more wisely, the English in modern times; and some few other nationalities. But, as for the world's history in general, alas! how few know any thing about training and fashioning men! Among the vast millions of human beings on earth, and of all its divers nations, what a minimum of men! Vast hordes of male inhabitants there are, in this country and in that; but that largeness of soul—that quick, glad recognition of noble principles—that love of and reverence for fixed and eternal truth—that eager desire for the work of life, which mark and characterize men—true men,—in how many of the human frame and form, in any land, can you discover them?
And yet you can easily sec the radical necessity, in this respect, in two ways. For, first it is only men who can make a country. You may have rich, productive fields, vast mines of silver, of gold, and of diamonds; a genial clime; noble rivers, capacious harbors, nay, even large masses of inhabitants; and yet you may fail as a nation. That requires citizens with large, expanded minds, a fine culture, with natural or acquired manners, and a constant delicate honor; giving strength and solidity at home, and fair ​fame, respect, and character abroad. And, next, with regard to ourselves, how this need is pressed upon our heart of hearts! For the truth must needs be confessed by us all, that oiir natures have been dwarfed and our souls shrivelled by the dread ordeal of caste and oppression through which our fathers, and some of ourselves, have passed. Why, do not you, and you, and you, fellow-citizens, feel the want, the lack, the incompleteness of being?—the idea that something is gone?—that you need something that has been taken away, and you cannot seize upon it—so that, at times, the heart swells, and the tears come unbidden, and the mind itself becomes bewildered? It is the fruit of that old system, which tracks even freemen to freedom's own domain. It is the remembrance of that old death, which retains vitality and generates agony even in the region of life and blessedness.
Men talk of our having been in training for freedom! that slavery has schooled us for free government! We submit to the severe providences of God, and recognize his wisdom therein; but they are nought but vain babblers, who speak as though this were natural sequence, or legitimate result, or effect, which should follow its parent cause—that death should be the prime and proper originator of life—that filth and pollution should generate purity—that sin should be the direct author and agent of salvation—that Satan should be the sure guide to godliness and heaven! We reject and scorn all such empty verbosity as this—so disgraceful to the cause of freedom, and so dishonoring to the name of liberty; for I doubt whether ​there can be found an eminent man in tins country who is not haunted by the gloomy spectre of past thraldom, and -who -would not give thousands of pounds if the whole matter could be blotted out forever, as history and as a remembrance, and become a blank!
Ye must get rid of all this—get rid of it for the generations to come; and the great means thereto is cultivation. And -what a word of depth, of power, of vast import, of broad significance, of profoundest meaning, and of far-touching influence, is this!—a word which enters into the training of little children, the formation of men's characters, the development of women's virtue and moral beauty, the determining the power of laws, and the founding of states and empires!
And if the word has such deep and mighty import, so, likewise, the work which it implies and places before us; a work which requires all sorts of instruments and all kinds of agencies. For to cultivate men and manhood is no easy task, and can be done by no simple, trivial means, nor yet by any special order or peculiar class in the state. Men look here to the preacher, the missionary, the school teacher, to cultivate and train up the future manhood of the country; and great, I know, is the responsibility which rests upon them. But the cultivation of the manhood of a nation comes from all sources in the commonwealth, and flows in upon the souls of its citizens from all its streams of influence:—from the Executive, the prime representative of authority, repressing passion, giving its wonted authority to cool, calm reason, illustrating ​in his life the quietness, the order, the patriotism, and the character, which it is his duty to promote; from the Judges on the bench, forgetful of persons, and passing transitory circumstance, remembering the awful idea of justice above, preserving their ermine unspotted from the stains of spite and prejudice, of personality and partisanship; from the Merchant, who, by strict integrity, high honor, business capacity, courtesy, and promptness, incarnates the character of his country in the eyes of the foreigner, and gives pride and hope to his fellow-citizens; from the plodding, enterprising Farmer, married to the soil, and, like a faithful spouse, rejoicing in its fruitfulness; from the Mechanic and the Artisan—types of honest, patient industry, exhibiting daily thrift, skill, and ingenuity, the honest pride of manly energy, and the dignity of healthful toil; from the Sailor and the Trader—the latter penetrating the wilderness, and the former ploughing the main, yet both exhibiting that boldness, endurance, daring, and courage, which serve to fill up the hardy element of a people's character and to prompt its youth to ambition and adventure; from the Teacher and the Clergyman, the representatives of maimers and refinement, of culture and enlightenment, of high morals and pure speech; holding the tender hearts of little children in their hands, and training the young, the mature, and the aged in those lofty truths and those divine principles which sanctify life in all its phases, and which tell upon eternity.
