"There are ten week-day schools in all the settlements, supported generally by education and missionary societies in this country. The teachers in most cases are coloured persons. A laudable thirst for knowledge pervades the community, and a great desire is expressed for an academic institution, toward the support of which they would contribute liberally; though as yet they are scarcely able to establish one single handed.
"In some places, as at BASSA COVE, literary societies are formed for mutual improvement, much on the plan of village lyceums in this country.
"At Bassa Cove and Monrovia there are public libraries for the use of the people. The one at the former place numbers 1200 or 1500 volumes.
"A monthly newspaper is published at Monrovia. The articles in this paper afford good testimony of the general intelligence of the people, and reflect great credit upon the talented editor, a coloured man.
"There are at present 25 or 30 white persons connected with the various missionary and education societies, or attached to the colonies as physicians, &c. The government of Liberia is essentially republican. All the officers, except the Governor, (who is appointed by the Colonization Society) being chosen by the people. Elections are held annually in every village, and are conducted with great propriety and decorum. A vice-governor, legislative councillors, a high sheriff, constables, &c., are some of the officers elected annually. The militia is well organized and efficient. The officers and men exhibit a degree of enthusiasm in the performance of their duty seldom witnessed elsewhere; and on field days their neat and orderly appearance, their thorough discipline, and the promptness and precision of their evolutions, command the admiration of every observer.
"There are a number of volunteer corps, regularly uniformed and equipped. These of course are the elite of the Liberia militia; and indeed many of them would lose nothing by a comparison with our own city guards.
We have before shown that although the only object of the Colonization Society is to restore the free man of colour to the land of his fathers, yet that the accomplishment of this very object necessarily involves the removal of the actual cause of slavery itself, and of all its horrors, viz. _the African slave-trade_. In this respect alone, if it did no more, it as far exceeds in utility, the Abolition Scheme, as the light of the sun exceeds that of a taper. Moreover this one fact, and this alone, ought to secure for it the patronage of every friend of humanity; and would no doubt long since have done so, and have procured for it ample funds from the good people of this country and of England, had its objects not been misrepresented, particularly in the latter place, where there is no one sufficiently acquainted with the merits of the case to refute and put to silence those who were, and are employed, by the Anti-Slavery Society, for the express purpose of vilifying and calumniating, before a British public, some of the greatest benefactors this country ever had. It is well known how that indefatigable and disinterested friend of the coloured man, Elliott Cresson, Esq., after he went to England, at his own expense, for the express purpose of promoting this cause in that country, was vilified, calumniated, and misrepresented by American Abolition Agents!