Sierra Leone, as a mission field, is free from some of the most serious difficulties which retard the progress of the Gospel among the Natives and in South Africa. Its chief advantages consist in its freedom from war; in the absence of white Colonists; and in the accumulating progress of civilization. Its inhabitants possess such a unity of races, such a social equality, as to prevent hostile collisions on account of color. Its officers and principal merchants, only, are white; and, hence, fewer occasions arise here than in South Africa, where the black man is made to feel his inferiority to the white. The intellectual improvement of its people has been much more rapid than that of the population in the South African Missions; and, as a consequence, the teachers of the schools and seminaries, in Sierra Leone and its connections, are, mostly, colored men; while few, indeed, of the natives in the Colonies of the Cape, have been able to attain such positions.[54] In these facts are we to find the causes of the superiority of the Sierra Leone missions, over those to the Natives and to the South of Africa. Sierra Leone, however, when contrasted with Liberia, is found to lack some of the essential elements of progress possessed by the Republic. The liberty secured to the citizens of Liberia, extends to all their relations, personal, social, political. The people of Sierra Leone, enjoy but two of these elements of progress. They have personal freedom and a fair degree of social equality, but are deprived of the third—political equality—which, above all, exerts the most potent influence to stimulate the intellectual faculties of men. The young convert in the seminary at Sierra Leone, doubtless, finds great encouragement to mental improvement, in the prospect of becoming a teacher, or in entering the ministry; but to the unconverted youth, in the absence of the prospect of political promotion, there is, absolutely, nothing to stimulate to efforts at high attainment in science and literature. Thus the political system of Sierra Leone, supplies but half the elements of progress to its people. Had it been otherwise, had the aspirations of its early emigrants been cherished, and its civil affairs committed mainly to their hands, the Colony might now be in a far more advanced situation. This will be apparent on a fuller contrast of its condition with that of Liberia.