These are some of the sources whence proceeds the cultivation of the men and manhood of a nation. I ​give but an epitome, for the full detail would be tiresome.
But besides these agencies, we must also consider the cultivation itself: what it is in quality, nature, character, and purpose. This is too large a theme for one day's discussion, but some few simple things I may say. In this cultivation of manhood in a nation, boys and girls are to be our main material to act upon. And I would say that they should have every item of culture, every element of instruction, all the treasures of science and learning which we can possibly command. I hope there is no man here to-day who fears that learning will spoil our youth!—who, poor father!—
("The booby father claims a booby son"—)
trembles lest his child, by too much knowledge, should get harm, and hurt, and injury! You may dismiss your fears; learning only spoils fools, and pedants, and smatterers—the creatures who can easily pick up tools, but know not how to use them—who pride themselves more upon the show of tools than men of common sense upon the skilful handling of them. Your true scholar is not such. His learning is his instrument; his knowledge is designed for good and useful ends, not for ornament and display; and whether it be his treasures are from the languages, or the rich revealings of history, or skill in the sciences, or the beautiful creations of art; in all he sees the great and plastic power of man for human well-being and human progress.
With all this mental culture, let it be also remembered, that man has a body, is of a composite nature, ​has a physical existence, as well as a mind. Forgetfulness of this fact has greatly injured the cause of learning. Men have idly supposed that to cultivate manhood was to cultivate the brain merely. True, cultivation of men is the bringing out, harmoniously, all their powers—mental, moral, and physical: hence we shall fail in our attempted cultivation of manhood here, if we do not raise up and train useful, practical men. Our youth must be trained to be active, and useful, and enterprising. For of what use, I ask, will they be to the heathen, with all their Latin and Greek, and science and history, if they come up into life and society with hands of baby softness, be-booted and be-strapped, be-muffled and be-scented—so delicate and gentlemanly that they cannot handle a hoe or wield an axe, if needed, and with no heart, if they become missionaries or commissioners, to build a hut in the "bush" or to cook, with their own delicate hands, a meal of victuals. Out upon such creatures, I say, in a land like this! They are men-milliners, popin-jays, ladies-maids—or, as the poet paints them—
"The flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing,
And weave their petty cells, and die."
And these, too, are the men who bring learning and scholarship into ill-repute; not true scholars indeed, not men of erudition, not the men who, by close thought and laborious, painful study, seek the ground of things, but your dilettante students, your amateur scholars!
For never, in all the world's broad history, has such ill desert fallen upon learning through the ​character of those who, in very deed, were true scholars, whether from the schools or self-made men. For all the great generals, the founders of states, the rulers of immortal fame, the men who have inaugurated letters, and learning, and science in commonwealths and empires, the great authors, renowned teachers and philosophers, and immortal philanthropists—yea, all the names of might and power in history, with the rarest, scarcest exceptions, have been ranked in the lofty scroll of scholars. "For," says Lord Bacon, "the conceit that learning should dispose men to leisure and privatencss, and make men slothful, it were a strange thing if that which accustometh the mind to perpetual motion and agitation should induce slothfulness, whereas, contrariwise, it may be truly affirmed, that no kind of men love business for itself but those who are learned; for other persons love it for profit, as a hireling that loves work for the wages or for honor, . . . or because it putteth them in mind of their fortune, &c, etc. Only learned men love business as an action according to nature, as agreeable to health of mind as exercise is to health of body, taking pleasure in the action itself and not in the purchase; so that of all men they are the most indefatigable, if it be towards any business which can hold or detain their mind."
In prudence, with assiduousness, under a deep sense of responsibility to God, and man, and the state, may we all determine to use our influence, and to set the example, which may tend to cultivate men and manhood in our country. Let law and religion, ​learning and scholarship, pure speech, noble ideas, and sacred principles—the order and moral dignity of the family—man's moral strength, woman's winning beauty, her stainless purity, her exalted excellence and piety,—and the simplicity of youth,—let these be the agencies we use in forming and compacting the main and master instrument for the fulfilment of a nation's mission—its mind and manhood!
