withstanding the attempts to exterminate it by the naval forces of the United States and Great Britain, the inhuman traffic is still pursued to as great an extent as at any former period, and with greater cruelty than ever.'-[African Repository, vol. vi. p. 345.] 'The slave trade, which many suppose has been every where abolished for years, there is reason to believe is still carried on to almost as great an extent as ever. It has been recently stated in the papers, that an association of merchants at Nantz, in France, had undertaken to supply the island of Cuba with thirty thousand fresh negro slaves annually! And in Brazil, it is well known, that for several years past, the importations have even exceeded this number.'-[Idem, vol. vii. p. 248.] 'Africa, for three long centuries, has been ravaged by the slave trade. Notwithstanding all that has been done to suppress that traffic, notwithstanding its formal abolition by all civilized nations, it is carried on at the present hour, with all its atrocities unmitigated. The flags of France, Portugal, Brazil, and Spain, with the connivance of those governments, afford to the slave trader, in spite of laws and treaties and armed cruisers, a partial protection, of which he avails himself to the utmost. And with what cruelty he carries on his war against human nature, every year affords us illustrations sufficiently horrible.'-[Christian Spectator for September, 1830.] This horrible traffic, notwithstanding its abolition by every civilized nation in the world, except Portugal and Brazil, and notwithstanding the decided measures of the British and American governments, is still carried on to almost as great an extent as ever. Not less than 60,000 slaves, according to the most moderate computation, are carried from Africa annually. This trade is carried on by Americans to the American states. And the cruelties of this trade, which always surpassed the powers of the human mind to conceive, are greater now than they ever were before. We might, but we will not, refer to storics, recent stories, of which the very recital would be torment.'-[Seventh Annual Report.] * * "Notwithstanding the vigilance of the powers now engaged to suppress the slave trade, I have received information, that in a single year, in the single island of Cuba, slaves equal in amount to one half of the above number of fifty-two thousand have been illicitly introduced.' 'Mr Mercer submitted the following preamble and resolutions :-Whereas, to the affliction of the Christian world, the African slave trade, notwithstanding all the efforts, past and present, for its suppression, still exists and is conducted with aggravated cruelty, by the resources of one continent, to the dishonor of another, and to an extent little short of the desolation of a third,' &c.-[Tenth Annual Report.] It is painful to state, that the Managers have reason to believe that the slave trade is still prosecuted, to a great extent, and with circumstances of undiminished atrocity. The fact, that much was done by Mr Ashmun to banish it from the territory, under the colonial jurisdiction, is unquestionable; but, it now exists, even on this territory; and a little to the north and south of Liberia, it is seen in its true characters-of fraud, rapine, and blood! In the opinion of the late Agent, the present efforts to suppress this trade must prove abortive.'— [Thirteenth Annual Report.] Some appalling facts in regard to the slave trade have come to the knowledge of the Board of Managers during the last year. With undiminished atrocity and activity is this odious traffic now carried on all along the African coast. Slave factories are established in the immediate vicinity of the Colony, and at the Gallinas (between Liberia and Sierra Leone) not less than nine hundred slaves were shipped during the last summer, in the space of three weeks.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report, 1831.] In defiance of all laws enacted, it is estimated that no less than fifty thousand Africans were, during the last year, (1831,) carried into foreign slavery. During the months of February and March of the same year, two thousand were landed on the island of Cuba.'—[Circular published by the Massachusetts Colonization Society for 1832.] No pro Here, then, is the acknowledgment of the Society, that it has accomplished nothing toward the suppression of the slave trade in fifteen years! Nor has the settlement at Sierra Leone effected aught in thirty years! Nor have the untiring labors of Wilberforce and Clarkson, for a longer period, produced any visible effect! The accursed traffic still continues to increase-and why? Simply because the market for slaves is not destroyed. Break up this market, and you annihilate the slave trade. Keep it open, and you may line the shores of Africa and América with naval ships and armed troops, and the trade will continue. position in Euclid is plainer. So long as there is a brisk market for goods, that market will be supplied. The assertion has been made in Congress by Mr Mercer of Virginia, (one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society,) that these horrible cargoes are smuggled into our southern states to a deplorable extent. In 1819, Mr Middleton, of South Carolina, declared it to be his belief that 13,000 Africans were annually smuggled into our southern states.' Mr Wright of Virginia estimated the number at 15,000 !!!-[Vide Seventh Annual Report-app.] -This number is seven times as great as that which the Colonization Society has transported in fifteen years! * By letting the system of slavery alone, then, and striving to protect it, the Society is encouraging and perpetuating the foreign slave trade! * The following amusing anecdote is a capital illustration of the folly of those colonizationists, who are endeavoring to suppress the rising tide of our colored population by extracting a few drops annually with their mop and pattens.' Dame Partington is clearly outdone by them, in regard to pertinacity of purpose and feebleness of execution. Rev. Sidney Smith, in his speech at the Taunton meeting, (England,) said: The attempt of the House of Lords to stop the progress of Reform, reminded him of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington, during the great storm at Sidmouth, in 1824. The tide rose to an incredible height; the waves rushed in upon the houses, and every thing was threatened with destruction. In the midst of the fearful commotion of the elements, Dame Partington, who lived upon the sea beach, was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her mop and sweeping out the sea water, and vigorously pushing back the Atlantic. The Atlantic was roused, and so was Mrs. Partington; but the contest was unequal. The Atlantic beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she could do nothing with a tempest.' END OF PART I. 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 purposes 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 [PART II.] 1 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 angelsshall 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 [and native] soil-they strike their roots downward with a perpetual effort, and heave their proud branches upward in perpetual strife. Are they to be removed?—you must tear up the very earth with their roots, 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 valley-upon house, and garden, and steeple-spire-upon the soil, whether it be rough or smooth, sandy or hard, barren or luxuriant. 'Like ivy, where it grows, 't is seen To wear an everlasting green.' The man who does not cherish it is regarded as destitute of sensibility; and to him is applied by common consent the burning rebuke of Sir Walter Scott: 'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, * John Neal. This is my own, my native land ! From wandering on a foreign strand! To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Whose bosom does not thrill with pleasurable emotion whenever he listens to that truest, sweetest, tenderest effusion,Home, sweet home?' 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Which, seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home!' An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain O give me my lowly thatched cottage again; The birds singing gaily that came at my call Give me them, with the peace of mind dearer than all! 'Home-home! Sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home!' 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, |