day, may on this principle be an impoverished slave to-morrow. Does physical strength make valid this claim? This, too, is evanescent sickness and age would ultimately degrade the most muscular tyrants to servitude; and mankind would be composed of but two parties-the strong and the weak: Can high birth annul the rights of the lower classes? There is no difference at their birth, between the children of the beggar and those of the king. We brought nothing into this world,' says an inspired apostle, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.' Man is created a rational being; and therefore he is a subject of moral government, and accountable. Being rational and accountable, he is bound to improve his mind and intellect. With this design, his Creator has outstretched the heavens, and set the sun in his course, and hung out the burning jewels of the sky, and spread abroad the green earth, and poured out the seas, that he might steadily progress in knowledge.

6

The slaves are men; they were born, then, as free as their masters; they cannot be property; and he who denies them an opportunity to improve their faculties, comes into collision with Jehovah, and incurs a fearful responsibility. But we know that they are not treated like rational beings, and that oppression almost entirely obliterates their sense of moral obligation to God or man.

I fully coincide in opinion with the authoress of a work entitled, IMMEDIATE, NOT GRADUAL ABOLITION,' that the holder of a slave, whether he obtained him by purchase or by inheritance, is as guilty as the original thief.* The wretch who stole him could by no possible means acquire or transmit the right to make a slave of him, or to keep him in slavery. He has a right to his liberty :-through whatever number of transfers the usurpation of it may have passed, the 'right is undiminished.

* The owners of slaves are licensed robbers, and not the just proprietors of what they claim: freeing them is not depriving them of property, but restoring it to the right owner; it is suffering the unlawful captive to escape. It is not wronging the master, but doing justice to the slave, restoring him to himself. Emancipation would only take away property that is its own property, and not ours; property that has the same right to possess us, as we have to possess it; property that has the same right to convert our children into dogs and calves and colts, as we have to convert theirs into these beasts; property that may transfer our children to strangers, by the same right that we transfer theirs. Rice.

No man, says Algernon Sidney, can have a right over others, unless it be by them granted to him: That which is not just, is not law; and that which is not law, ought not to be in force : Whosoever grounds his pretensions of right upon usurpation and tyranny, declares himself to be an usurper and a tyrant—that is, an enemy to God and man-and to have no right at all: That which was unjust in its beginning, can of itself never change its nature : HE WHO PERSISTS IN DOING INJUSTICE, AGGRAVATES IT, AND TAKES UPON HIMSELF ALL THE GUILT OF HIS PREDECESSORS: The right to be free is a truth planted in the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all who have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disproved by none but such as through wickedness, stupidity, or baseness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts, and to have retained nothing of men but the outward shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt from their master the devil.

The following is the indignant, emphatic, eloquent language of HENRY BROUGHAM, on the subject of slave property :

Tell me not of rights-talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I DENY THE RIGHT-I ACKNOWLEDGE NOT THE PROPERTY. The principles, the feelings of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of the laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes-the same throughout the world, the same in all times-such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth and knowledge; to another, all unutterable woes ;such it is at this day it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations. The covenants of the Almighty, whether the old or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions. To those laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for by one shameful compact, you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet, in despite of law and of treaties, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not assuredly by parliament leading the way; but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. Now, then, let the planters beware-let their assemblies beware let the government at home beware-let the parliament beware! the same country is once more awake,-awake to the condition of negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave trade; and, if it shall descend again, they, on whom its crash shall fall, will not be destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray that their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible judgments of God!'

Is this the language of fanaticism? Is Henry Brougham a madman ?

The following extracts must close the evidence in support of my third allegation, that the Colonization Society disregards the fundamental principle of human liberty and equality, that man cannot hold property in man :

*

*

'Let me ask, who can wish under existing circumstances that the constitution should be altered, when it must bring with it a violation of property-and when that violation of private property must engender such hostility of feelings, and elicit such bitter vituperation? The whole Union would feel a concussion, and no one can count the costs of the contest.' * By means of our colony, they may remove their slaves and restore them to freedom-and at the same time no way jeopardize the safety of themselves or their property.'— [Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the New-Jersey Colonization Society.]

The establishment of our colony will afford facilities to proprietors for completing in Africa the exercise of the right which can only be partially exercised in this country, of disposing of our property, in our own way, without injury to the community.'-[Fourteenth Annual Report.]

What audacity do those advocates of the Society exhibit, who use, in reference to beings made a little lower than the angels, language like this--' disposing of our property in our own way '—' we hold their slaves, as we hold their other property, SACRED '!!* If they really mean and believe what they say, it is something more heinous than impertinence to urge the planters to dispossess themselves of their property by colonization; and if the slaves belong of right to them,—are on a par with goods and chattels,-how idle, how supremely ridiculous it is to mourn over their wretched condition, to sigh for their emancipation, to declaim against the evil and wickedness of slavery, or even to denounce the slave trade! But the unfortunate blacks are not now, and never can be, the property of the planters; consequently the claims of their pretended owners. are no better than those of the pirate or highway robber.

