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ing, mal-treated worse than a brute, &c. &c. &c. is more desirable than to be a free man, able to acquire wealth, unrestricted in his movements, from whom none may wrest his wife or children, and who can find redress for any outrage upon his person or property!

'Policy, and even humanity,' cries another, forbid the progress of manumission'! Indeed! But is it right to hold our fellow creatures as chattels, and to perpetuate their ignorance and servitude? O no! this is wrong, but it would be a greater wrong to emancipate them! Is this folly or villany? To oppress our brother is wrong, but to cease from oppressing him would not be right!

'I would be a slaveholder to-day without scruple,' says another advocate.

'Many owners of slaves,' another declares, hold them in strict accordance with the principles of humanity and justice'!!! Yes, to deprive men of their inalienable rights is to do unto them as we would have them do unto us!

Finally, another boldly declares that the slaves are treated too indulgently!-The laws which regard them as beasts, but punish them for the commission of crime as severely as if they possessed the knowledge of angels, he must suppose are too lenient. Their allowance of corn is too liberal; they ought not to wear any raiment; to sleep in their wretched huts is calculated to make them effeminate—the open field is a more suitable place for cattle; no religious instruction should be granted even orally to them! The slaves, as a body, too kindly treated! -The Lord have compassion upon any of their number who shall come under the control of him who holds this opinion!

Sentiments, like these, act upon the consciences of slave owners like opiates upon the body, lulling them into a slumber as profound and fatal as death. It were almost as hopeless a task to attempt to arouse, alarm and animate them, so long as they repose under the stupefying effects of this poison, as to raise the dead. This must not be. Slaveholders are the enemies of God and man; their garments are red with the blood of souls; their guilt is aggravated beyond the power of language to describe; and they must be made to see and realise their

awful condition. Truth must send its arrows into their consciences, and Terror rouse them to exertion, and Conviction bring them upon their knees, and Repentance propitiate the anger of Heaven, or they perish by the sword. The slaves must be free; and He who is no respecter of person is now holding out to us this alternative-either to wait until they burst their chains and wade through a river of blood to freedom, or to liberate them willingly ourselves. Can we hesitate in our choice? Be this our only reply to those who apologise for the oppressors, and fix the standard of policy higher than that of duty: Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Wo unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!'

SECTION III.

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY RECOGNISES SLAVES AS PROPERTY.

THE heresies of this combination are flagrant and numerous. A larger volume than this is needed to define and illustrate them all. Much important evidence, and many pertinent reflections, I am compelled to suppress.

My next allegation against it is, that it recognises slaves as property. This recognition is not merely technical, or strictly confined to a statutable interpretation. I presume the advocates of the Society will attempt to evade this point, by saying that it never meant to concede the moral right of the masters to possess human beings; but the evidence against them is full and explicit. The Society, if language mean any thing, does unequivocally acknowledge property in slaves to be as legitimate and sacred as any other property, of which to deprive the owners either by force or by legislation, without making restitution, would be unjust and tyrannical. Here is the proof:

It interferes in no wise with the rights of property.' * * It is utterly opposed to any measures which might infringe upon the rights of property.' * * 'We hold their slaves as we hold their other property, SACRED.' [African Repository, vol. i. pp. 39, 225, 283.]

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Does this Society wish to meddle with our slaves as our rightful property? I answer no, I think not.’ The Society cannot be justly charged with aiming to disturb the rights of property or the peace of society.' ** 'It seeks to affect no man's property.' * To found in Africa, an empire of christians and republicans; to reconduct the blacks to their native land, without disturbing the order of society, the laws of property, or the rights of individuals,' &c.—[African Repository, vol. ii. pp. 13, 58, 334, 375

They are also convinced, that the Society have conducted their operations with so much prudence, as to give no cause of alarm to the holders of slaves, for the security of this property.'-[African Repository, volume iii. p. 341.]

The rights of masters are to remain sacred in the eyes of the Society.’—[African Repository, vol. iv. p. 274.]

*

The Society has never interfered, and has no disposition to interfere with the rights of private property." * The alarm for the rights of property appears to have subsided, and the Society is no longer charged with any sinister or insidious design. It has constantly disclaimed any intention of disturbing the rights of others; and its conduct entitles its declaration to credit.' ** The American Colonization Society has, at all times, solemnly disavowed any purpose of interference with the institutions or rights of our Southern communities.' 'Our friends, who are cursed with this greatest of human evils (slavery) deserve our kindest attention and consideration. Their property and safety are both involved.'-[African Repository, vol. v. pp. 215, 241, 307, 334.]

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It has constantly disclaimed all intention whatever of interfering, in the smallest degree, with the rights of property.' * The Society, from considerations like these, whilst it disclaims the remotest idea of ever disturbing the right of property in slaves,' &c. It is not the object of this Society to liberate slaves, or touch the rights of property.' ** Honorable instances might be adduced of disinterested benevolence on the part of the owners of slaves, and of their sacrificing property to a large amount, in their enfranchisement and restoration to the land of their ancestors.' The American Society

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has disclaimed from the first moment of its institution, all intention of interfering with rights of property." * 'The federal government has no control over this subject it concerns rights of property secured by the federal compact, upon which our civil liberties mainly depend; it is a part of the same collection of political rights; and any invasion of it would impair the tenure by which every other is held.' * It is equally plain and undeniable, that the Society in the prosecution of this work, has never interfered or evinced even a disposition to interfere in any way with the rights of proprietors of slaves.'

