POSTSCRIPT IN MONROVIA ^

They are the only form of investment Liberia
provides for though prospectuses have been {
for the Bank of Liberia Ltd., with a capital of
1,000,000 dollars divided into 200,000 shares, nobody
has subscribed; as early as 1923 the Legislature
granted the bank the exclusive right of issuing bank-
notes and coins, but Liberia still depends for its
currency on the British. The only Liberian coins in
circulation are heavy copper pennies. So from ex-
President King downwards anyone with any monev
to spare not invested in the Firestone Bank (the
British Bank has left Liberia) puts it into building,
but the buildings are very seldom finished. The
foundation^ and the first storey usually exhaust the
owner's capital, though sometimes years later a few
more stones are added to the follies dotting the rough
slopes near the sea.

It is easy to make fun of this black capital city;
of the Secretary of State who, when a white man
expressed his amazement that he should occupy such
a position at so young an age as thirty-four, replied,
"Pitt was a Prime Minister at thirty"; of a town
where almost every other m&n is a lawyer and every
man a politician. "There is no body of men/'
Thomas Paine wrote, "more jealous of their privileges
than the Commons: because they sell them/* and
one cannot doubt that this motive forms a part of
Liberian patriotism. The native in the interior, if
he comes in close contact with a Government agent,
has every reason to deplore "the mighty calamity of
Government." But there is a pathos about these
stunted settlements along the.coast, the grassy streets,
the follies on the rocky hillside, the pathos of a black