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PROSPECTUS.-This work is conducted in the spirit of Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favorably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader.

The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make use of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies.

The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it

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now becomes every intelligent American to be informed of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with ourselves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute or foresee.

Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shal systematically and very ully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own.

While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified.

We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff" by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it wil aspire to raise the standard of public taste.

tion of this work-and for doing this a liberal commission will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves in the business. And we will gladly correspond on this subject with any agent who will send us undoubted refer

TERMS.-The LIVING AGE is published every Satur- Agencies. We are desirous of making arrangements, day, by E. LITTELL & Co., corner of Tremont and Brom-in all parts of North America, for increasing the circulafield sts., Boston; Price 124 cents a number, or six dollars a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be thankfully received and promptly attended to. To insure regularity in mailing the work, orders should be addressed to the office of publication, as above. Clubs, paying a year in advance, will be supplied as follows:

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ences.

Postage.-When sent with the cover on, the Living Age consists of three sheets, and is rated as a pamphlet, at 44 cents. But when sent without the cover, it comes within the definition of a newspaper given in the law, and cannot legally be charged with more than newspaper postage, (1 cts.) We add the definition alluded to:

A newspaper is "any printed publication, issued in numbers, consisting of not more than two sheets, and published at short, stated intervals of not more than one month, conveying intelligence of passing events."

Monthly parts.-For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in eighteen months.

WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845.

Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind 14 the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 200.-11 MARCH, 1848.

London. 1843.

From the British Quarterly Review.

1. Medical History of the Expedition to the Niger. By JAMES ORMISTON M'WILLIAM, M. D., Senior Medical Officer of the Expedition. 2. Is Cheap Sugar the Triumph of Free Trade? A letter to the Right Honorable Lord John Russell. By JACOB OMNIUM. London. 1847. 3. Notes on Cuba. By a Physician. Boston, U. S. 1844.

THE late Sir Fowell Buxton's confessions respecting the utter failure of the proceedings of "The Friends of the African" did more credit to the candor of that gentleman than to the ability and discretion of the party of which he was the acknowledged head. In the year 1840 he frankly admitted that England, after having spent at their instigation, and under their guidance, upwards of 15,000,000l. in her efforts to suppress the slavetrade, after having thereby seriously compromised her friendly relations with the powers whose subjects were engaged in that nefarious traffic, and having consigned to a premature grave thousands of her bravest sons in the performance of their professional duties on the shores of Africa, had but succeeded in aggravating the sufferings of the unhappy beings whom she sought to relieve.

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It is not our purpose in the present paper saturate the public mind with the horrors of the slave-trade." We merely wish to lay before the self-elected champions of the negro a brief résumé of what they have effected on behalf of their wards, leaving to their own discernment, and to that of the puolo, to decide whether it will not be better that the sort of imperium in imperio-the Exeter Hall influence which has up to the present day pervaded the colonial counsels in Downing streetshould cease; that the duty of defending the weak and of redressing the oppressed should in future devolve on the governors, clergy, and other official

servants of the colonies where such interference is required; and that every individual sheltered under the British flag, be he white, brown, red, black, or copper-colored, should henceforward be permitted to lapse under the protection of practical government and common sense.

In making this suggestion, we by no means desire that any philanthropic body, instituted for the amelioration of the physical or moral condition of mankind, should be thrown out of work at this inclement season of the year. We could easily point out to them parishes in England where missionaries are quite as much wanted as in the most unenlightened group of the Cannibal Islands; we could show them, within two days' post of London—(for we have had enough of the capital itself in a preceding article)-whole districts where ignorance * Buxton.

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and oppression, and famine-ay, and pestilenceare as rife as amongst the rocks of Patagonia or in the delta of the Niger; and if any there be amongst them (it may be deemed uncharitable to surmise it) who are stimulated in their career of benevolence rather by the thirst of fame than the pure love of humanity, we believe we may assure them that most people will honor them more for one personal effort made on behalf of distress abroad-or even at home-than for all the vicarious gallantry of which there have been from time to time such dazzling displays in the Strand. The most generous disregard of other men's lives and other men's interests is a claim to celebrity which, we fear, will always be open to question.

