ABSTRACT
Sierra Leone is, I am afraid, a name of evil omen in the ears of most Englishmen. Zachary Macaulay 2 was the first white man who ever expressed a real affection for the place, and as far as I know he was also the last. The furthest corners of our colonial empire have been illuminated by Mr. Kipling’s 3 genius; but he has always maintained a silence, which he probably considers discreet, as to the existence of Englishmen anywhere between Old Calabar and the Gambia. Miss Kingsley 4 can both appreciate and express the humour of a tropical swamp, and the charms to be found in the society of particularly degraded savages; but unfortunately she has hardly any personal acquaintance with our own colonies. This need not always be so, and the day may come when we shall glow with patriotic pride on recalling the historic associations of the Town Council of Free Town, and take a sentimental interest in tracing out the descendants of Madam Yoko 5 and Bai Bureh. 6 But such a time is not yet; and at present it is possible to quote Sierra Leone as an example of the futility of the most benevolent of human wishes. Founded with infinite pains to afford the negro a chance of showing that he is fit for something better than slavery, some qualified observers have been known to declare that the colony has not achieved this end. Its recent state would certainly have surprised its original founders, who never contemplated the existence of a populous settlement where the free negro on the coast might earn a comfortable fortune on trafficking in the produce of the slave labour in the interior. The reign of pure commercialism, however, is over, whatever may have been its faults, and they were numerous, and its merits, and they were great. For the circumstances of the colony have been radically changed, and, for better or worse, a corresponding change in the government of the colony is inevitable.
