"The settlers along the banks of the St. Paul have given more attention to the cultivation of the soil. They raise sweet-potatoes, cassava, and plantains, for their own use, and also supply the Monrovia market with the same. Ground-nuts and arrow-root are also cultivated, but to a very limited extent. A few individuals have cultivated the sugar cane with success, and have manufactured a considerable quantity of excellent sugar and molasses. Some attention has been given to the cultivation of the coffee tree. It grows luxuriantly, and bears most abundantly. The flavor of the coffee is as fine as any in the world; and, if the Liberians would give the attention to it they ought, it would probably be as highly esteemed as any other in the world. It is easily cultivated, and requires little or no outlay of capital; and we are surprised that it has not already become an article of export. The want of disposition to cultivate the soil is, perhaps, the most discouraging feature in the prospects of Liberia. Mercantile pursuits are followed with zeal and energy, but comparatively few are willing to till the ground for the means of subsistence." Liberia had its first constitution in 1825. It was drawn at the instance of the Colonization Society in the United States. It set forth the objects of the colony, defined citizenship, and declared the objects of the government. It remained in force until 1836. In 1839 a "Legislative Council" was created, and the constitution amended to meet the growing wants of the government. In 1847 Liberia declared herself an independent republic. The first article of the constitution of 1847 reads as follows:-- "ARTICLE I. SECTION I. All men are born equally free and independent, and among them natural, inherent and inalienable rights, are the rights of enjoying and defending _life_ and LIBERTY." This section meant a great deal to a people who had abandoned their homes in the United States, where a chief justice of the Supreme Court had declared that "a Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect,"--a country where the Federal Congress had armed every United-States marshal in all the Northern States with the inhuman and arbitrary power to apprehend, load with chains, and hurl back into the hell of slavery, every poor fugitive who sought to find a home in a professedly free section of "the _land of the free and the home of the brave_." These brave black pilgrims, who had to leave "the freest land in the world" in order to get their freedom, did not intend that the solemn and formal declaration of principles contained in their constitution should be reduced to a _reductio ad absurdum_, as those in the American Constitution were by the infamous _Fugitive-slave Law_. And in section 4 of their constitution they prohibit "the sum of all villanies"--_slavery_! The article reads:--