ALL the black people from the United States." Proceedings of New York Col. Soc. 2nd Anniversary.

We have remarked that EXPEDIENCY is unhappily the governing principle of the Society, and to this principle must be attributed the recent talk about select emigrants.

Funds are low, and temperance is popular, and all at once we hear that the colonies in Liberia are to be temperance colonies; and that the emigrants are to be "moral, industrious, and temperate." And so we are to send the good negroes away, and keep the bad at home! And yet, by transporting the few moral, industrious and temperate individuals, that can be selected in a vicious and ignorant population of between two and three millions, we are to abolish slavery!! Surely Colonizationists, by holding such language, pay but a poor compliment to their own candor, or the common sense of the community. The truth is there never has been, and never will be, a selection made.* The two last cargoes sent by the Society, were by the public confession of Mr. Breckenridge "two cargoes of vagabonds." Will it be pretended that all the coercion exerted to induce the blacks to emigrate, operates only on the good; or that it is the drunken and profligate who find favor in the eyes of Colonizationists, and are permitted to remain in peace and quietness at home!

The Society itself has borne abundant testimony to the depravity of the free blacks, and its friends, with scarcely an exception, zealously maintain that the slaves are unfit for freedom; and yet, as we have seen, it is proposed to transport them all to Africa. And now we would ask, on what principle of common sense, on what record of experience, does the Society expect that a population, which in a land of Bibles and churches, is sunk in vice and ignorance, will,

* Since the first edition of this work, a public meeting has been held (17th March) in N. Orleans, preparatory to the departure of some manumitted slaves to Africa. At this meeting, the intended emigrants were arrayed before the audience, and the Agent of the Amer. Col. Soc. informed them that the society was "unalterably determined to send to the Colony none but such as are willing to pledge themselves to total abstinence from ardent spirits." He also announced that one negro had been rejected as an emigrant "on account of his habits of intoxication." A pledge was then read to the negroes, and they were ordered to signify their assent by rising, which they accordingly did. See New-York Journal of Commerce, 1st April, 1835.

This N. Orleans scene will afford no gratification to the friends of temperance; nor will it permanently advance the cause of colonization. In a population universally addicted to intoxica tion, ONE is selected as a public example of the abhorrence of the society to drunkenness, and is shut out from the promised land, not for refusing to take the pledge, but on account of his intemperate habits; while his companions are required to promise total abstinence, under the pe nalty of spending their lives in bondage!!

If the society wishes to promote temperance, instead of extorting pledges from miserable slaves, let them excrcise the power they possess of excluding all intoxicating liquors from their Colony.

when landed on the shores of Africa, and immersed in all the darkness of paganism, become on a sudden, a Christian society, and employed in teaching thousands of barbarians "the doctrine of immortality, the religion of the Son of God!"

Pious Colonizationists would themselves be shocked at the proposal of disgorging on the islands of the Pacific the tenants of our prisons, under the pretext of instructing the natives in " religion and the arts;" and yet they flatter themselves, that emigrants, who, by their own showing, are less intelligent, and scarcely less guilty than our prisoners, will, by undergoing a salt water baptism, land in Africa wholly regenerated; and qualified as heralds of the cross, to convert millions and millions to the faith of the Gospel. So monstrous an absurdity, can be the offspring only of a deep and sinful prejudice. Hatred to the blacks can alone delude us into the belief that in banishing them from our soil, we are doing God service. Were it not for this hatred, we should feel and acknowledge, that Christianity must be propagated in Africa, as elsewhere, by faithful and enlightened missionaries. If the climate or other circumstances require that such missionaries be of African descent, it is our duty to educate them, before we send them. But alas, instead of educating negroes, we wish to keep them in ignorance, and yet pretend that our nuisances will, in Africa, be converted into blessings. But if Colonizationists are so perverse as to believe that a bitter fountain will send forth sweet waters, let them contemplate the following picture of Sierra Leone, drawn by a devoted friend to the Society.

"Ineluding the suburbs of the town, (Free Town,) there are some six or eight thousand inhabitants, about eighty of whom are white.-The morals of Free Town are fearfully bad. As in colonies, too generally, where the restraints of home, of friends, of those we love, and those we fear, are broken off, licentiousness prevails to a most lamentable degree. The abomination is not committed under the cover of midnight, nor am I speaking of the natives whose early habits might plead some apology for themit is done at noonday, and to use a figure, the throne as well as the footstool has participated in the evil; and the

evil, I am told, is increasing. Sanctioned as it is, by those who take the lead in the society, and who ought to form the morals of the colony, avarice has been added to lust, and those who otherwise might have been virtuous, have sold themselves to work wickedness.-Humanity and philanthropy, which have struggled so hard and so long to help this degraded country, must weep and cover itself with sackcloth, to see its best interests so wickedly perverted!" Letter from Rev. M. B. Cox, Methodist Missionary in Liberia. Af. Rep. IX. p. 209.