Before the slave-trade was declared illegal, the average mortality amongst the negroes during the middle passage was computed to be 9 per cent. Mr. Buxton admitted, in 1840, that the courses adopted by himself and his party had increased that ratio of deaths to 25 per cent. Slave speculators,

in consequence of the augmented chances of pursuit and capture, found it their interest to carry on their trade in sharper and flimsier craft, fast sailers, run up at little cost. They likewise considered it advantageous to crowd them to an incredible degree with slaves, in order that one rapid and fortunate passage might remunerate them amply for previous But no one losses by mortality and confiscation.* could describe the failure of all that had been attempted, with a view of putting down this traffic prior to 1840, more forcibly than Mr. Buxton has himself done :

"Millions of money and multitudes of lives have been sacrificed, and in return for all we have only the afflicting conviction that the slave-trade is as far as ever from being suppressed: nay, I am afraid that the fact is not to be disputed, that while we have thus been endeavoring to extinguish the traffic, it has actually doubled in amount."-The SlaveTrade, p. 171.

In the year 1791 the colony of Sierra Leone was established under the same auspices, as a nucleus whence the blessings of Christianity and agriculture were to extend their ramifications over benighted Africa. Its motto was, "The Bible and the Plough." Officials of every grade were exported fresh and fresh from England (for they died very rapidly) at the expense of the government. Clergymen, schoolmasters, and missionaries, simple and enthusiastic men, were urged to resort thither in abundance by sleek and voluble agitators at home, who, saying nothing of the dangers they

The captures of the Jesus Maria, of 35 tons, (the size of a Cowes pilot-boat,) with 297 souls on board-of the Si, of 89 tons, with 400 souls-of the Vincedora, of 16 tons, and 71 souls-(Burton)-attest too clearly the cause of the increased proportion of deaths.

felt no call to share, announced the colony as a| African population was to be attributed rather to sort of moral model farm, whose success was al- the docile and imitative disposition of that race than ready guaranteed by the energy and piety of the to any efforts made on their behalf by Europeans." powerful body that supported its interests in Eng-Wages were from 3d. to 4d. a day, and but scanty land.

employment was to be obtained even at that low rate. Capital was stated to be unknown in Sierra Leone. Money payments were rare-muskets, check-shirts, and rum having supplanted £. s. d. in the currency of the pattern colony.

place statements tended to give an undue importance to the settlement, in a commercial point of view, in the minds of the ignorant and the sanguine. In 1842, the industry, or rather indolence, of 40,000 settlers, all either agriculturists or idlers, raised produce for exportation to the value of

annum for each individual. Coffee to the amount of 201. was exported in 1836 rum, tobacco, and sugar were amongst the imports. For fourteen years no progress had been made in production; and this in a country whose advances in civilization were, according to the manifestos of the Strand, unimpeded by the avarice and cruelty of speculation, or the cold-blooded selfishness of tradewhere the soil and climate were originally stated to be "admirably suited for every species of tropical cultivation," and where labor was abundant at 4d. a-day.

