L - NOTICE OF AFRICAN COMMERCE

Summary

Mr. Venn's younger son and namesake rendered his father much assistance in the promotion of the material development of Africa, and has furnished the following notice of African commerce:

Mr. Venn early perceived that in Africa trade must go along with Christianity. This fact had been recognised long before in the earliest days of the mission to Sierra Leone, but after the failure of those early efforts the promotion of African trade had not been kept prominently in view by the secretaries of the Society. The necessity for this union of trade with religion has never existed in any other mission except in that of Metlahkatlah, on the shores of the North Pacific; and Mr. Venn would have been the last man to promote it if he had thought it any hindrance to the proper work of missions.

In West Africa he encouraged trade for two reasons—first as the chief means for the destruction of the slave trade, and secondly as promoting the independence of the native Christian Church.

Whilst the work of the Church Missionary Society was confined to the colony of Sierra Leone the missionaries experienced but little hindrance from the slave-trade. The prisoners released from captured slave-ships were brought to Sierra Leone, and there handed over to the missionaries; but the slavers themselves naturally avoided the colony.