nating selection of settlers must be made than ever hab BEEN-even in the first and second expeditions by the Elizabeth and Nautilus in 1820 and 1822-or the prosperity of the colony will inevitably and rapidly decline." Ashmun's Letter, 3d March, 1828. Af. Rep. IV. 86.

In the 11th Report, the managers assure us:

"No village perhaps, in our own land, exhibits less which is offensive, and more that is gratifying to the eye of the Christian, than the village of Monrovia. Crimes are almost unknown, and the universal respect manifested for the Sabbath, and the various institutions and duties of Christianity, have struck the natives with surprise, and excited the admiration of foreigners." Af. Rep. XI. p. 14. 1828.

But how are we to reconcile this, with the following statements.?

"Permit me to say, sir, there must be a great revolution in this colony, before it can have a salutary influence on the surrounding natives; that is, before it can have a moral influence over them." Letter from Rev. G. M. Erskine, 3d April, 1830. Af. Rep. VI. 121.

"We stand in much need of a work house, and some acres of land enclosed, for confining licentious females, and other disorderly and lazy persons." Letter from A. D. Williams, Agent, 10th Sept. 1830. Af. Rep. VI. 275.

"There are several enterprising merchants here. It is not, however, a favorable spot for small storekeepers and wandering pedlars, who, I am told, generally become stript of what they may have. got, and in wandering about in the interior for small traffic, disgust the natives by their immoralities." Letter from Lieut. Page to Sec. of Navy, 9th April, 1832. Af. Rep. VIII. 141.

"With respect to the character of the people composing this expedition, I regret to be compelled to state, that they are, with the exception of the Pages from Virginia, and a few others, the lowest and most abandoned of their class. Our respectable colonists themselves, are becoming alarmed at the great number of ignorant and abandoned characters that have arrived here within the last twelve months." Letter from Dr. Mechlin, Agent, Sept. 1832. Af. Rep. VIII. 298.

"Let them (the friends of the Society in America) know,

that to extend knowledge and promote sound piety, a quire of paper is at the present moment of more worth than a Bible. Bibles and Tracts have been sent here, and either used as waste paper, or made food for worms-why? Not because the people despise either, but because we have not a reading population. Until this is secured, Bibles would be of more value in China." Letter from Rev. J.-B. Pinney, Agent, 7th March, 1834.

On the 17th June, 1833, Mr. Gurley, Secretary of the Society, in a speech at a Colonization meeting in New-York, hazarded the following most extraordinary assertion, “TEN THOUSAND NATIVES had placed themselves under the protection of the colony, receiving from it, instruction in civilization."

The Society, at its annual meeting 20th January, 1834, unanimously "Resolved, that this Society is cheered in its enterprise by the beneficent effects which its operations have upon the natives of Africa itself." Af. Rep. IX. 360.

On the 20th February, 1834, the Rev. Mr. Pinney, Agent at Liberia, thus writes from the colony.

"The colonists are very ignorant of every thing about the interior. Except the tribes along the coast, nothing at all is known, and of them, little but their manner of traffic. Nothing has been done for the natives hitherto by the Colonists, except to educate a few, who were in their families in the capacity of servants." Mr. Pinney appears not to have been acquainted with the fact, that " a thousand barbarians" had been taught the doctrine of immortality within the gates of the colony, or that ten thousand natives" had received instruction in civilization!

.

Had any Missionary Society been guilty of such extravagant anticipations and such gross and palpable contradictions, the whole community would have joined in loading it with ridicule and odium.

It is deeply to be regretted, that some distinguished Colonizationists, have of late attempted to lead the public to hope, that in future no emigrants but such as are of good moral character, will be permitted to go to Liberia. It is difficult to reconcile such an attempt with moral rectitude, unless it be accompanied with a total and avowed abandonment of Colonization as a means of relieving the country from the

-nuisance of a free colored population, and from the guilt and curse of slavery. Of the gross inconsistency, (not to use a harsher term,) of Colonizationists on this subject, the proceedings of a Colonization meeting in Cincinnati, October 31st, 1834, afford a striking example. On motion of the Rev. Dr. Beecher, the following Resolution was unani, mously adopted: "Resolved, that the establishment of co lonies in Africa, by the selection of colored persons whe are moral, industrious, and temperate, is eminently cal culated of itself to advance the cause of civilization and religion among the benighted native population of that continent; as well as to afford facilities to the various Missionary Societies for the prosecution of their pious designs."

This resolution would be utterly without point or meaning, were it not laudatory of the plans of the Colonization Society; and no person of common intelligence would conjecture from the resolution, that the "selection" mentioned in it, was utterly at variance with, and directly opposed to, the avowed objects of the Society. Slavery in our country cannot be abolished by Colonization, without removing more than two millions of slaves; and how is it possible to remove this number, and yet select for colonists only "the moral, industrious, and temperate ?" Nevertheless, the meeting "Resolved, that the friends of humanity and the friends of God, should cherish the Colonization Society, because of its influence TO ABOLISH SLAVERY, and advance the best interests of the African race."

Pages might be quoted to show that the professed ultimate object of the Society, is to remove the whole colored population to Africa, without any selection whatever. In 1824, a Committee of the Board, in an official report, declared, that the national interest "required that the whole mass of free persons of color, and those who may become such with the consent of their owners, should be progressively removed from us, as fast as their own consent can be obtained, and as the means can be found for their removal and for their proper establishment in Africa." Afric. Rep. VII. p. 113.

"But the Colonization Society hopes for, and aims at, much more the abolition of slavery, and the removal of

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

Proceed

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, ket them exercise 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.

"Including 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 them— it is done at noonday, and to use a figure, the throne as well as the footstool has participated in the evil; and the