The results that will proceed from such high endeavor are clear and certain. We shall raise up on these shores a race of men, a stock of mannood, and a growth of manners, which shall confuse and mystify all the past chronicles of time pertaining to our race. We shall falsify all the lying utterances of the speculative ethnographies and the pseudo-philosophies which have spawned from the press of modern days against us. And we shall bring about such an expansion of mind and such a development of character, that the report thereof shall bring to our shores curious travellers to behold here the mature outgrowth and the grateful vision of a manly, noble, and complete African nationality!
And now, having fit and capable men for the beneficent work of a nation, we may turn to other means and agencies by which it may work out its end and mission. One of these is commerce—perhaps the foremost. All men can see at a glance how one nation blesses another by the interchange of commodities: for this is our experience, and in many ways our blessing. And were it not for trade and commerce, how sad and miserable would be the condition of vast masses of the human family—how ​civilization would lie retarded—how slow would be the progress of brotherhood, humanity, and true religion! In the days previous to the use of the magnet and the successful adventures of Columbus, when non-intercourse seemed the rule of the world, and heavy tariffs kept nations apart, then national strife almost universally prevailed, and the common tie of humanity seemed completely severed. Gradually, during the succeeding centuries, ships have multiplied, tariffs and imposts have been relaxed, and now we have just commenced a new era in the world's history; and "Free Trade" seems about inaugurating, under the Divine Providence, a new evangel to men. And what already is the result? Why, in every land the masses of the population are being made more comfortable, and are becoming blessed. Take the single article of tea: there are persons here who have seen the time when tea was a luxury, and now it is a common staple in nearly every civilized land on the globe. Take sugar: why, even after the common use of tea, for a long time, sugar was used by few. And now the poorest laborer in England or Scotland, the backwoodsman far away in the western wilds of America, the emigrant on the coast of New Zealand, or here, on the shores of Africa, can daily at his meals enjoy the pleasurable exhilaration of the—
"Cup which cheers, but not inebriates,"
made still more pleasurable by the sweets of the cane.
Thus it is that commerce, providentially, has become a beneficent agency for the good of man. And thus it should be: what I mean by this is, not that ​this is a genial happening, or an adventitious good; I mean more than this. I mean that there is duty and obligation on the part of nations thus, and in this manner, to contribute to the well-being of the human race. I want sugar; I want tea; I want cotton fabrics for my family; I want utensils of metal for domestic use; and the luxuries of foreign lands for pleasure and gratification.
But the country in which I live cannot perhaps produce tea; nor supply me with china for my table; nor cotton fabrics for my wear; nor the luxuries I have mentioned for my delight; nor the articles for common need and convenience.
But the Chinese and the English, the Americans and the French, are able to supply me with these articles, for a proper remuneration. Moreover, these people cannot get oils, and dyes, and other articles we can command, which they need for constant use; and therefore if they will supply our needs, we, in return, can give them what they seek and desire.
What is duty in this case? Why, most assuredly, that those foreigners are bound by duty to meet my wants, and I am equally bound to meet theirs.
I say, without hesitation, that this is duty; and God teaches this most clearly by his providence. When a nation or a number of nations refuse to do their commercial duties, one to the other, they are punished: the healthful life-blood of the body politic ceases its natural flow, and stagnation ensues, or progress and civilization are retarded, or the nation is either judicially smitten down at once, or a sudden check is given to its free and genial growth, and it ​stands before us "without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots," and yet at times with the seeming semblance of vitality.
I cite no evidences; for already in this address I have shown the suicidal and retributive nature of all selfish isolation—of all misanthropic exclusiveness; and, at the same time, I have given the historic proof that there can be no national vitality or progress, without a community of thought and sentiment, and the interchange of products and commodities, between different countries.
