market in the world. We suffer our commerce to be burdened with a discriminating duty of twelve per cent. on all goods imported into Liberia from this country, from which the recognition of her Government would exempt us; and the consequence is, that the trade from the United States, which was formerly a direct one, is now carried on in English vessels, or in American vessels sailing from British ports. France is seeking the interior of Africa up the Senegal, and from the Mediterranean, England is making her way to it from Sierra Leone, and Cape Coast Castle, and Lagos, and up the Zambesi, while the United States, with the peculiar facilities, which its relations to Liberia naturally afford, of accomplishing a commercial destiny in this connexion, such as France or England can never win, is neglecting its opportunities until they may be lost to it forever.

That the trade here referred to may be appreciated as it should be, it may be stated, that while, in 1853, the export of palm oil from Lagos was but one hundred and sixty tons, its declared worth in 1857 was $5,314,000. In 1852 the whole export of cotton from Abeokuta was nine bags, weighing about eighteen hundred pounds in all. In 1859 it was 416,341 lbs. The quantity of palm oil sent annually from the western coast of Africa is at least sixty thousand tons, exceeding in value the product of a whale oil season. The quantity that reached Great Britain alone, in 1860, was 40,216 tons, while the exports of British goods to the West Coast amounted, for the first six months of the same year, to $3,656,310, being a gain of forty per cent. on the export of 1858. The present extent of this trade is not so remarkable as its rapid increase, and the efforts which are making by European nations to encourage and obtain it.

But the pecuniary loss attending the destruction of our commercial intercourse with Africa, through Liberia, will not be the only result to be deplored should our present policy be persisted in.Commerce has been the great agent of colonization from the days of the Phenicians down to the last arrival from Germany and Ireland in the harbor of New York. It is the only agent upon which reliance can be placed to accomplish the voluntary self-paying emigration to Africa, which will one day equal the emigration from Europe to America. With the necessity for such an emigration becoming daily more and more apparent, it is, unquestionably, as unwise as it is unstatesmanlike not to encourage, in every possible way, the commerce upon which, take place when it will, it must be dependant. Foster commerce with Liberia, and colonization will pay its own way, and our free colored population will pass from amongst us, voluntarily and quietly, in the natural order of events. Destroy this commerce-let its growth be hampered with restrictions and Liberia must become a dependency of England, and we will have thrown into the hands of a rival all the advantages which Liberia yearns to accord to that land which, whatever the policy of the Government, is still the mother country of her people.

Nor are the means of transportation which commerce affords alone to be regarded in this connexion. Commerce assists in preparing for the reception of the immigrants, as it increases the population, multiplies the resources, and enhances the wealth of the cities where they land. The ship loads that now disappear in New York, as they are absorbed in the population that commerce has accumulated there, would have overwhelmed the village of New Amsterdam at any time within the first twenty years after its establishment on the island of Manhattan. There is a law that regulates immigration according to the capacity of the particular locality, and which will operate in the colonization of Africa, as it has done in all the colonizations that have preceded it. As has been shown, in the case of the recaptives recently landed in Liberia, this capacity of the Republic is now upwards of four thousand per annum, even where the immigrants are mere barbarians. But there is no doubt that a still greater number could have been received had they been of the character sent from the United States, provided with more or less means, and acquainted with the occupations and having the habits of civilization. Indeed, it may be assumed, that Liberia is now prepared to receive any number of emigrants which, under any circumstances, may be landed there, until the removal of our free colored population shall be gradually and satisfactorily accomplished. African colonization is destiny. The colonization of America was slower in the beginning, and yet what a people we have become! The colonization of California was more rapid, because the gold there was more attractive to the adventurous of the United States than the religious persecutions of the Old World were repulsive to the Pilgrim Fathers. The colonization of Africa will be more certain than either was in the first instance; because, while persecution might have ceased in Europe, and the gold become exhausted in California, the law of races and the increase of population are inflexible and uncontrollable, and must be enduring in their operation, and absolutely certain in their results.

In whatever aspect, then, recognition presents itself, it is commended to our favorable consideration. It obviates a discrimination which hampers commerce; it encourages kind feeling, which no nation, however great, is the worse for, from any other nation, however small; it provides for exigencies that are daily becoming more momentous: but, above all, and beyond all, it is an act just in itself, which the United States should no longer withhold from a people which exists through its philanthropy, is an illustration of its wisdom, and must be an agent in the fulfilment of the purposes of its God.

Nor, while we thus plead the cause of Liberia, is she speechless in her own behalf. It is no rock-bound coast, ramparted with ice, and under a howling sky, that receives the emigrant from America. The rich and luxuriant vegetation of the tropics comes down to the very borders of the sea; and although here, as elsewhere upon earth, comfort and competence are to be won by toil alone, yet a climate congenial to the nature of the individual gives to industry its reward through all the seasons of the rolling year. The colored man is here his own master. The law of races here operates in his favor. It is

his race which is the dominant one; and, dependant as this law is, in this instance, upon climate, and not upon accident, it is his race which must be paramount forever; and from Robertsport, under the shadow of Cape Mount, by Monrovia, where the first settlement was made, by Bassa, where rest the ashes of Buchanan, by Sinou, and Cape Palmas, and Cavalla, to the Rio Pedro, and from the coast line indefinitely towards the interior, are homes prepared for those whom circumstances, accumulating with the rapidity of the increase of an avalanche, will soon, measuring the time by the magnitude of the result, deprive of all freedom of choice, and leave no alternative but removal.

Members of the American Colonization Society: The chair, at the three anniversary meetings immediately preceding the installation of the present incumbent, was successively occupied by Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Charles Fenton Mercer. The West, the North, and the South-Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Virginia-were repre ented by them. The wonderous orator, the great expounder of the Constitution, the accomplished statesman and philanthropist, were united in the support and advocacy of our cause. The inspiration of their presence is still around us. Were we permitted to see them in dim perspectives of the spirit world-could another Beatrice, to another Dante, point out their majestic shadows, as they listened to "the roll of the red artillery" and the tramp of the close columns of armed men which blasted the earth they had left green with the velvet garb of peace, would not Clay be seen, with impatient gesture, head thrown back, and foot advanced, and hand extended, filling the Senate house with the thunder of his voice? Webster, statuesque, with folded arms, darting, from beneath his massive brow, gleams of living fire, as he invoked a world's vengeance on the violators of the Constitution? And Mercer, calm and sorrowful, gazing from one to the other, as he prayed, with clasped palms, that eloquence and wisdom so combined might save his country? And would we not then seek counsel, if we might, from these bold, true patriots and statesmen, as to our own course in the sad emergency of the times.-But the dream of the poet is beyond our realization, and we can only recall to memory what has passed away forever-walking, here on earth, by the light which experience has afforded us, turning neither to the right hand nor the left from the principles which have guided us from the beginning, and finding, in the faith of Finley, that "he knew the scheme was from God," our warrant and our strength, in toiling through strife, as we have toiled in peace, to urge onward to a glorious end the grand cause of African Colonization.

The Rev. Dr. CYRUS MASON, of New York, then addressed the meeting, on our duty to the tropical races, and offered a resolution, which, as amended by the Rev. Dr. TRACY, is as follows:

Resolved, That the colonization of tropical Africa, by persons of African descent already civilized, opens a new and cheering prospect for the general welfare of the different races of men.

Address of Rev. Dr. Cyrus Mason.

Benevolence, like business, must submit its plans to the unbending laws of nature, and learn from physical science how to direct its operations; but pure benevolence turns naturally toward the light, and, by a divine ingenuity, is apt to conform its labors to these physical laws.

The mixed motives which suggested the Liberian Colony merged on the fact that a great physical law had been violated in transferring the natives of tropical Africa to our wintry climate, and that the error was to be corrected by sending them back. At an early day they began to be removed southward on this continent, but benevolence and social justice required their return to the land of their fathers.

