The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1861-01-09

the probability is that their captures will be equally
are we TO do with the slave car
goes that fall into our hands2 Our present course
is to carry them to Liberia and to nav hundred
dollars per capita for their maintenance for one
one year after landing. But the danger is that,
instead of the Liberians proving capable of civil
izing and Outstanding these barbarians, the
barbarian element will speedily predominant, and
that the Lberians will themselves suffer from the
consequences of our philanthropy. The whole
population of that Colony does not exceed ten
thousand persons, and within few months we
have landed there, exclusive Of the previous car
goes of the Pons and the Echo, four thousand lib
Grated Africans. These involuntary emigrants,
all of them of the lowest type Of barbaraus
are therefore, in point of numbers, equal
to one half of the civilized population of Liberia.
OF the five thousand in all which have been
landed at Monrovia, the greatest aggre-
gate number that can possibly be bound out
to eligible persons, will not according to the re-
port of President BENSON, exceed one thousand -
What to do with the remainder is the problem TO
be solved. 1t is feared that the Iiberians cannot
absorb this savage element without serious injury
to their own civilization, and although President
BENSON is sanguine of overcoming the difficulty,
there are many warm friends of the colony who
doubt the practicability of the scheme which he
has devised to effect that purpose. The laws of
the Republic which apply to re-captured Africans
provide that after the expiration of the year for
which our Government has paid for their support,
they shall be bound out as apprentices for terms
If I-no RAJ ui 70
as not more than one thousand can be disposed of
in this way, and as the Republic is too poor to
undertake the support of the Others it is proposed
to lay off several hundred acres of land in each
county, where manual labor schools may be es-
tablished, under proper supervision, and where
the captives may be educated and trained to labor
during the full terms of their apprenticeship
This may possibly answer for those that are al
ready there; but what is TO he done with 9th
ers that may be landed during the pre-
sent year? The prospect is, that Notwithstanding
the temptation of the subsidy, the Liberians will
object to receiving any further additions of this
class of population, and if such should be the case
our only resource is TO transfer in future the cap
tured slave cargoes 10 Great Britain, who will
gladly take them off our hands, free of cost, for
the purpose of introducing them as laborers into
her West India Islands, and under her well regu-
lated system of apprenticeship. Indeed, we are
inclined to believe that the latter arrangement
would be best for all parties. The Liberans have
already surfeit of savage Congos, and any addi-
ton 10 their number would certainly be to the
prejudice of the colonsts. The latter are doing
well nov, and are moderately prosperous; but the
beseting sin of the negro, whether semi-savage or
semi-civized is laziness and from this falling the
Liberans themselves, if report speaks true are not
wholly free. They infinitely prefer to become
small merchants and pedlers, rather than to en-
gage in agricultural pursuits; and if they arc in
future to have a superfluity of servants, in the
shape of liberated Africans, they will naturally
incline to make those servants do all their work
and the apprenticeship system will gradually de
generate into system of perpetual slavery.