And from all this we may learn our duty. We have a genial clime, a most productive soil, a population not large, but of peculiar fitness to the capacity and the productions of the soil and to the demands of commerce. We grow here sugae and coffee; the cane has a richness and endurance in this land, as is acknowledged, beyond that of Cuba or Louisiana; and coffee here gives a larger yield to the tree, and for a longer period, than in most other countries. Other articles arrest our attention: Indigo, with a small capital, under the new French process of preparation, can be made to yield at least 8^00 per acre; for Indigo brings, at Liverpool and New York, nigh three dollars per pound. The Cinnamon will grow here; the experiment of its growth has just been proved successful at Cape Coast, and we should have larger groves of it. Flax and hemp are both of tropical growth—both in great demand in all the markets of the world, and lucrative in trade. You know the high value of cotton, and its great demand; ​you know also how important the production of this article has become in the decision of that great moral question of the age—the destruction of slavery; and I need not pause here to show what a blessing we might become to our race and to the world, by the "disturbing element" of thousands of bales of cotton, competing with the oppressors of our race in the ports of Liverpool and Glasgow, and beating down their ill-gotten gains! It grows all around us here, amid the huts, and villages, and the rice farms of our heathen neighbors, and by the use of bounties we can largely prompt its growth among them, as also by our own labor lead to its extensive and profitable cultivation in our own fields.
To the query put, "How can we as a nation bless mankind, and contribute to their well-being and civilization?" I answer, that our farmers, by their toil and energy, can lessen the needs of distant men, break down the barbarism of unrequited toil, and give cheer, by their production, to foreign lands.
The annual demand for sugar, for coffee, for cotton, has never yet been fully met in any of their great markets. Within a few recent years, the East Indies, Algiers, Egypt, and the Fantees, below us on this coast, have been increasing the quantity of cotton sent to England; while there has been no sensible diminution of the large masses shipped from America; and yet to the "Board of Commerce" in Manchester there are few, if any, questions more puzzling than this—that is, "Whence they can secure new and larger supplies?
It is the same with sugar: Cuba, India, Singa​pore, do not furnish a sufficient supply, and Louisiana is falling off. And you all know that there is a market everywhere for our coffee as soon as we are ready to meet the demand. And thus we see the ability God has given us to serve men in the broad field of the civilized world before us, and we should meet that duty at the earliest day that thrift and enterprise will enable us.
Another duty germane to this devolves upon us. There are plants, barks, dyes, and woods all around us, and still more in the interior, which the commercial and scientific world needs and asks for. The further we push into the interior, the more abundant and the more valuable do these gifts of nature become. Moreover, the learned and the Christian world want now, at once, if God so permits it, the solution of the great inner mysteries of this continent. To this end expeditions on all sides are investing the continent. Now we hear of one in the East, on the White Nile; then of another, through Nubia, across the desert, to lake Tschad. Now they run up the Quorra, or some other branch of the Niger; and again we hear of one from the Cape, by land, across to Zanzibar.
Are we to have nothing to do in this great scrutiny? Look at the map of Africa! See how all along this coast, from Goree downwards, travellers have furnished the geographical world with such an amount of information that it has been enabled to dot the map of Africa with the towns, and villages, and rivers, and marked localities of neighborhoods sonic hundreds of miles interiorwards; but take our ​vicinage, with Monrovia for a centre, and you can make a semi-circle, its back circumference the Kong Mountains, its ends touching the coast, of nearly all which the scentific world knows nothing!
I am aware of our slender resources and our thinly-scattered population, and no wise man expects an infant to do a giant's work. But we can do something. Let us systematically, year by year, push more and more into the country, if it be but ten, or even five miles a year; open gradually a highway into the interior; look out the goodly land beyond us, "well watered everywhere as the garden of the Lord," and appropriate it; press onward a highway for the tribes far back, nigh the mountains, to come unmolested hitherward by open roads; and so by and by we may get large herds of cattle from the interior, and instead of sending some $60,000 or $100,000 out of the Republic for the single article of meats, we may have "our oxen around us strong to labor," and "our sheep may bring forth thousands and tens of thousands in our streets."
​Of course, we could not do such a work as this in a brief period, but we could agree upon a system, and system seems the main thing in all great projects; and such a system would give our merchants plenteous hides from the interior for shipment; vast quantities of oil, which would be their own, without foreign competition, as on the coast; new discoveries of woods and dyes, and especially would it lead to the settling of civilized men in the interior, and the wide cultivation of great staples; and all the while important revelations would come through us to the world, as we pressed further into the heart of the continent, of the tribes near the mountains of the Kong, if not, indeed, of the dwellers at the sources and along the valleys of the Niger.
And in this way we should be meeting the demands of science, aiding in the work of civilization, extending Christianity, and doing our work as a Christian state.
But there are two great works which are our special duty and mission, and which we should never lose sight of:—
First, We should be opening a highway for the gospel of Christ Jesus into the far interior, and thereby competing with the missionaries of England and America in the gracious rivalry as to who shall first reach the needy tribes living under the shadow of the Kong Mountains, and make more musical than ever, by the voice of salvation, the sweetly flowing streams from those mountains, which are, doubtless, the tiny sources of the Niger.