The evidence given by Colonel H. D. Campbell, one of the few governors who had the good luck to return alive, by Dr. Madden, the government commissioner, who visited the colony in 1840, and by other witnesses before the parliamentary com- Its statistics, in a commercial point of view, mittee of 1842, enables us to judge with much were all in keeping. In the various florid descripaccuracy of the success with which the Friends of tions put forward by its patrons, much stress was the African have discharged the important trust generally laid on the obvious truism that all the of which they have so confidently monopolized the plants and fruits which are indigenous to a tropical duties, and which cost the mother country nearly country could be successfully cultivated there; and 100,000l. a year. Up to that date more than as these vegetable productions are looked upon as 60,000 settlers had at various times been poured rarities in our climate, and are only to be met with into Sierra Leone. These Africans, so prolific in the forcing-houses of the rich, these commonelsewhere, instead of multiplying, diminished in numbers the actual population being estimated at 40,000; of whom 80 were Europeans-of these but six were women. White children born in the colony invariably died. Insurance offices charged an additional 25 per cent. on persons about to proceed thither. Colonel Campbell, on reaching the 45771.-something under 2s. 6d. per head per seat of his government, which he had been instructed was 66 a great annoyance to the colonial office, in consequence of the abuses and vile system there," describes a social state which we believe has not been equalled by that of any other tropical colony in the worst days of slavery. He found "the colonial chaplain totally ignorant of the state of religion and education," whilst Mahomedan missionaries were making such numerous proselytes that the white Christians thought fit to check the progress of that persuasion by destroying their mosques. The best British subjects were the Kroomen-a race of muscular, good-tempered, laborious fellows-but stone-deaf in heathendom, ardent devil-worshippers, and, says the Rev. J. Schön, "fearfully" addicted to polygamy. The liberated Africans, when turned loose in the colony, found themselves in such a destitute condition that Colonel Campbell, on subsequently visiting the interior, recognized many of his former subjects, who had returned into voluntary slavery in order to insure a subsistence. The children landed from slavers were apprenticed out to other negroes66 as uncivilized as the children they obtained"many of whom themselves had not been a year in the colony-and were carried off into the bush, where they lived in a state of nature. The young girls were intrusted to negro-women in the town, who grew rich on the wages of their prostitution. In the gaol Colonel Campbell found men, women, children, lunatics, debtors, tried and untried criminals, guilty and innocent, huddled together night and day, without distinction of sex, age, or crime.* He described the European population, small as it was, as most degraded and immoral; and declared, "that what little had been done in civilizing the

Jacob Omnium's description of a Cuban harracoon is paralleled, if not surpassed, by the model prison of Free

town.

Such was the condition of Sierra Leone, established and conducted under the special surveillance of the friends of the African, after nearly half a century of their fostering care-such was "the glimmer of civilization," which these doers of good by deputy had succeeded in shedding over the country of their adoption-such their practical adaptation of the Bible and the plough. Although it is a matter of surprise to us that these persons themselves were not utterly disheartened by the deadly failures of their experiments, it is a matter of far greater that the English nation was not disgusted and undeceived by their proved incapacity, and that a ministry and a people could be found willing to endure any longer such murderous child's-play for men's lives and fortunes.

The expedition of Macgregor Laird up the Niger in 1836 had demonstrated that that river was navigable for small steamers to a considerable distance from its mouth. The Liverpool merchants with whom it had originated-persons of known capacity and humanity-were experienced in the trade and climate of the coast; moreover, the principal shareholder in that daring adventure accompanied and directed it himself. Their object was to ascertain the practicability of ascending the Niger in steamers, to verify the tales rife amongst

the natives on the coast of the greater salubrity of | large white crews of the steamers thus dispatched the interior, and of the abundance of ivory, gold-up the Niger at the very season described by Mr. dust, and indigo procurable there; and to establish, Buxton himself—(Slave Trade, p. 200)—as most if the scheme appeared on examination to afford promise of success, a trading settlement at the confluence of the Niger and the Tchadda. Lieutenant Allen, R. N., accompanied Mr. Laird as passenger, with a view of making a survey of the river; but the enterprise received no aid or notice whatever from the friends of the African or the English government. Its sad results are well known. The two steamers Quorra and Alburkah penetrated up the Niger as far as Rabbah; the mercantile part of the speculation wholly failed; and but eight men out of forty-eight-amongst whom Messrs. Laird and Oldfield, and Lieutenant Allen, were luckily included-survived to tell the tale.

