In this way Liberia has proved, from the standpoint of humanity,
pre-eminently successful.




3. _As a Step toward the Civilization of Africa._


George Whitefield is said to have declared to Oglethorpe when lamenting
his failure to exclude slavery from Georgia, that he was making a
mistake: the Africans were much better off as slaves than in their
native barbarism, and would receive a training that would enable them
ultimately to return and civilize the land of their nativity. In this
bold idea he anticipated one of the leading thoughts of the fathers of
colonization, and, perhaps prophesied, a great migration which the
world is yet to see. But to confine ourselves to the present and the
strictly practical--there is to the interior of Liberia, sweeping away
beyond the valley of the Niger, a country of teeming population and vast
resources. That this territory be opened to the commerce of the world,
and the blessings of civilization be conferred upon the people, it is
necessary that some impulse of enlightenment come from without. The
casual visit of the trader has been proved by experience to do vastly
more harm than good. Vice and demoralization have too often followed in
his track. The direction and instruction of European agents accomplish
little. The best efforts of all men of this class have resulted in an
unequal hand-to-hand fight with the deadly climate, in which no white
man can work and live. Besides, the natives need more than guidance;
they must have before them the example of a civilized settlement.