Next, A matter of highest import: by these in​ternal ventures we should be achieving the commercial independence of Liberia, or, at least, giving it mastery and might.
I am no merchant, and I have in no way whatever, a direct interest in the mercantile affairs of Liberia; but as a citizen I do endeavor to study the best interests of our Commonwealth, and to scan closely all that affects her fortunes.
We are all descendants of Africa, and hence we claim a special interest in, and a peculiar right to, her fruits, her offerings, and her gifts. But after all, how very limited is our participation therein! I hear of ivory, and oils, and dyes, and precious woods, and gold; flowing from all parts of this western coast to foreign lands, to enrich their princely merchants, and to build up their great houses. We all see here that fine line of steamers, which, according to her wont, shows that England knows how to appropriate with skill and effect the resources of foreign lands to her own good; and we hear, likewise, of projected "Ebony lines," for the increase of foreign wealth and luxury. And to all this I bave no objection whatever, because it is the legitimate and the healthful process and result of commerce.
It may be that such a one as I,—a man more busied with books, and papers, and sermons, than with ledgers, accounts, and prices current,—should not venture to speak upon these matters. But I must say, nevertheless, that I should like to see some of these great bouses here; and to recognize, as some of these princely merchants, the merchants of our own town and country, citizens of this Republic! I ​am not satisfied,—I tell yon the truth,—that the wealth of this, our Africa, should make other men wealthy and not ourselves. It troubles me in the night, and in the day it vexes me, that of all the moneys poured out here for fish, and meats, and shoes, and merchandise, so little stays at our own water-side.
The policy which shall modify this state of things is not, I know, to be demanded altogether of the merchants. The whole country, by management and legislation, is to aid in bringing about this result. And it seems to me that, by increase of agricultural activity, by the opening of roads, by a more extensive system of farming, by a proper attention to our great tropical staples, we may at one and the same time increase the comfort and well-being of our communities in general, give importance to the agricultural interest of the land, assist that strong arm of the nation, mercantile enterprise, and thus aggrandize the country!
And now, before I close, allow me briefly to say, that, as a new Christian state, there is one moral good we can do the world: we can strive after a lofty style of government, and the lustration of law and order.
I see the seeming vanity of such an aspiration. But I have neither time nor inclination to bestow thought upon what merely seems to be presumptuous, when I have a real truth and a possible reality to suggest.
The world needs a higher type of true nationality than it now has: why should not we furnish it? I know the wont to regard precedent in fashioning and ​compacting the fabric of government. And it is, to a great degree, a wise tendency; for it is a perilous sea on which to embark,—that of nationality; and all along its course one sees strewn, everywhere, the wrecks of nations. And, therefore, an infant state needs, and should seek light as
"It goes sounding
On its dim and perilous way."
And this light comes, to a great degree, from the past,—the light of national experience. Hence we must read history, and the philosophy of history, and laws, and the genius and spirit of laws. But are we ever to be bound by these? Are they ever to hold the spirit, and the brain, and the healthful instincts of cultivated and civilized humanity, in this day of the world's high advancement,—hold them ever in check and close restraint? Must we, in order to be a nation, imitate all the crudities and blunders which statesmanship has gravely handed down in history as rule and authority? I trust not; for no thoughtful man can look into the history of states without perceiving many national forms and established customs which even now have mastery, but which are nothing more nor less than empty gewgaws. I do not lack, by any means, reverence for the sage wisdom of ages; neither do I despise the ancient forms of older states, which often are the clothes-garments of noble truths. But he must be blind who does not see that the formal precedents and the hollow forms which, for ages, have held and bound the souls of vast empires and mighty kingdoms, are now vanishing be​fore the clear brain and the cool common sense of mankind.
"Even now we hear, with inward strife, A motion toiling in the gloom,— The spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with life.
"A slow developed strength awaits Completion in a painful school,— Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New majesties of mighty states."
Why should we haste, with foolish, blind zeal, to pick up the chaff, and rust, and offal, which wise nations ajre throwing away? Why not seize upon their cautious, prudent eclecticism, now, in our masculine youth, instead of going the round of a stale, perhaps a foul, experience? Why not make ourselves a precedent? Why should we not profit by the centuries of governmental history, if even we should appear venturesome?
