by strong habits, and by people at hand to take advantage of them. It is to be remarked that between these three settlements there were two intervals of sea-coast, each about one hundred miles, which were foreign in regard to the colonies. There were also battle-fields, where slavers afloat and slavers ashore, with the occasional help of a pirate, and the countenance of Spain and Portugal, were ready to resist colonial authority, and even to withstand the opposition which they might encounter from cruisers and other sources. There were honest traders, also; that is, those who were honest as things went there, dropping their anchor everywhere as they could get purchasers for their rum and gunpowder. Nor had European powers yet made up their minds how the colonies and their claims were to be treated. The necessity of union was a clear case to every man, and Buchanan prepared himself to accomplish it. The Bassa Cove people entertained sentiments not very conciliatory towards the Monrovians. The Mississippi people of Sinoe might come under suspicion next, and no one could imagine how far the evil would extend. This state of things was clearly understood among the friends of the American Colonization Society and of the State societies, and the corrective was applied. A committee, comprising the names of Charles F. Mercer, Samuel L. Southard, Matthew St. Clair Clark, and Elisha Whittlesey, met at Washington, and drew up a common constitution for the colonies. Mr. Whittlesey moved, and the motion was adopted, “That no white man should become a landholder in Liberia,” and that full rights of citizenship should be enjoyed by colored men alone. Political suffrage was extended to all adult males, and slavery was absolutely prohibited. This constitution divided the territory into two provinces or counties, and having been acceded to and acted on by the different colonies, superseded and abolished the political relations of the separate establishments to the associations which had preceded it. The American Colonization Society retained the right to disapprove, or veto, the acts of the local legislature. This last particular, as an indication of national dependence, was the characteristic distinguishing the commonwealth from the republic subsequently established. The emancipation of the negroes under the English government was now taking effect. The United States government were beginning to realize the expediency of keeping permanently a naval force on the west coast of Africa; and notwithstanding difficulties and apprehensions resting gloomily on the future, Governor Buchanan, on landing with the new constitution, at Monrovia, on the first of April, 1839, seems to have inaugurated a new era for the African race.