Let us appeal to experience. In what state was Britain herself, when first visited by the Romans? More barbarous than many of the African kingdoms in the present day. Look to the aboriginal inhabitants of both the northern and southern continents of the new world, both when America was first discovered, and at the present day, with the exception, perhaps, of only the kingdom of Mexico. Look to New Holland, a tract of country as great as all Europe; look to Madagascar, to Borneo, to Sumatra, to the other islands in the Indian seas, or to those of the Pacific Ocean. Are not the Africans far more civilized than any of these? The fact is undeniable. Instead of a miserable race of wretched savages, thinly scattered over countries of immense extent; destitute almost of every art and manufacture (this is the condition of the greater part of the nations above specified), we find the Africans, in the interior, in the state of society which has been found, from history, next to precede the full enjoyment of all civil and social blessings; the inhabitants of cities and of the country mutually contributing towards each others’ support; political and civil rights recognized both by law and practice; natural advantages discerned, and turned to account; both agriculture, and, still more, manufactures, carried to a tolerable state of improvement; the population in some countries very considerable; and a strong sense of the value of knowledge, and an earnest desire of obtaining it. How great is the progress which the Africans have made compared with the scanty advantages they could derive from their barbarous Mahometan invaders! But it has been the peculiar misery of Africa, that nations, already the most civilized, finding her in the state which has been described, instead of producing any such effects as might be hoped for from a commercial connection between a less and a more civilized people; instead of imparting to the former the superior knowledge and improvements of the latter; instead of awakening the dormant powers of the human mind, of calling forth new exertions of industry, and thus leading to a constant progression of new wants, desires, and tastes; to the acquisition of property, to the acquisition of capital, to the multiplication of comforts, and, by the more firm establishment of law and order, to that security and quiet, in which knowledge and the arts naturally grow up and flourish: instead of all these effects; it has been the sad fate of Africa, that when she did enter into an intercourse with polished nations, it was an intercourse of such a nature, as, instead of polishing and improving, has tended not merely to retard her natural progress, but to deprave and darken, and, if such a new term might be used where unhappily the novelty of the occurrence compels us to resort to one, to barbarize her wretched inhabitants. [Sidenote: New phenomenon: interior of Africa more civilized than the coast.]