"The noble soul by age grows lustier,
Her appetite and her digestion mend;
We cannot hope to feed and nourish her
With woman's milk and pap nnto the end: Provide you manlier diet!"
If I mistake not, the great desideratum of the nations is, a rigid honesty; a clear, straightforward rectitude; the absence of chicane, of guile, and cunning; the cleaving the meshes of policies and heartless diplomacy; and the constant and happy consciousness of the ideas of God, of truth, and of duty. We sec it now nowhere among the nations; in some there is an approach, a desire, an aspiration,—so strong, in some ​cases, as to threaten great men,—and ancient houses, and aristocracies. But how sickening to read the memoirs of Prime Ministers and State Secretaries in times past,—ah! and, alas! to read them in our own day, at times, with our own open eyes!
How proud a thing for this young nation, if, from the start, she sends out the reputation that eschews all this; that the simple instincts of morality, the plain dictates of honesty and honor, should be the rule of our governmental polity at home and abroad, and God our Governor!
For this the people are chiefly responsible; for, in a representative government, the moral purity of the masses produces its reflex in their rulers; and, therefore, parents and guardians, and teachers and ministers, should endeavor to train the popular mind to right habits of thought, to just notions of government, and of citizenship, to high principles of self-respect, and to prompt instincts of obedience and subjection to rule. If, in the quiet walks of life, in the family, the workshop, and the school, we can but secure the true sentiments of honesty, sobriety, self-control, and manly dignity, conjoined with legal obedience, then we are safe; for the influence thereof will ascend to the higher spheres of life with a controlling power, and we shall have a government here, the reflex of a pure, honest, healthful public sentiment, manifesting, in the arena of political life, the rigid honesty and the simple purity which characterize the dealings of plain, honest men. As a consequence, intrigue, corruption, subornation, could never find here sanction, vantage-ground, or undisturbed and settled rule.
​For this end we must turn our attention to public men and to public transactions, with a large open eye, and with a discriminating spirit; otherwise, we can never reach the ideal of a high, noble commonwealth. And here we catch a glimpse of duty to governors. And here I would say, most seriously, that we, who are private citizens, should learn ourselves, and teach our children, to respect all constituted authority, to reverence the laws, and to fear our rulers. The fact thatthis is a republic, voids not the remembrance of the sacred Word, that"the powers that be are ordained of God." If, therefore, we would more and more approach ideal governmental superiority,—while, indeed, studying our rights, jealously Avatching the safeguards of liberty, in a free state like this,—we should always maintain a manly forbearance, and that generous balance of thought and inclination which eschews the blustering demagogueism, whose tendency is to make rulers insecure in their high places, and cause weak minds in authority to cater to public prejudice and passion. Rulers should never fear the people; and it is the depth of meanness in a man, or a number of men, who would create a public sentiment, which would so relax rule and authority, that it should fall away to magisterial sycophancy and official mean-spiritedness.
As the people, so also their rulers, are bound to give their free gifts for the high ends Ave have pointed out in civil government. And here two things stand out prominently, and can never be forgotten by rulers without treason to God and recreancy to the state. ​The first, that, if the just powers of government come from the people, so, also, do they come from God; and, therefore, that in all legislation in a Christian state, the introduction, for any purpose of expediency, or in compliance with blind popular passion, of that which opposes morality and the Divine law, is obnoxious to the Divine Governor, and must eventually bring down upon it the repugnance of thinking men. The ruler, therefore, who would give dignity to the governmental regimen of his country, must, like such a man as Sir Matthew Hale, remember that nations are governed by those bright statutes which are inscribed upon the broad bosom of Jehovah, as well as by the codes and constitutions of states, So, also, the other larger truth is to be remembered by rulers and officers, and especially by those who take here, on earth, the "mimic seat" of "awful justice throned on high,"—the truth, contained in the majestic words of Hooker,—that "Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power. Both angels, and men, and creatures, of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."
These remembrances on the part of people and rulers will ever give the check, on the one hand, to wild Radicalism, to which, as one of the trials of states, all Governments are called; and, on the other, ​will protect us from the iron bond of tyranny forever. They are the conserving elements, the saline qualities—if I may so term them—which retain the healthful energies and the youthful life of nations. And, without these, the people, in a popular government, while retaining the forms of freedom, are nothing more than a band of idiots, shouting, with insane frenzy, around the cap of liberty; and the rulers of such a people stand before men and the world pretenders, impostors, and shams!