There is still an important consideration, which does not seem to have engaged the attention of Colonizationists. It is proposed to transport to Africa, our whole colored population, and of course to found a mighty nation in Liberia. But how long will this nation remain dependent on the Board of Managers at Washington? Instead of millions, suppose the colony to be only ten thousand strong. Who is to govern it, who defend it, and fight its battles? Were the colony now to declare independence, how would the Society reduce it to subjection; and if not subjected, what becomes of the mighty plan of making it the receptacle of our slaves and free negroes? Suppose the colonists like their brethren of Sierra Leone engage in the slavetrade, who is to punish or control them? Suppose in time they find the influx of emigrants inconvenient, and refuse to admit them, who shall coerce them.

On the whole, the system of African Colonization is full of absurdities, and contradictions, and evils, which are not seen, because they are concealed by a veil of prejudice. It is a system which strikingly exposes the folly of human wisdom, when opposed to the precepts of the Gospel of Christ. Had America possessed that fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of true wisdom, slavery would long since have ceased from among us, and our colored brethren, treated with Christian kindness, instead of being ignorant and degraded, would have been valued and useful citizens, and our churches, instead of uniting to send " cargoes of vagabonds" to Africa under the guise of Christian missionaries, would have aided the descendants of her sons, furnished by us with all the stores of human learning, and selected

for their piety and zeal, in proclaiming the glad tidings of salvation, throughout that benighted continent.

CHAPTER V.

INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIETY ON SLAVERY.

IN 1822, a committee was appointed by a public meeting in Boston, to report on the character and tendency of the American Colonization Society. The committee in their report remark:

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It is only from the belief which the committee very cordially entertain, that the active members of the American Colonization Society are perfectly disposed to frame their measures with reference to the entire suppression of the slave trade, and to a gradual and prudent, but COMPLETE EMANCIPATION of those now held in slavery, that we can regard the Society as having any claim upon the sympathy or assistance of the people of New England."

Such were the expectations by which northern philanthropists were at first induced to countenance the Society. There is scarcely to be found a Colonization article or speech that does not warrant these expectations, that does not promise the exertion by the Society of a mighty MORAL INFLUENCE in abolishing slavery.

Now it is obvious, that such an influence must operate in one or more of the following ways, viz. :

1. On the conscience of the slave holder, convincing him that slave holding is sinful, and that his Maker requires him to liberate his slaves.

2. On the reputation of the slave holder, making him feel, that his standing in the community is lowered by keeping his fellow men in bondage, and enjoying, without compensation, the fruits of their labor.

3. On the interests of the slave holder, persuading him, tnat emancipation would enhance his property.

4. On the fears of the slave holder, alarming him for the safety of himself and family.

5. By the power of example, showing the slaveholder, by the conduct of others whom he esteems, what his own ought to be.

We flatter ourselves, that we shall prove, that the influence of the Society is in no degree exerted in any one of these ways, except the last. Of the extent of this last mode, we shall speak hereafter.

It will not be pretended, that the Society addresses itself to the conscience of the slaveholder. Such addresses are not authorized by the constitution, and have been repeatedly disclaimed by the Society. But when the Society disclaims appeals to the conscience, it disclaims the most powerful of all means for the removal of slavery.

"We never made any headway," says a British writer, "in the abolition of the slave trade, and of slavery, till it was taken up by the religious men, prosecuted as a concern of the soul, with reference to eternity, and by motives drawn from the cross of Christ." Mr. G. Smith, a most estimable officer of the Society, remarked, in a temperance address:

"I never heard that temperance had any success any where, unless the appeals in its favor were made directly to the consciences of the rum dealers. Strike out these, and it is in vain that you seek for other means to propel the triumphant car of temperance. Hitch to that car, health, economy, expediency, the public good, what you please, if you leave out the appeal to men's consciences, you have, as we say at the North, a weak team." And surely a more weak, broken-winded, good for nothing team, than colonization, was never hitched to the car of abolition. How, and in what direction, does this team draw? It is amusing to observe how wary Colonizationists are of approaching this question. They dwell on the political evils of slavery, and call on religion and patriotism for aid in removing them; and when, in breathless attention, we are waiting to learn by what process the moral influence of the society is to deliver us from the curse of slavery, in a moment the scene shifts to Africa, and we are entertained with visions of its future bliss and glory. It may be safely asserted, that not one Colonization writer or orator in a hundred, ever attempts to explain how the Society is to induce mas