By an Act of Parliament of 1763, 4 George III, Chapter 20, Senegal and its Dependencies became vested in a Company which is described as the Company of Merchants Trading in Africa, and by an Act of the following year the property of the Company became vested in His Majesty King George the Third, and the trade to Africa was declared open to all his subjects, the officers and servants on the Coast being forbidden to export negroes on their own account. The Peninsula of Sierra Leone was purchased in 1787, and a number of freed slaves and about sixty white women arrived from England the same year. The Sierra Leone Company, which had been formed for philanthropic purposes, was established by Act of Parliament, 31 George III, Chapter 55, of the 1st July, 1791, for a period of thirty-one years, and annulled on the petition of the Company by an Act transferring to His Majesty certain possessions and rights vested in the Company, and for shortening the duration of the said Company and for preventing any dealing or trafficking in buying or selling slaves within the Colony of Sierra Leone on the 8th August, 1807. The Colony was formally transferred to Governor Ledlum for the Crown on the 31st January, 1808. Apart from anything else, Sierra Leone, on account of its very close association with the abolition of the slave trade and the efforts made to promote civilization in West Africa and to convert the natives to Christianity, will always appeal to the sentiment of a large section of the English public. It was the famous ruling of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield in 1772 that a slave setting foot in England became free, which inspired William Cowper’s stirring lines:— “Slaves cannot breathe in England: if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country and their shackles fall.” * * * * * “Freedom has a thousand charms to show That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.” Although the slave trade was abolished over a century ago, slavery still exists in many parts of West Africa, and it was in a great measure due to the raids by the Sofas and intertribal wars for the purpose of obtaining slaves that a Protectorate was in 1896 declared over the territory adjacent to the Colony of Sierra Leone. Domestic slavery still exists, but it is a kind, patriarchal sort of slavery, and slaves are allowed to purchase their freedom by paying, in the case of an adult, a sum not exceeding £4, and in the case of a child a sum not exceeding £2; many of them prefer to remain as domestic slaves or retainers, or, as they describe it, “sit down to some person” who makes himself responsible for their welfare. Their position is somewhat similar to that of the serf under the old English feudal system.