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fatal to human life. Their remonstrances were unheeded as those of interested meddlers; the little fleet crossed the Atlantic without accident; and having taken on board at Sierra Leone a sufficient number of Kroomen, on the 13th of August, 1841, the Amelia schooner and the Albert and Soudan steamers rolled in heavily over the bar of the Nun mouth of the Niger-were followed on the 15th by the Wilberforce and began the journey dreaded by the people."—(Duncan.) One hundred and forty-five white men, and one hundred and fifty-eight blacks-thirty-three of whom were destined to be permanently located on a certain model farm, the materials of which were Yet when, in 1840, with such appalling experi- stowed in the hold of the Amelia-composed the ence to deter him, Mr. Buxton, undismayed by the crews of the devoted vessels, which were comevil which he had already wrought, declared that manded by Captains Trotter, Bird Allen, and W. he had hit upon a new remedy for the slave-trade Allen, R. N. Their objects appear to have been -when, averting his eyes from the almost incredi- to penetrate up the river as far as Rabbah, ble misery, idleness, and debauchery which per- establishing new commercial relations with those vaded every corner of what had been formerly his African chiefs or powers within whose dominions pet land of promise, Sierra Leone, he issued, in the internal slave-trade of Africa is carried on, and the name of a "New Society for effecting the the external slave-trade supplied with its victims ; extinction of the slave-trade, and for promoting the the bases of which conventions were to be—first, the civilization of Africa," his proposals that similar abandonment and absolute prohibition of the slaveestablishments should be tried on a greater scale; trade-and, secondly, the admission for consumpthat efforts should be made to "cultivate districts tion in this country, on favorable terms, of goods of Africa selected for that purpose, in order that the produce and manufacture of the territories subher inhabitants might be convinced of the capabil-ject to them."-(Lord J. Russell's Letter.) They ities of her soil, and witness what wonders might be accomplished by their own labor, when set in motion by our capital and guided by our skill"— (The remedy, p. 336)—when, in 1840, Mr. Buxton ventured on this new appeal, England, sensible, practical England, responded eagerly to his invitation. Lord John Russell disdained to reflect on the fatal fatuity which had hitherto characterized the undertakings of this party: he did not stoop to consider the state of the pattern colony which had been specially committed to their charge; and again were the elders of Exeter Hall permitted to sport with the resources of the country and the lives of braver if not better men than themselves.

Never did any previous expedition create such a sensation as that which was prepared in 1841 for the civilization of Africa—magnum opus! Ample funds were voted by parliament, in compliance with the wishes of the prime minister, for its outfit and maintenance; three iron steamers were built expressly for the service; the flower of the British navy volunteered for the grand undertaking-the officers attracted by the certainty of promotion and renown, the men by the prospect of danger and double pay.

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were further to select a spot, "healthy, for Africa," (Buxton,) on which to locate the thirtythree poor wretches who had been persuaded to remain and conduct the model farm which was to promote cultivation, advance civilization, diffuse morality, and induce attention to a pure system of religion throughout that quarter of the globe." It is not easy to divine by what train of reasoning Mr. Buxton had persuaded Lord John Russell that the idolatrous, polygamic, and rum-bibbing homicides, whom he dignifies with the titles of "the Sultans and Kings of Central Africa," were likely to observe, any longer than was agreeable and profitable to them, treaties which Lord Palmerston had over and over again pronounced, and which it was notorious had proved, to be no better than waste paper when employed to restrain the princes of Christian Europe from the same detestable commerce.

The history of the business is a short one. The sources from which we shall condense our sketch of it are "The Medical History of the Niger Expedition," by Dr. M'William, and a brief account lately published in Bentley's Miscellany, by Duncan, the African traveller, who officiated as masterat-arms on board the Albert. On the 15th of August, two days after they entered the Nun, the river-fever struck its first victim. William Bach, the mathematical instrument maker, died.

In vain did Macgregor Laird, Jamieson, and other such men, endeavor to expose the absurdity and the impolicy of the attempt; the injury which it would inflict upon the increasing legitimate commerce of Africa with England; and the inevi"By the 4th of September, sickness of a most table mortality which awaited the unnecessarily malignant character broke out in the Albert, and

almost simultaneously in the other vessels, and of the "Sultans of Central Africa," with whom abated not until the whole expedition was par- anti-slavery treaties were to be concluded, was alyzed."-M' William. visited for that purpose by Capt. Trotter.*