May the might of manhood, the healthful, quickening, vital influences of honest commerce, and national intercommunication, with the force of law and the Divine Providence, ever preserve this rising commonwealth from these disastrous happenings and these deadly results.
The aim and intent of the words I have spoken this day, fellow-citizens, have been, I trust, made clear and plain. I have endeavored to show that Ave, as a nation, ought to render our contribution of good and blessing to mankind; and I have aimed to point out some of the means by which we may meet this duty. Two things, I think, may be seen through all this subject with clearness and distinctness,—that is, that energy and self-reliance are two prime, most important agencies in working out and fulfilling a nation's work and mission. For it is with the nation as with the man: when the materials are at hand, the individual must employ his own hands and use them. No one else but himself can do it for the man, none else for the nation. All the instrumentalities for large ​development and a great national work are furnished us, as a new Christian state. Ve have soil, and sky, and bright heavens, and a luxuriant clime, and the broad, strong hands of hardy men, and civilization and histories, and the high inner instincts of true men, if we will but listen at times to our own hearts, and also the sight of numerous nationalities. These are the materials Providence has placed within our reach. Now, what we have to do is to show a quick, keen brain, and strong practicalness. We should throw ourselves, under God, upon our own powers and our own abilities. No other people are to come here and work for us; we have got to work for ourselves. And it is only by clearly, wisely, seeing this, that we shall be able to secure to ourselves the appliances of high culture, the fruits of hardy effort, the gifts of science and of art, the happiness of superior men, the respect and confidence of mankind, and the Divine benignity.
For now it comes about in the world's civilization that help, aid, support, are words that have a low significance. The Christianity of 2,000 years has not educated the world up to consideration for the weak, nor respect for the lowly and the feeble. That is to be left for a higher stage of human culture and the golden age beyond. The civility of the world has still a pagan element; it loves hardihood, robustness, strength, and mightiness. Even in its moods of benevolence, and in its fits of charity, it shows this peculiarity. The Christian merchants of London or New York dole out a partial, limited liberality to aid the heathen; they send golden masses of capital to ​the strong and enterprising young nations of America and Europe, where they see activity and growing wealth. And thus, simply by the world's mercantile polity, we can see that
"To be weak is to be miserable."
I do not blame the Christian world,—I merely point out the significance of a fact. For the truth thus revealed is, that nothing but earnestness, reality, and vigorous manly effort, can gain for us respect, consideration, and the available resources of a thriving nation. The world, in these our days, can waste no thought upon mendicity, nor ragged, imbecile beggarism. It looks for woke: and when it sees that, it graciously pauses and bestows a smile. And so powerful, so deep-seated, is this idea and word in the mind of the age, that it is not confined to mere contemplation; it makes the wide atmosphere of the universe resound with it.
For the land, everywhere, in the bounds of civilization, echoes and re-echoes with it; and ocean winds are vocal with its utterance on every side, from steamboats and clippers, and ships, and the fleets of commerce, and the spreading wings of trade. Yea, the civilized world now rises up with an irresistible audacity and demands, "What right have you to live, ye lethargic do-nothings? And then, in its own bold, free utterance, declares, "We respect nought but the productive agencies of time."
Into our listening ears come these clear, audible words, on this natal day of our country: "The productive agencies of time, and they only, get respect, and notice, and advantage; all the rest is odious ​beggarism and contempt." If we wish to rise as a nation, and to be felt as an influencing agency in the world, we must make the ideas of labor and achievement master ideas in onr communities, and cause the principles of self-reliance and manly energy to become vital and energetic in our midst.
And surely no man here need search for incentive to all this. Here, all around and beyond us, on every side, in ourselves and children, are spur, and stimulus, and high incitement, to every noble work and lofty desire that has circled the brain of the greatest men earth ever saw in all her histories. This ocean, in majesty and magnificence, seems inviting argosies of sail from our ports and harbors, laden with tropical products for foreign lands. This vast and wild Africa, to indefinite depths, seems now yearning to throw off the forest, the jungle, and the bush, and to open a pathway for the spade, the hoe, the plough, and the scythe; so that all the world, ere the coming of its last days, may delight itself with its prolific fulness and its vast and inexhaustible riches. Tribe after tribe, far inward, through marsh, over mountain, down beyond the broad valleys, clear off to the large central lakes of the continent, start up, and seem listening to the faint music of the distant Gospel sweetly sounding on this coast, and crave its blessings and its gifts. The vast rivers and the broad streams, struggling for centuries with the tangled roots, the giant trunks, and the broken branches of the falling forest, would fain burst forth from all their hindrances, and marry themselves a thousand times over to the graceful forms of ships and ​steamers, which never yet, with gliding keel, have kissed their golden faces, nor ever embraced their sweet and liquid forms.
