Australia was originally a penal settlement, to which convicts, as emigrants and settlers, were sent at Government expense. The emigration, however, that has made Australia what it is, and given to it its present promise, has been a voluntary and self-paying one, encouraged, in the first place, by the wool-growing facilities of the country, and afterwards by the discovery of gold, but carried on wholly by a healthy and profitable commerce. Of the same description has been the emigration to California. Convicts were formerly sent to Maryland and Virginia at the public cost, but it has been the self-paying emigration of Europe that has made us what we are. In determining, then, the comparative merits of Liberia and Central America as localities for the colonization of free people of color, future probabilities, looking to commerce, become of primary importance, and here, it must at once be admitted, that the preponderance is altogether in favor of Liberia, as one of the portals of the vast continent which thirsts for the products of civilization as the sands thirst for the dew. We have had the commerce of Central America for years, and it is utterly insignificant. Nor can any number of colonies of free blacks that may be planted there, or any nation that may grow out of them, give to it the importance which the commerce of Africa has for years past enjoyed, both in Europe and America. It is only necessary to read the travels of recent African explorers to appreciate the present value, and be satisfied of the growing demand of the commerce here referred to. Livingstone found cotton goods with the stamps of mills in Massachusetts on the upper waters of the Zambesi, and Barth furnishes, in detail, the data, which shows that nothing is wanted but facility of access to open markets in Africa for all the products of our manufactories. Every year, as some new explorer enters the field, multiplies the evidence in this respect. England has had for some time a line of steamers to the Bight of Benin, whose profits are amply remunerative, and in other ways has been using her best efforts to reach the new markets that Africa contains. France is doing her part for the same purpose, and the commercial statistics of this country show how large has been the increase of the African trade. The late act of Congress recognizing the independence of Liberia, and thus freeing our trade from an injurious discriminating duty, will produce a still further increase. The following statistics, prepared by William Coppinger, Esq., the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, and to be found in the last report of the Society at Washington, afford some idea of the rapidity of the growth of African trade: "In 1853 the export of palm oil from Lagos was 160 tons; in 1857 the declared value of this, with a few other articles, was £1,062,806. From Abbeokuta, interior a short distance from Lagos, the increase of raw cotton has been enormous. In 1852, 9 bags, or 1,810 pounds were exported; in 1858, 1,819 bags, or 220,000 pounds; and in 1857, 3,447 bags, or 416,341 pounds. From the Island of Sherbro, near the northern confines of Liberia, a cotton trade has sprung up in six years to the value of £61,000 for the last twelve months reported. Sixty thousand tons of palm oil are esti mated as sent annually from the western coast of Africa, and the quantity To Gambia, Sierra Leone, and the Gold 1858. 1859. 1860. £95,404 £148,538 £139,643 471,619 £432,343 £493,248 £611,262 To other parts of West Coast of Africa...... 336,939 Total........ "This table shows an increase of nearly forty per cent. in quantity and value, compared with 1859, and about fifteen per cent. in quantity and forty per cent. in value over 1858." In fine, commerce seems to have kept pace with those exigencies which make colonization a necessity, and may be safely relied upon as the all-sufficient means of taking to Africa the free blacks of the United States, in the same way that it has been bringing to America the redundant population of the Old World. A penal settlement may be maintained at the cost of Government, as Botany Bay was by England; a colony may be founded, and for a season be kept up by voluntary contributions of benevolent individuals, as Liberia has been by the American Colonization Society; but the emigration which is to transplant a people from one continent to another, must be a voluntary, self-paying emigration, brought about by the convictions of interest, depending, as already said, upon the attractions of the new home or the repulsions of the old one, or both combined. Such will be the emigration of the free colored people from the United States; and whether it shall take place to Africa or to Chiriqui, in Central America, must depend upon the commercial interests that will be developed in the ordinary course of events in a vast continent or in the petty State to which the attention of those most interested is now invoked. This is a question which the free people of color must determine for themselves. They have the intelligence to do so. The President proposes to afford them the opportunity. It is hoped they may avail themselves of it. They have tried Hayti, and Trinidad, and Demarara. Let them now make trial of Chiriqui. The argument here suggested, however satisfactory to many, ought not to stand against a successful experiment in Central America; and colonizationists would only show their willingness to sacrifice the interest of the free blacks to mere pride of opinion were they to oppose its being made. Very truly and most respectfully, yours, JNO. H. B. LATROBE, President American Colonization SocietyBALTIMORE, September 5, 1862. [From the Christian Mirror.] THE NEW NATIONALITY. NUMBER I. Congress admitted at its late session a new member into the family of nations with which this Government has diplomatic relations. It is Liberia―land of the free-situated on the west coast of Africa, between ten degrees on each side of the equator; extending about six hundred miles along the shore, and from fifty to one hundred miles into the interior, comprising about thirty thousand square miles of territory, with more than three hundred thousand inhabitants, of which some fifteen thousand are emigrants, and their descendants, from the United States. 46 It is wholly a country of colored people. No person can be a citizen who does not admit that African blood runs in his veins. Its present Chief Magistrate, Stephen Allen Benson, is a man of pure Negro extraction-a native of Maryland in this country, carried by his parents, when a child of six years, in 1822, to that colony, which was then forming the nucleus of Liberia. Its Government resembles our own. It has a "Declaration of Independence," a Constitution," a Legislature, composed of a Senate and House of Representatives elected by the people, a Supreme and other courts of justice, a small navy, and a well-trained militia. The President and Vice President must be thirty-five years of age, and have property to the amount of $600: and their term of office is two years. The members of the House are elected for two years, and of the Senate for four years. Universal freedom prevails under its jurisdiction. The English is the national language. The tastes, and customs, and sympathies of the people are eminently American. It has able men in the professions, industrious men in the field, skillful men in the shop, shrewd men in the market. It has good citizens, with more than fifty Christian churches, and three thousand communicants, and as many Sabbath school children. It has schools and seminaries, and a college with competent instructors. The press also is there, with its regular issues of the newspaper and other publications. Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, so named after President Monroe of this country, a distinguished friend of the settlement, is beautifully situated on Cape Mesurado, about seventy-five feet above the level of the sea, in 6° 19′ north latitude and 11° west longitude. Its population is about three thousand five hundred. Its position is peculiarly favorable for commerce with the interior, by means of the St. Paul's, the Junk, and other navigable rivers. The college edifice lately erected there, has a commanding site, on a twenty acre field for play grounds-granted by the Government. It was built by the beneficence of good people in Boston, Massachusetts, and vicinity. Four thousand acres of land is donated to this institution by the Liberian Legislature. Ex-President Roberts (a Methodist).is President; Rev. Alexander Crummell (an Episcopalian) and Rev. E. H. Blyden (a Presbyterian) are Professors. It is already supplied with a respectable library and geological cabinet, and is soon to receive pupils. The entire faculty are just now on a visit to this country. The buildings, streets, manners, and customs of the people of Monrovia are very much like those of places similarly situated in this country. The inhabitants are as industrious, moral, religious, and happy, as those of any like place in the world. The Monrovians are great Sabbatarians. Says Gerard Ralston, of London: "They go constantly to church; and so closely do they respect the Sabbath, that when the Prince de Joinville, the captain of the French frigate Belle Polee, came into their port on Sunday, and offered to salute their flag, it was declined because of their unwillingness to have the Sabbath desecrated. So, also, when Captain Eden, of one of her majesty's ships, was ordered to call at Monrovia to salute the flag, provided it would be returned, when he was informed that it could not be done on that day, being Sunday, but it would be done on the following day, (Monday.) Captain Eden, being pressed for time, saluted on Sunday, with the understanding that the salute would be returned to the first British cruiser that came into port." The climate of Liberia is warm, but equable, and tempered by frequent rains and daily sea-breezes. The year has two seasons-the wet, beginning about the middle of May, and the dry, commencing at the middle of November. The average temperature of the former being about seventy-five degrees, and of the latter about eighty degrees, so that the heat is never so great there as it is at times in this country. This is a salubrious clime to the man of color, but noxious to the whites. "Many attempts," says Gerard Ralston, "have been made by different nations-Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, Danes, and Swedes-to establish settlements of white colonies on various intertropical portions of the African coast, and all have failed from the same cause- -the deadly nature of the climate. The average length of the life of the white man there is said to be less than four years, while the colored immigrant will live as long as others of his race in America.* All immigrants, however, have to pass through a brief acclimating fever, in which death now rarely occurs. It is remarkable that foreigners must spend the night on board ship, while they may be on land from eight o'clock, A. M., to eight o'clock, P. M., with safety from the miasma. The two largest rivers within the present limits of Liberia are the Cavally, in the southeast, navigable to vessels of fifteen feet draft for eighty miles, and the St. Paul's, in the northwest, navigable for sixteen miles to ships of twelve feet draft, and extending into the country three hundred miles, through a fertile and beautiful region. Numerous small streams, some of which are half a mile wide fifty miles from the ocean, are navigable for small boats various distances. *We view these statements as in some degree erroneous-ED. Excellent fish abound in all these streams. The soil yields a rapid and abundant reward, being exceedingly fertile and prolific for almost every kind of tropical fruit. Half a million of coffee trees are under cultivation, and considerable quantities of this article are exported to Europe and this country. A single individual raised last year sixty thousand pounds of sugar. Cotton, being also indigenous to the soil, is beginning to be extensively cultivated, and a large trade in this staple, it is expected, will soon be opened with the nations in the interior, who raise and manufacture into cloths annually, as estimated by Mr. Crummell, not less than one million of pounds. Palm oil and the palm nut are prominent articles of export, the annual traffic of which on the west African coast is valued at more than ten millions of dollars. Forty vessels are owned and manned by the Liberians, and their commerce with this and other countries is already greater than that of New York for the first half century of its existence. From recent official tables, it appears that of sixty countries with which the United States have established commercial relations, Liberia stands number eighteen in the scale of importance, the value of our annual trade with her being-exports $2,062,723, imports $1,755,916. The facilities of Liberia for expansion into the interior are abundant. Explorations have been made eastward from Monrovia to the distance of some three hundred miles, which bring to light the most tempting inducements to the formation of new settlements and the introduction of the arts of civilized life. The native tribes are favorably disposed toward the Republic-and in their physical, mental, moral, and social condition, they promise much more of good than many of the coast tribes. Vast resources of wealth, agricultural, mineral, and industrial, have been found in these "regions beyond," and their capabilities are such that all the colored population of the globe could not exhaust them for ages. A wide and most inviting field is here open for all the people of color in this country, and for the most enterprising commercial, philanthropic, and Christian labors. It is fit that the Republic which has opened the door to this interior region should be recognized by our Government. We rejoice that this act of justice and policy is at last done. All honor to the noble men, dead and living, of every part of our country, who have labored for this auspicious result. NUMBER II. In addition to what we said last week, we would add further-The origin of Liberia is worthy of notice. It is purely American, philanthropic, and Christian. As early as 1770, before the American revolution, the scheme of civilizing and christianizing the natives of Africa by means of her returning children from this country, was broached by Rev. Samuel Hopkins of Newport, Rhode Island, and other good men in different parts of the country. In 1816 it assumed organic form at Washington, being directly stimulated at that period by the palpable necessity of making some better provision for |