experience in government; the Negroes, only recently out of bondage, had been deprived of any opportunity for improvement whatsoever.  Not only, however, did they have to contend against native tribes and labor to improve their own shortcomings; on every hand they had to meet the designs of nations supposedly more enlightened and Christian.  On the coast Spanish traders defied international law; on one side the English, and on the other the French, from the beginning showed a tendency toward arrogance and encroachment.  To crown the difficulty, the American Government, under whose auspices the colony had largely been founded, became more and more halfhearted in its efforts for protection and at length abandoned the enterprise altogether.  It did not cease, however, to regard the colony as the dumping-ground of its own troubles, and whenever a vessel with slaves from the Congo was captured on the high seas, it did not hesitate to take these people to the Liberian coast and leave them there, nearly dead though they might be from exposure or cramping.  It is well for one to remember such facts as these before he is quick to belittle or criticize.  To the credit of the “Congo men” be it said that from the first they labored to make themselves a quiet and industrious element in the body politic.

The early administrations of President Roberts (four terms, 1848-1855) were mainly devoted to the quelling of the native tribes that continued to give trouble and to the cultivating of friendly relations with foreign powers.  Soon after his inauguration Roberts made a visit to England, the power from which there was most to fear; and on this occasion as on several others England varied her arrogance with a rather excessive friendliness toward the little republic.  She presented to Roberts the Lark, a ship with four guns, and sent the President home on a war-vessel.  Some years afteryards, when the Lark was out of repair, England sent instead a schooner, the Quail.  Roberts made a second visit to England in 1852 to adjust disputes with traders on the western boundary.  He also visited France, and Louis Napoleon, not to be outdone by England, presented to him a vessel, the Hirondelle, and also guns and uniforms for his soldiers.  In general the administrations of Roberts (we might better say his first series of administrations, for he was later to be called again to office) made a period of constructive statesmanship and solid development, and not a little of the respect that the young republic won was due to the personal influence of its first president.  Roberts, however, happened to be very fair, and generally successful though his administrations were, the desire on the part of the people that the highest office in the country be held by a black man seems to have been a determining factor in the choice of his successor.  There was an interesting campaign toward the close of his last term.  “There were about this time two political parties in the country—­the old Republicans and the ‘True Liberians,’ a party which had been formed in opposition to Roberts’s foreign policies.  But during the canvass the platform of this new party lost ground; the result was in favor of the Republican candidate."[1]