Working under this law, Benevolence adapted to this colonization the favoring incidents, which have conspired to remove doubts, answer objections, and silence the clamors of those violators of nature who sought to absorb this tropical race by intermarriage with our own, and colonization of these people somewhere in tropical regions has become a national policy, while the most thoughtful and experienced find reasons of the highest order, reaching to the permanent welfare of all races of men, in favor of the Colony of Liberia.

While navigators crept along the shores of Europe each nation found the supply of its wants and the means of its increase only within its neighborhood; but when the ships of Portugal returned from India, and the ships of Spain from the Mexican Gulf, loaded with the rich products of the tropics, the nations of Europe began a new career of civilization, and looked to the interchange of conveniences and luxuries over the whole face of the earth. This career was restrained by their limited means of navigation, and still more by the indolence of the people of the tropics, and their unwillingness to prepare large supplies of the products of their soils and mines for the European market; but ships were rapidly multiplied, and large bodies of laborers and mechanics were carried to equatorial regions. But these colonists were subdued by the climate and demoralized and swept away by the habits of the barbarians; and the adventurers came to the natural and fixed conclusion that tropical products must be obtained by the labor of the equatorial races.

Following this conclusion, the adventurers tried various motives to induce regular and effective industry among the natives, and, failing in this, they resorted to enforcement. The slender race of Asiatics, which had entered America on the western side, sunk and perished under the toil exacted by their masters; and the hopes of Europe concerning the wealth of the New World were checked a second time.

Observation has shown that men from the equator become hardy by removing a few degrees farther to the north. Acting on this idea, the people of Guinea were brought to the borders of the Gulf of Mexico. They were found equal to the labor, and more effective on the northern than on the southern border. Now the abundance of

the tropics is poured into Europe, what had been the delicacies of the few-the sugar and its products, the coffee and the rice, the tobacco and the cotton,-became common to the whole people. The English colonies rose rapidly in the vicinity of this new labor. The Africans continued to be moved northward, and to enrich their masters; and in the newness of the country they were pushed so far into our winter climate that their labor soon became unprofitable.

The opening of the tropics and the mines, followed by the consequent inventions, has made the civilized world what it is in population and wealth. England employs on one tropical plant more people than England contained in the days of Elizabeth. The natives of the tropics do all the work of their own climate; they will continue to do it. Can they do it of choice? Can they do it cheerfully and hopefully? Can they make an even bargain for the fruits of their labor? Can they civilize?

The presence of the Caucasian race in controling numbers among equatorial races has not profited those races, and has been equally degrading to our race. Can tropical products be had in abundance without the controling presence of our race? This is the great question for solution; and in view of this question I have framed the resolution, "that the colonization of tropical Africa by Africans previously civilized in this country opens a new and cheering prospect for the general welfare of the different races of men."

It is a

The prospect is new; it is new in several of its features. new fact that a body of tropical Africans, enjoying letters and arts, have established and administered a civil government, and maintained it by the fair and effectual administration of written laws and courts of record during a course of years without the controling presence of men of our race. During thirty years past they have been steadily gaining civil strength and increasing in numbers, and during all that time they have required less and less of the directing care and control of this Society. They have made steady and hopeful progress in producing for the markets of the world such articles as we expect from tropical regions. They have scared away from six hundred miles of coast the malignant little gods who have always been the scourge of equatorial Africa. They have snatched from these gods many thousands of the natives, and brought them to the knowledge of the God of the universe, and led them to Christian worship. They have couquered a pestilent climate by clearing and draining their lands. They have built goodly houses and dwelt in them. They offer a home and protection to the converts brought by white missionaries from the pagan tribes behind them. Their schools produce engineers competent to project internal improvements, and mechanics able to execute them. Their merchants are respected in the civilized world. In all these matters they are steadily advancing, while the interference of our race in their affairs is not felt. It is so,

1s not this a new state of things in equatorial Africa? because these people were previously civilized in this country, and prepared to do what they are continuing without the presence of our race. They are colonists, with the means and motives for sending to