To make all this reality, seems the plain duty and the manifest destiny of Liberia. This is our work, and we must do it or must die. For when God gives a man, or a number of men,—a nation, place, circumstance, opportunity, advantage, and appliance, with
"Ample room and verge enough,"
thereunto added, for a great and noble work; such as the deliverance of a people, or the freedom of a race, or the laying the foundations of a new state, or the building wp of a great commonwealth, or the development of civilization in a new sphere, or introducing the kingdom of Christ into very domain of Satan; and they have neither sight to see, nor judgment to gauge, nor brains to understand, nor hardihood of sold to endure and to achieve, nor manly honor to meet their duty and to fulfil their work and mission; then the avenging angel of God stands in the way of such a people, and Jehovah's glittering sword cuts the cumberers down to the ground.
There are some fears; but far more and higher are the hopes, that such blindness to duty, and such fearfulness of penalty, will never fall upon this nation; for nigh at hand, and within our reach, are keen and quickening incentives, and the instruments that are mighty and commanding. Our religion is the Christian religion,—Protestant, God be praised, in its main characteristics; and it is harmonious, in all its utterances, as the music of the sphere's. Our civilization, ​in its elements, is that of the world's Christendom; and it springs upward, in all its legitimate tendencies, unerringly as the rustling pinions of a returning angel to the skies. Our language is that of the foremost men of all the earth; and it makes as our inheritance, although of other blood and race than theirs, the large common sense, the strong practicalness, the pure and lofty morals, the genuine philanthropy, the noble wisdom, and all the treasures of thought and genius, with which England has blessed the world:—
"We speak the language
Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held!"
The workings of our political institutions here, and the movements of society, may, and must be, made to be, as exact and as beautiful as the ways of nature, if we retain hearts and wills in unison with that One great heart and will which equally guides a planet and starts the pulsations of our veins. If God gives us strength, we will employ the great aids and the noble availabilities granted us, for a larger development of manhood, a fine expression of rule and government, and for the Divine glory. And then, with the Divine benignity resting upon us, with high aims and pure intents prompting our life and being, we shall be enabled to manifest here human duty, the loftiest ways of manhood, worthy character and true Christian excellence,—all mingled with, and controlled by, law and noble government. And so, from this point boldly jutting out into the glad free sea,—this spot, dedicated to nationality, ​consecrated to freedom, and sacred to religion,—from this spot shall be heard, through all the coming times, the full, clear tones of justice, the grateful symphonies of truth, the silvery voices of piety and virtue, mingling ever harmoniously with the choral echoes of the ocean!
* ↑ Dr. Arnold. See Miscellanies.
* ↑ Livy, b. 5.
* ↑ Blackstone.
* ↑ Dr. Whewell, "Elements of Morality," b. vi., chap. 1.
* ↑ Dr. Arnold. See Miscellanies.
* ↑ "Our land is rough and poor," said a New Englander, "we can raise but little produce, and so we build school-houses and churches, and raise men."
* ↑ Lord Bacon, "Advancement of Learning," b. 1.
* ↑ Jude 12.
* ↑ This subject of roads is one of the most important that can be pondered and acted upon by the people of Liberia. Our independence of the foreign market, the cessation of our biennial and exhausting wars, the promotion of industrial habits among the natives, the opening of larger farms among ourselves, the wide promotion of civilization, and the extension of the gospel in the interior, are all connected with roadmaking. With regard to belligerent natives, no better plan could be adopted than that of obliging them to keep wide roads open wherever they live nigh our settlements; and whenever a war occurs they should be forced, as one of the terms of treaty, to open a road some thirty or forty miles into the heart of their country. Trade would then keep it open, and they cannot fight in an open country.
* ↑ Gen. xiii. 10.
* ↑ Ps. cxliv. 13, 14.
* ↑ Rom. xiii. 1.
* ↑ Ec. Polity, B. 3.
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