had yet known.  He had the cooeperation of the Maryland governor, Russwurm, in such a matter as that of uniform customs duties; and he visited the United States, where he made a very good impression.  He soon understood that he had to reckon primarily with the English and the French.  England had indeed assumed an attitude of opposition to the slave-trade; but her traders did not scruple to sell rum to slave dealers, and especially were they interested in the palm oil of Liberia.  When the Commonwealth sought to impose customs duties, England took the position that as Liberia was not an independent government, she had no right to do so; and the English attitude had some show of strength from the fact that the American Colonization Society, an outside organization, had a veto power over whatever Liberia might do.  When in 1845 the Liberian Government seized the Little Ben, an English trading vessel whose captain acted in defiance of the revenue laws, the British in turn seized the John Seyes, belonging to a Liberian named Benson, and sold the vessel for L8000.  Liberia appealed to the United States; but the Oregon boundary question as well as slavery had given the American Government problems enough at home; and the Secretary of State, Edward Everett, finally replied to Lord Aberdeen (1845) that America was not “presuming to settle differences arising between Liberian and British subjects, the Liberians being responsible for their own acts.”  The Colonization Society, powerless to act except through its own government, in January, 1846, resolved that “the time had arrived when it was expedient for the people of the Commonwealth of Liberia to take into their own hands the whole work of self-government including the management of all their foreign relations.”  Forced to act for herself Liberia called a constitutional convention and on July 26, 1847, issued a Declaration of Independence and adopted the Constitution of the Liberian Republic.  In October, Joseph Jenkin Roberts, Governor of the Commonwealth, was elected the first President of the Republic.

It may well be questioned if by 1847 Liberia had developed sufficiently internally to be able to assume the duties and responsibilities of an independent power.  There were at the time not more than 4,500 civilized people of American origin in the country; these were largely illiterate and scattered along a coastline more than three hundred miles in length.  It is not to be supposed, however, that this consummation had been attained without much yearning and heart-beat and high spiritual fervor.  There was something pathetic in the effort of this small company, most of whose members had never seen Africa but for the sake of their race had made their way back to the fatherland.  The new seal of the Republic bore the motto:  THE LOVE OF LIBERTY BROUGHT US HERE.  The flag, modeled on that of the United States, had six red and five white stripes for the eleven signers of the Declaration of Independence, and in the upper corner next to the staff a lone white star in a field of blue.  The Declaration itself said in part: