America and Africa indicate that we are called on by Providence to employ the means and accomplish the work. Good, it is true, may be done while the slave trade continues, because it has been done. Missionaries have carried the religion of Jesus to some of her tribes, and the redeemed both on earth and in heaven, attest that they have not carried it in vain. Instances are not wanting of Africans, over whose brutal and ferocious features civilization had never shed one softening ray, who have surrendered themselves up to the pure and peaceful influences of our religion. The tiger has as much pity as had old Africaner, yet he became one of the loveliest specimens of Christian character. Still the good which has been effected, and we give full credit for it all, has been occasional and local, and had no permanent bearing on the great mass of the population. As long as the slave trade shall continue, a sense of the insecurity of life and property pervading the minds of the African people, will frustrate our endeavours to civilize them. Even in our own country, we find the march of improvement slow and difficult, and it would cease but for the security of life and property. Africa may be compared to a family which suspends all improvement while a law suit is pending, or disease threatens the life of one of its prominent members. Even in our own happy country, (happy far beyond any which the sun shines on) the kind mother ventures to leave her house with none in it but her infant in its cradle, and the family lie down to sleep with unbolted doors. And why? ''Tis because the shield of the laws is over her infant, and the moral sense of the community is the protection of the family. Look at Africa, and you see a perfect contrast. What more common scene there, than that of a neighbourhood filled with horror and dismay, villages surprised and fired; the inhabitants, while the conflagration glares upon them-some perishing-some escaping, others more ill-fated, bound and on their way to the slave ship, which lies waiting to receive them. We sympathize with good old Jacob, bereaved and afflicted, when his son was sold into slavery. But have we no hearts for the thousands of Jacobs in Africa, who are lamenting that Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and that Benjamin, too, the man stealer has taken away. Mothers, so alive to sympathy, how many Rachels in Africa are now weeping and refusing to be comforted, because their children are not, the man stealer has taken them away? We have asylums for orphans. But who shall gather the uncounted orphans of Africa? Methinks if we could pass over Africa we should see many children weeping over the ashes of their houses, or laying their heads at the feet of their beautiful palm trees to weep over murdered parents, or over the worse fate to which slavery has consigned their parents. I have glanced at the reasons why Africa cannot be radically improved while the slave trade continues. Let me illustrate this still further. Suppose the case of Africa our own. Suppose our country were thrown into apprehension-a hundred towns laid in ashes, and ten thousand of our people carried into hopeless slavery. Would not our plans of improvement quickly perish? Would not our projects, our roads, schools, banks, courts, be neglected? Would not even our Legislators desert their public duties, to guard their homes and families from the incendiary and man stealer? But such is the condition of Africa, not for one year only, but for centuries has it been such-and such will it continue to be, until the slave trade shall be abolished. How is this trade to be abolished? Experience teaches that no laws, no treaties stop it, though much more might be done, than has been done. By laws and treaties it is already denounced, and yet nearly 100,000 slaves are annually taken from Africa, the victims of cormorant never-sated avarice. The slave trade will exist so long as it can exist. So long as there are slave ships, there will be slaves to freight them. No peril of property or life will induce the slave trader to abandon it. To suppress this trade, it must be made physically impossible. We must line the Western coast of Africa, with civilized settlements. Two such already exist. I pass over Sierra Leone.Ours exerts a two-fold influence. On the one hand, it elevates the neighbouring tribes and enlists them in its suppression; on the other, it presents to the slave trader, whose soul no moral suasion can reach, an effectual barrier. The flag that waves on Cape Montserado, proclaims to the slave trader, that there is one spot, even in Africa, consecrated to freedom-one spot which his polluting foot-shall not tread. The single fact, that during the last 12 or 18 months, 100 of the native children have been sent to the schools of the Colony, shows that we have not overrated the happy influence which it exerts on the tribes in its vicin. ity, and that the slave traders scarce dare to land within fifty miles of the Colony, proves that we have not exaggerated the terrors with which this settlement strikes them, and the power which it exerts for putting down their horrid traffic. Such are the means and the only means, by which the slave trade can be abolished. And let me add, that it is by the continued operation of these means that Africa is to be enlightened. Every emigrant to Africa (said Mr. Clay) is a missionary going forth with his credentials in the holy cause of Civilization and Religion and free Institutions, and the colonies which we will establish, will be so many points, from which the beams of Christianity and Civilization will radiate on all that black empire of ignorance and sin. These influences must be poured in from the Western coast. The Northern boundary is within the dominion of the false Prophet, and no light is to be expected from that direction. If we look towards its eastern border, we look to the region and shadow of death. I have time but to glance at a few of the reasons which might be adduced in support of my remaining position, that Providence calls upon us to regenerate Africa. One reason is, that in our colored population, we have most abundant materials, and, from their acquaintance with our excellent Institutions, better materials than are to be found elsewhere for Colonists. Another reason is, the pressing and vital importance of relieving ourselves as soon as practicable, from this most dangerous element in our population. Another reason is, that we are under pre-eminent obligations to serve Africa, because we have surpassed all others in afflicting and wronging her. I do not mean the South only, for the time has not been long gone by when Northern merchants found their most lucrative gains from this atrocious traffic. So far from reproaching the South with the evil of her coloured population, I admit that the North owes her exemption, not to a better morality, but to colder skies and a less fertile soil. I said in my opening remarks, that the blessings our Society will confer on Africa, must reflect immensely favorable, if not indispensable, influences on the direct operations of the Society. It is evident, that, just in proportion as Africa rises in the scale of improvement, will be the desire of our Blacks to return to her. The dread of going to a land of barbarians is now the commonest objection amongst them to our Colonization scheme. But let those barbarians be converted into civilized beings, and their dread of going to Africa will be converted into a desire to go there. There is