into the hands of the living God? You may plot by day and by night; you may heap together the treasures of the land, and multiply and enlarge your combinations, to extricate yourselves from peril; but you cannot succeed. Your only alternative is, either to redress the wrongs of the oppressed now, and humble yourselves before God, or prepare for the chastisements of Heaven. I repeat it-REPENTANCE or PUNISHMENT must be yours.

The Colonization Society deters a large number of masters from liberating their slaves, and hence directly perpetuates the evils of slavery: it deters them for two reasons—an unwillingness to augment the wretchedness of those who are in servitude, by turning them loose upon the country, and a dread of increasing the number of their enemies. It creates and nourishes the bitterest animosity against the free blacks. It has spread an alarm among all classes of society, in all parts of the country; and acting under this fearful impulse, they begin to persecute, believing self-preservation imperiously calls for this severe treatment. It is constantly thundering in the ears of the slave States-Your free blacks contaminate your slaves, excite their deadliest hate, and are a source of horrid danger to yourselves! They must be removed, or your destruction is inevitable.' What is their response? Precisely such as might be expected—' We know it; we dread the presence of this class; their influence over our slaves weakens our power, and endangers our safety; they must, they shall be expatriated, or be crushed to the earth if they remain!' It says to the free States 'Your colored population can never be rendered serviceable, intelligent or loyal; they will only, and always, serve to increase your taxes, crowd your poor-houses and penitentiaries, and corrupt and impoverish society!' Again, what is the natural response? It is even so; they are offensive to the eye, and a pest in community; theirs is now, and

must inevitably be, without a reversal of the laws of nature, the lot of vagabonds; it were useless to attempt their intellectual and moral improvement among ourselves; and therefore be this their alternative-either to emigrate to Liberia, or remain for ever a despicable caste in this country!'

Hence the enactment of those sanguinary laws, which disgrace our statute books; hence, too, the increasing disposition which is every where seen to render the situation of the free blacks intolerable. Never was it so pitiable and distressing-so full of peril and anxiety-so burdened with misery, despondency and scorn; never were the prejudices of society so virulent and implacable against them; never were their prospects so dark, and dreary, and hopeless; never was the hand of power so heavily laid upon their limbs; never were they so restricted in regard to locomotion and the advantages of education, as at the present time. Athwart their sky scarcely darts a single ray of lightabove and around them darkness reigns, and an angry tempest is mustering its fearful strength, and thunders are uttering their voices.' Treachery is seeking to decoy, and violence to expel them. For all this, and more than this, and more that is to come, the American Colonization Society is responsible. And no better evidence is needed than this: their persecution, traducement and wretchedness increase in exact ratio with the influence, popularity and extension of this Society! The fact is undeniable, and it is conclusive. For it is absurd to suppose, that, as the disposition and ability of an association to alleviate misery increase, so will the degradation and suffering of the objects of its charities.

If the American Colonization Society were indeed actuated by the purest motives and the best feelings toward the objects of its supervision; if it were not based upon injustice,

fraud, persecution and incorrigible prejudice; still, if its purpose be contrary to the wishes and injurious to the interests of the free people of color, it ought not to receive the countenance of the public. Even the trees of the forest are keenly susceptible to every touch of violence, and seem to deprecate transplantation to a foreign soil. Even birds and animals pine in exile from their native haunts; their local attachments are wonderful; they migrate only to return again at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps there is not a living thing, from the hugest animal down to the minutest animalcule, whose pleasant associations are not circumscribed, or that has not some favorite retreats. This universal preference, this love of home, seems to be the element of being, a constitutional attribute given by the all-wise Creator to bind each separate tribe or community within intelligent and well-defined limits: for, in its absence, order would be banished from the world, collision between the countless orders of creation would be perpetual, and violence would depopulate the world with more than pestilential rapidity.

Shall it be said that beings endowed with high intellectual powers, sustaining the most important relations, created for social enjoyments, and made but a little lower than the angels-shall it be said that their local attachments are less tenacious than those of trees, and birds, and beasts, and insects? I know that the blacks are classed by some, who scarcely give any evidence of their own humanity but their shape, among the brute creation: but are they below the brutes? or are they more insensible to rude assaults than forest-trees?

་

Men,' says an erratic but powerful writer-'men are like trees: they delight in a rude soil-they strike their roots downward with a perpetual effort, and heave their proud branches upward in perpetual strife. Are they to be remov.

ed? - you must tear up the very earth with their roots, and rock, and ore, and impurity, or they perish. They cannot be translated with safety. Something of their home—a little of their native soil, must cling to them forever, or they die.'

This love of home, of neighborhood, of country, is inherent in the human breast. It accompanies the child from its earliest reminiscence up to old age: it is written upon every tangible and permanent object within the habitual cognizance of the eye upon stone, and tree, and rivulet-upon the green hill, and the verdant plain, and the opulent valleyupon house, and garden, and steeple-spire-upon the soil, whether it be rough or smooth, sandy or hard, barren or luxuriant.

No one will understand me to maintain, that population should never be thinned by foreign emigration; but only that such an emigration is unnatural. The great mass of a neighborhood or country must necessarily be stable: only fractions are cast off, and float away on the tide of adventure. Individual enterprise or estrangement is one thing: the translation of an entire people to an unknown clime, another. The former may be moved by a single impulse-by a love of novelty, or a desire of gain, or a hope of preferment; he leaves no perceptible void in society. The latter can never be expatriated but by some extraordinary calamity, or by the application of intolerable restraints. They must first be rendered broken-hearted or loaded with chains-hope must not merely sicken but die—cord after cord must be sundered-ere they will seek another home.

African colonization is directly and irreconcilably opposed to the wishes of our colored population, as a body. Their desires ought to be tenderly regarded. In all my intercourse with them, in various towns and cities, I have never seen one of their number who was friendly to this scheme; and I

have not been backward in canvassing their opinions on this subject. They are as unanimously opposed to a removal to Africa, as the Cherokees from the council-fires and graves of their fathers. It is remarkable, too, that they are as united in their respect and esteem for the republic of Hayti. But this is their country- they are resolute against every migratory plot, and willing to rely on the justice of the nation for an ultimate restoration to all their lost rights and privileges. What is the fact? Through the instrumentality of BENJAMIN LUNDY, the distinguished and veteran champion of emancipation, a great highway has been opened to the Haytien republic, over which our colored population may travel toll free, and at the end of their brief journey be the free occupants of the soil, and meet such a reception as was never yet given to any sojourners in any country, since the departure of Israel out of Egypt. One would think, that, with such inducements and under such circumstances, this broad thoroughfare would present a most animating spectacle; that the bustle and roar of a journeying multitude would fall upon the ear like the strife of the ocean, or the distant thunder of the retiring storm; and that the song of the oppressor and the oppressed, a song of deliverance to each, would go up to heaven, till its echoes were seemingly the responses of angels and justified spirits. But it is not so. Only here and there a traveller is seen to enter upon the road-there is no noise of preparation or departure; but a silence, deeper than the breathlessness of midnight, rests upon our land—not a shout of joy is heard throughout our borders!

Whatever may be the result of this great controversy, I shall have the consolation of believing that no efforts were lacking, on my part, to uproot the prejudices of my countrymen, to persuade them to walk in the path of duty and shun the precipice of expediency, to undo the heavy bur dens and let the oppressed go free at once, to warn them of