ABSTRACT
WHILST James Johnson was brooding over the low tone of morality and the mere churchianity of the world around him, events, momentous in the experience of its inhabitants, were being enacted in the Colony of Sierra Leone. Three of these events were of crucial significance. In 1861 the Church Missionary Society launched an experiment, the first of its kind in its history, by creating a Native Pastorate from nine of its churches-thereby devolving some measure of self-government on the African clergy and laymen. Two years later the British administration also began an experimentagain the first of its kind in Negro British Africa-by taking Africans into greater partnership in state deliberations, through the appointment of a liberated African, John Ezzidio/ to membership of the Legislative Council.
