7. African Colonization will have a powerful tendency to destroy the slave trade. Hitherto all efforts to stop the progress of this abominable traffic have been unavailing. Notwithstanding the laws made against it by various nations, and especially against the importation of slaves into their territories, the work still goes on. It is estimated that 50,000 were carried into foreign slavery the last year. And this will continue to be the fact for years to come, unless more effectual measures are taken than any that government can adopt. The slave-stealers lie along the coast of Africa, and glide up and down her rivers, ready to seize upon every man, woman and child, who come within their reach. And this they will continue to do in spite of all penal enactments. By resorting to false flags, and false decks, and false passports, they effectually elude detection; or, if they are hard pressed and cannot escape their pursuers, they throw their cargoes overboard, and thus evade the law which requires that slaves shall be actually found in the ship in order to justify a capture. When hard pressed they will even head the negroes up in casks, and cast them into the sea, that they may take them up again when the chase is over. Now there is no conceivable way, while the world remains as it is, by which this inhuman traffic can be suppressed, but by establishing colonies on the coast of Africa. And this will do it. ‘This will draw a cordon around the continent which the slave-trader cannot penetrate.’ All communication with the natives will be cut off, and if it is not wholly so, the influence which the colonists will have upon them will remove their disposition to sell their brethren and sisters into bondage. The colony at Liberia has already done this to a great extent. Says a recent British publication, when speaking of the influence of the American Colony at Liberia, ‘Nothing has tended more to suppress the slave-trade in this quarter, than the constant intercourse and communication of the natives with these industrious colonists. Wherever the influence of this colony extends, the slave-trade has been abandoned.’ And we have other evidence to show that, for hundreds of miles around Liberia, the slave-trade has ceased. Is it not plain then that African colonization exerts, and if suffered to proceed will continue to exert, a favorable influence for the suppression of the slave-trade? Does not Divine Providence seem to point to this as the only way to bring it to an end? Is not this the way by which those sighs and groans, and agonies unutterable, which Heaven annually witnesses on the coast of Africa, and in the middle passage, will be brought to an end?