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The slaveholder, so far from having just cause to complain of the Colonization Society, has reason to congratulate himself, that in this Institution a channel is opened up, in which the public feeling and public action can flow on, without doing violence to his rights.'—[African Repository, vol. vi. pp. 13, 69, 81, 153, 165, 169, 205, 363,]

'It was proper again and again to repeat, that it was far from the intention of the Society to affect, in any manner, the tenure by which a certain species of property is held. He was himself a slaveholder; and he considered that kind of property as inviolable as any other in the country.'—[Speech of Henry Clay.-First Annual Report.]

'Your committee would not thus favorably regard the prayer of the memorialists, if it sought to impair, in the slightest degree, the rights of private property.'-[Report of the committee of the House of Representatives of the United States, on the memorial of the President and Board of Managers of the Colonization Society.-Second Annual Report.]

The Society has at all times recognised the constitutional and LEGITIMATE existence of slavery.'-[Tenth Annual Report.]

The Society protests that it has no designs on the rights of the master in the slave or the property in his slave, which the laws guarantee to him.'—[Fourteenth Annual Report.]

Something he must yet be allowed to say, as regarded the object the Society was set up to accomplish. This object, if he understood it aright, involved no intrusion on property, NOR EVEN UPON PREJUDICE.'-[Fifteenth Annual Report.]

'To the slaveholder, who had charged upon them the wicked design of interfering with the RIGHTS OF PROPERTY under the specious pretext of removing a vicious and dangerous free population, they address themselves in a tone of conciliation and sympathy. We know your rights, say they, and we respect them.' * * C Equally absurd and false is the objection, that this Society seeks indirectly to disturb the rights of property, and to interfere with the well established relation subsisting between master and slave.'-[African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 100, 228.]

"I repeat, that though not a slaveholder, yet I think that every man ought to be protected in his property, and as the laws of our country have decreed that negroes are property, every person that holds a slave, according to these laws, ought to be protected.'-[ A new and interesting View of Slavery.' By Humanitas, a colonization advocate. Baltimore, 1820.]

'We are made to disregard this description of property, and to touch without reserve the rights of our neighbors.'-[Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the New-Jersey Colonization Society.]

Thus the American Colonization Society shamelessly surrenders the claims of justice, and leaves the enemies of oppression weaponless! Hence it rejects the proposition, that man cannot hold property in man; and we are called upon to prove that which is self-evident. No accidental differences of condition or complexion-no vicissitudes of fortune-no reprisal or purchase or inheritance, can justly make one individual the slave of another. When God created man, he gave him dominion over the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field; but not over his fellow man. 'All men are born free and equal,' and are 'made of one blood.' Shall we look to wealth as giving one a title to the labor and freedom of another? Wealth is the creature of circumstances, and not an arbitrary law of nature. It takes to itself wings, and flies away; and he who is an opulent tyrant to

day, may on this principle be an impoverished slave to-morrow. Does physical strength make valid this claim? This, too, is evanescent sickness and age would ultimately degrade the most muscular tyrants to servitude; and mankind would be composed of but two parties-the strong and the weak. Can high birth annul the rights of the lower classes? There is no difference at their birth, between the children of the beggar and those of the king. We brought nothing into this world,' says an inspired apostle, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.'

Man is created a rational being; and therefore he is a subject of moral government, and accountable. Being rational and accountable, he is bound to improve his mind and intellect. With this design, his Creator has outstretched the heavens, and set the sun in his course, and hung out the burning jewels of the sky, and spread abroad the green earth, and poured out the seas, that he might steadily progress in knowledge.

The slaves are men; they were born, then, as free as their masters; they cannot be property; and he who denies them an opportunity to improve their faculties, comes into collision with Jehovah, and incurs a fearful responsibility. But we know that they are not treated like rational beings, and that oppression almost entirely obliterates their sense of moral obligation to God or man.

I fully coincide in opinion with the authoress of a work entitled, IMMEDIATE, NOT GRADUAL ABOLITION,' that the holder of a slave, whether he obtained him by purchase or by inheritance, is as guilty as the original thief.* The wretch who stole him could by no possible means acquire or transmit the right to make a slave of him, or to keep him in slavery. He has a right to his liberty-through whatever number of transfers the usurpation of it may have passed, the right is undiminished.

*The owners of slaves are licensed robbers, and not the just proprietors of what they claim freeing them is not depriving them of property, but restoring it to the right owner; it is suffering the unlawful captive to escape. It is not wronging the master, but doing justice to the slave, restoring him to himself. Emancipation would only take away property that is its own property, and not ours; property that has the same right to possess us, as we have to possess it; property that has the same right to convert our children into dogs and calves and colts, as we have to convert theirs into these beasts; property that may transfer our children to strangers, by the same right that we transfer theirs.Rice.