The negroes, however, receive a sort of bonus by their conversion to Mohamedanism. In the event of war waged on them by a Mohamedan power, they are spared, or at all events not compelled to feel the horrors which usually attend it. But the crying sin of Mohamedanism and the main spring of its pernicious tendency, is the toleration of polygamy. I confine my observations to its effects in Western Africa, although if this were the proper time and occasion, I should not dread being able to demonstrate that wherever tolerated, its tendency must be evil in the worst degree. Polygamy is the fruitful source of jealousy and distrust, it contracts the parental and filial affections, it weakens and disjoints the ties of kindred, and but for the unlimited influence of the Maraboos and the fear of hell, if they do not profit of the license of their great Apostle, must totally unhinge the frame of all society. The father has many wives, the wives have many children, favoritism in its most odious form sets in, jealousy is soon aroused, and revenge unsheathes the sword which deals forth destruction. But it is not to the domestic circle, it is not to the family arrangements, it is not to the fearful mischiefs it leads to upon social intercourse that I look alone; but to its division of the soil and to its mutilation of the different states, than which nothing can prove more destructive to any country. The jealousies of the mothers, while exciting to domestic hatred, lead to external civil war, and states rise and set with a sort of harlequin operation, and when they are sought for vanish in the air, and “leave not a wreck behind.” The consequence of these wars is, that during the precarious conquests of these chiefs, their whole employment is plunder, and where that cannot be procured the forfeiture—is life. All order and morality is upset, all right is unknown, and the effect must be the degradation of society and the dismemberment of empire in that ill-fated portion of the world.