PREFACE. THE conductors of the Repository have one great object in view, the diffusion of information in regard to the plans and operations of the Ame rican Colonization Society. Matters of fact will therefore constitute the great body of its reading. We do not theorise; we do not speculate; we tread the firm and solid ground of experience we record the history of the rise, progress and achivements of the infant Republic of Liberia; and we challenge the investigation of the sceptical and the scrutiny of the doubting, to say if these things are not so. It were easy to fill our pages with the wild dreams of a brilliant imagination to speculate and philosophize: it were easy to polish the weapons of our warfare and hang them in flowery wreaths and garlands richly dipped in all the colors of the rainbow: but we entertain the most serious doubts of the practical value which would result from such a style of doing business. We might look simply to the literary character of our Journal-and continually inquire how will this strike the delicately strung nerves of our most fastidious readers. We might be very solicitous lest our literary reputation should suffer by dealing continually in sober, common-sensical matters of fact. But if the cause of Colonization should suffer mean while, we know nothow we could answer for it to our own consciences or to an enlightened and benevolent public. This great enterprise is of far more value than any private taste or feeling of our own and it is vastly more important to promote its welfare and advance its interests than it is to build up for ourselves the most splendid reputation for fine writing and unexceptionable literary taste. If we are not entirely deceived then, the reader of this volume of the Repository will every where find that our aim has been to awaken and concentrate all the liveliest and best feelings of our nature on the great necessities and the valuable achivements of Colonization. It contains not merely the ephemeral publications of a day: facts and things for the historian adorn its pages. It may be read with profit years hence. And when the shades of Africa's long night shall have vanished away and the sun of her redemption shall be riding in the full glory of his noon-day splendors, these pages shall not be found void of interest to the philanthropist and the Christian. |