The Liberator

SLAVE TRADE IN SIERRA LEONE.

Read the following extract from the English Monthly Review for May:

'One of the school-masters in Sierra Leone has been tried for selling some of his scholars. There were lately upwards of 100 liberated Africans who had been kidnapped from Sierra Leone, and were conveyed to a place near the banks of the river Pongos. Here they were detained until an opportunity occurred of reshipping and selling them as slaves. The plan of detention, it appears, is under the superintendence of an Englishman named Joseph—an outlaw whom the government has in vain endeavored to arrest. The horrible state in which the kidnapped Africans must be kept in this place, is revealed at once by the fact, that when the Plumper was in the Pongos river, a female slave rushed one day from the shore to the vessel and would not be induced to return on any threat or persuasion. She was finally brought to Sierra Leone in safety. His Majesty's ship Favorite boarded a vessel, under French colors, with a great number of slaves, some of whom spoke English, like the liberated slaves in Sierra Leone.'

What security is there that the Africo-Americans of Liberia will be more honest and humane than the English at Sierra Leone? These facts show the folly of attempting to arrest the progress of the slave trade by means of colonies, while the market for slaves is kept brisk.