] 'may be out of place (date?) in England, but
in Sierra Leone they would have saved an entire population from trusting
to the allurements of a petty, demoralising trade; they would have saved
us the sight of decayed villages and a people becoming daily less capable
of bearing the laborious toil of agricultural industry. To handle the hoe
has now become a disgrace, and men have lost their manhood by becoming
gentlemen.' I shall presently return to this subject.
Thus the four colonies which successively peopled Sa Leone were composed
of destitute paupers from England, of fugitive Nova Scotian serviles, of
outlawed Jamaican negroes, and of slave-prisoners or criminals from every
region of Western and inner Africa.
The first society of philanthropists, the 'Sierra Leone Company,' failed,
but not without dignity. It had organised a regular government, and even
coined its own money. In the British Museum a silver piece like a florin
bears on the obverse 'Sierra Leone Company, Africa,' surrounding a lion
guardant standing on a mountain; the reverse shows between the two numbers
50 and 50 two joined hands, representing the union of England and Africa,
and the rim bears 'half-dollar piece, 1791,' the year of the creation of
the colony.
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