*Is there no difference between a vested interest in a house or a tenement, and a vested interest in a human being? No difference between a right to bricks and mortar, and a right to the flesh of man-a right to torture his body and to degrade his mind at your good will and pleasure? There is this difference,the right to the house originates in law, and is reconcilable to justice; the claim (for I will not call it a right) to the man, originated in robbery, and is an outrage upon every principle of justice, and every tenet of religion.'-Speech of Fowell Buxton in the British Parliament.

SECTION IV.

SOCIETY INCREASES THE

THE AMERICAN

COLONIZATION

VALUE OF SLAVES.

I COME now to my fourth charge,—which, although not more serious or consequential than any of the foregoing, may possibly create more surprise,—namely, that the Society increases the value of slaves, and adds strength and security to the system of slavery. It is the discovery of this fact that is so wonderfully, and to many superficial observers so inexplicably, increasing the popularity of the Society at the south. It would require more pages of this work than its necessarily contracted limits permit, to sum up minutely the evidence on this point, and to give those illustrations which might serve more clearly to establish its validity. The most common, as it is the most potent, argument used by colonization agents among slave owners, to secure their patronage, is,-"The successful prosecution of our scheme will remove the chief source of danger to yourselves, and enable you to hold your property in greater security: the presence of free persons of color among your slaves is eminently calculated to make them insubordinate, and to procure their violent emancipation.' This argument, I say, is introduced into every conversation, and every public address, and every essay; and whoever carefully consults the numbers. of the African Repository, through seven volumes, will find it repeated in almost every appeal to the south.

I choose to consider the testimony of southern men, in regard to the invigorating effects of the colonization enterprise upon. the system of slavery, conclusive. Here is a very small portion of it: more may be found under the sixth section of this work..

The object of the Colonization Society commends itself to every class of society. The landed proprietor may ENHANCE THE VALUE OF HIS PROPERTY by assisting the enterprise.'-[African Repository, vol. i. p. 67.]

But is it not certain, that should the people of the Southern States refuse to adopt the opinions of the Colonization Society, [relative to the gradual abolition

of slavery,] and continue to consider it both just and politic to leave, untouched, a system, for the termination of which, we think the whole wisdom and energy of the States should be put in requisition, that they will CONTRIBUTE MORE EFFECTUALLY TO THE CONTINUANCE AND STRENGTH OF THIS SYSTEM, by removing those now free, than by any or all other methods which can possibly be devised? Such has been the opinion expressed by Southern gentlemen of the first talents and distinction. Eminent individuals have, we doubt not, lent their aid to this cause, in expectation of at once accomplishing a generous and noble work for the objects of their patronage and for Africa, and GUARDING THAT SYSTEM, the existence of which, though unfortunate, they deem necessary, by separating from it those, whose disturbing force augments its inherent vices, and darkens all the repulsive attributes of its character. In the decision of these individuals, as to the effects of the Colonization Society, we perceive no error of judgment: OUR BELIEF IS THE SAME AS THEIRS.'-[Idem, p. 227.]

THE EXECUTION OF ITS SCHEME WOULD AUGMENT INSTEAD OF DIMINISHING THE VALUE OF THE PROPERTY LEFT BEHIND.' -[Idem, vol. ii. p. 344.]

'The removal of every single free black in America, would be productive of nothing but safety to the slaveholder, nor would the emancipation of as many as the benevolence of individual masters would send off, as far as I can see, be productive of disaffection among the remainder, more than the example of such as are every day set free, and sent to the Ohio or elsewhere; and if so large a part should ever be set free as to create discontent among the remainder, (and nothing but the emancipation of a great majority can do this,) yet that remainder must then, from the terms of the proposition, be so much diminished, as to be easily kept down by superior numbers.'-[Idem, vol. iii. p. 202.]

‹ The tendency of the scheme, and one of its objects, is to secure slaveholders and the whole Southern country, against certain evil consequences, growing out of the present threefold mixture of our population.'—[Idem, vol. iv. p. 274.]

"We all know the effects produced on our slaves by the fascinating, but delusive appearance of happiness, exhibited in persons of their own complexion, roaming in idleness and vice among them. By removing the most fruitful source of discontent from among our slaves, we should render them more industrious and attentive to our commands; and by rendering them more industrious and obedient, we should naturally secure their better treatment-we should ameliorate their condition. Our enemies have admitted that good would result from the removal of this class. Caius Gracchus declares, that if the Society could attain "this single object in good faith, (the removal of the free people of color) he should, perhaps, be among the last citizens in the commonwealth-who would raise his voice against it," and the author of the CRISIS (who is doubtless regarded as authority in South Carolina) acknowledges, "that there is no doubt but that if we in the South, were relieved of this population, it would be better for our southern citics, where they principally reside." Nothing can be more plain then, than that the Colonization Society, in its efforts to remove the free people of color, is accomplishing a work to which the citizens of the South,, whether friends or foes to the Society, have given their decided approbation.’— [Idem, vol. vi. p. 205.]

If, as is most confidently believed, the colonization of the free people of color will render the slave who remains in America more obedient, more faithful, more honest, and, consequently, more useful to his master,' &c.—[Second Annual Report.]