ArOn the 10th of September the four vessels rangements had been previously made for drawing reached the locality sagaciously pointed out for up the compact between his majesty and Queen the establishment of the model farm. In "The Victoria; all his ministers and judges were sumRemedy" (written after the results of Laird's as-moned to attend, as also the commissioners of the cent had been published) these words were actually African Society and the officers of the ships comput forth :-"Where the confluence of the Tchadda posing the expedition. Suitable presents having with the Niger takes place is the spot to erect the been selected, the representatives of her majesty capital of our great African establishments. A went ashore, and mounted six ponies belonging to city built there, under the protecting wings of Great his majesty. Mr. Duncan, master-at-arms of the Britain, would ere long become the capital of Af- Albert, attired as a full private of the Life Guards, rica. Fifty millions of people, yea, even a greater to which regiment he had formerly belonged, and number, would be dependent on it." (p. 355.) This carrying a union-jack, headed the procession. chosen scene had now been reached. On the 11th They entered the "imperial tent" by a hole about they commenced discharging their "farm-house three and a half feet high, which the ex-lifefurniture, carts, ploughs, and harrows, and all guardsman observes "was very awkward for a sorts of farming implements." The place they man of six feet three inches, with cuirass and helselected had been a large town about two years met, particularly with a boarding-pike and flag atbefore, but this had been destroyed by a hostile tached to it." Here they found the sultan squatted tribe, the Felatahs. The high rank grass cov-on a bench, looking very stern, surrounded by his ered the streets, the ruins of the huts, and the gardens. At every step a reptile of some sort was trodden on. After remaining on this eligible site for two days, during which time they buried a man named Powell, they discovered that it was not as well calculated for their settlement as they at first supposed, and therefore, to their great mortification, they were compelled to reembark all their stores. One mile higher they again landed neir farming paraphernalia, including "the famous Eglintoan tournament-tent as a temporary residence for the farmer and his servants." But here again death began to make rapid strides :

"We lost," says Mr. Duncan," in the Albert alone 7 men in one week, and had 18 sick. We remained here until the 19th; during this period, men were falling ill almost every hour, consequently it was determined that all the sick should be placed in one vessel, the Soudan, and sent down the river to Ascencion, although it was very clear that most of them would be consigned to the deep long ere they reached that place. The lamentable and awful spectacle can scarcely be imagined, when on Sunday the 19th, all the sick, or at least those not expected to recover, from all three ships, were crammed on board the Soudan, with very indifferent accommodation, nearly all being on deck like cattle.

“We had still seven men sick, after sending fourteen on board the Soudan; out of 21 white men, the crew of the Soudan, 19 were dangerously ill. The sick from the three vessels amounted to 40, a great number out of 75 men. It was arranged for the Albert and Wilberforce to proceed up the river the following day, but unfortunately on the afternoon of the 19th and morning of the 20th a great number of the remaining officers and men fell sick. In fact we had scarcely a sufficient number out of both vessels left to take one steamer up the river; consequently it was arranged that the Wilberforce should follow the Soudan, and the Albert proceed up the river."

During the ascent from the mouth of the Nun to the model farm station, the King of Iddah, one

court, and dressed "much," says Duncan, "like the Guy Fawkes' effigies in London on the fifth of November. He, however, readily accepted the presents-promised everything they asked, on condition that they should aid him in his squabbles with the neighboring kings and sultans of Central Africa-ceded a portion of his territory to his sister the Queen of England-and was very anxious that Mr. Duncan should exchange his helmet for a damaged elephant's tooth. His ministers evinced great delight at being presented with some red nightcaps, spectacles, and needles; and darkness coming on before the completion of this international treaty-(only second in importance and utility to that which Lord John Russell has lately had the good fortune to conclude with the Republic of the Equator)-it was signed and sealed by the light of a bit of calabash saturated with palm-oil, blazing in a British frying-pan, which the King of Iddah was in the habit of using as a candelabrum. That monarch never spoke during the interview, but merely from time to time nodded his woolly head.†

On such fool's errands as these were gallant men despatched to certain death, in the nineteenth century, by the friends of the African and the government of England.

The Albert hurried on her desperate attempt to reach Rabbah. On the 22nd Capt. Bird Allen and Messrs. Fairholme and Webb, mates, sickened. On Sundays they lay at anchor all day, "doing nothing but attending divine service,”

*Under the head of "Facilities for making Treaties," Mr. Buxton informed the public, on the authority of Gov ernor Rendall, that thirty-nine kings, including the Almanez of Footah-Jallow and the Sultan of Woolli, had consented to abolish the slave-trade, in consideration of a yearly subsidy of 3001., or about 71. 13s. 10d. a piece.

+"The treaty made with the Attah of Iddah has been ratified by government, except that her majesty declines the sovereignty of any territory in Central Africa, or the proprietary interest in any land agreed by the Attah to be ceded to her majesty."-Proceedings of the African Civilization Society.

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