another and still more important respect in which this reflect influence is to be viewed. Whence the apathy, that pervades our country in relation to our black population? If the Greeks are suffering, we can feel for them across a space of 5 or 6000 miles, and minister to their necessities. Nor can our handful of Indians suffer real or apparent wrongs, without arousing the sympathies of the Nation.But who are there to feel for our 2,000,000 Blacks-more than five-sixths of whom are in bondage, and the other sixth incapable of freedom on our soil. And why are they not more felt for? The ready answer is, because the African race is despised; because of the vague impression, that the descendants of Ham are inherently and naturally inferior to ourselves and others, the self-complacent children of Shem and Japhet. But, let Africa begin to enter upon the redemption of a character, which guilty Christian nations have, for centuries, combined to keep down to the lowest point of degradation; and she will begin to be respected; and the condition of her outcast children on our shores will awaken a livelier sympathy. And when Africa shall have put on the garments of civilization, and the influences of her regeneration shall be felt throughout this land, our most tenacious and obstinate slave-holder will shrink from the relation he bears to her children. The poor creature, whom he formerly regarded as but a few removes above the brute, will now present himself before the new associations of his master's mind as his fellow-man and his equal-and the slave will be permitted to go free. And then will even such slave-holder be as willing as other slave-holders to aid in returning our blacks to their father-land. I am persuaded, Sir, that here is a point on which I do not say, that our Society should lay its greatest stress and its most sanguine hopes(for our Society has nothing to do directly with the question of slavery,) but I do say that it is a point, on which they, who desire the abolition of slavery in our country, should lay their greatest stress and their most sanguine hopes. The principle is almost as true in relation to our blacks, as it is to water. They cannot rise above their source. They cannot rise in our esteem above the level of the moral state of the land of their origin-for we are ever associating them with that land, which is their appropriate, their only home. But let Africa become civilized, and there will be the same moral impossibility in the way of our continuing to hold her children in bondage, that we should have to encounter in an attempt to reduce Englishmen or Frenchmen to bondage on our shores. It is because Africa is too ignorant to know that we wrong her. It is because her debasement is so great, that she is insensible to the shame we pour upon her, that we presume to hold her and her people so cheap.Whilst the honor of civilized nations is alive to the least indignities cast upon their subjects-poor Africa might say, in the language of inspiration: "They have stricken me, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not-when shall I awake?" We admit that in this way, that is, through the renovation of Africa, the Colonization Society may exert an important influence on the question of slavery-an influence, which may yet compass the abolition of slavery in our land. But, mark you, Sir, it is a way that leads through a change-through the willingness of the master's mind, and, therefore, he cannot object to it. Whilst 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-it does nevertheless admit, and joyfully admit, that the successful prosecution of the object of the Society must produce moral influences and moral changes leading to the voluntary emancipation of the slave, not only in our country, but throughout the world. I am aware, that there are persons, whom it does not satisfy to know, that our Society has no other object but the removal of our present and future free black population to Africa. The Colonization Society is an offensive Institution to them, because, as they maintain, it agitates the question of slavery. Such persons are unwilling to have the subject of slavery considered even in its most abstract form. But, Sir, the subject of slavery is one, that will be considered: it will be felt on, and thought on, and spoken on. We must first blow out the lights of this age, and turn backward the swift wheel of improvement, and quench the spirit, that is now so fearlessly searching out abuses both in the old world and the new, before such a subject as slavery can be prevented from coming under the public consideration. And the slave-holder, 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. The closing of this channel might be calamitous to the slave-holder beyond his conception: for the stream of benevolence that now flows so innocently in it, might then break out in forms even far more disastrous than Abolition Societies, and all their kindred and ill-judged measures. It is deeply painful to see how slow the people of our country are to wake up to this subject-a subject having such strong claims on their humane and patriotic and christian feelings. A single glance at these claims, shows that I do not overrate them. I ask, which is the most fruitful, infinitely most fruitful, source of our political dissensions? Do I hear our Southern brethren say, as some of them are accustomed to say "the North has nothing to do with this subject of black population-and all their solicitude about it, is meddling and officious." I reply, the North has something to do with this subject. The evil is ours as well as theirs: the multitude of blacks in our towns in the North attests, that we have a share in this evil. The fact, that although the black population in our Northern States is probably not more than a fortieth part of our whole population, yet, that about one-sixth to one-fourth of our convicts and paupers are blacks, attests that we have a share in this evil. The severe legislation, (I will not say, that, under all the circumstances, it is too severe)the severe legislation of the slave states, which drives their emancipated blacks into the free states and scatters the nuisance there, attests that we have a share in this evil. And I ask in all kindness, if, in view of this legislation, it is not with an ill grace that Southern lips rebuke our complaints of this evil? But we will take a more elevated and patriotic view of the subject to show, that the free States share with the slave States in this immeasurable evil. The members of our Republic are so intimately united, that in the language of the Apostle: "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." And when the Northern traitor to the Union says, "let the Southern tier of States, with this immeasurable evil upon them, separate from the Union"-we reply, that the patriot, who loves his country, would as soon consent to lose a member of his person as a portion of that territory, the whole of which is consecrated to his affections-in view of the whole of which it is, that he exclaims with the Poet: "This is my own, my native land." And how important is it, as it respects our character abroad, that we hasten to clear our land of our black population? We boast, that our country is the great moral and political light-house of the world, whose beams are guiding the nations of the earth to freedom and happiness. But how much brighter would those beams shine-how much more consistent and powerful would be our example, but for that population with |