The scheme of sending our free colored
polulation to Africa, prosecuted in the man-
ner it is by the Colonization Society, and
forwarded as it is by extraordinary and most
reprehensible legislation, is exciting a disas-
trous influence on the prospects of the col-
ored people, both bond and free, and is fa-
miliarzing the public mind with injustice
and cruelty. The following pages afford am-
ple materials, drawn from the writings and
speeches of the advocates of this scheme,
for learning its true origin and real purport.
It will be seen that the idea of banishing
the free blacks sprang from the alarm caused
by a slave insurrection; and that, from the
first to last, the enterprise has been regarded
as intimately connected with the security of
the slaveholders and the permanency of hu-
man bondage.

It is freely admitted that benevolent men
of the north have co-operated in this effort,
in the hope of benefiting the unhappy peo-
ple whom it was proposed to exile. In the
pursuit of what appeared to them a good
object, they seem not to have been duly
scrupulous about the means used to effect
it.

It may be true, that some of the emigrants
find in Liberia a comfortable asylum from
American prejudice and oppression; but it
should be recollected that the very money
expended in thier transportation was collec-
ted by appeals powerfully tending to aggra-
vate the sufferings of their brethren who are
left behind. The whole drift of the constant
stream of vituperation directed against our
free colored people, as "a curse and a blight,"
is to encourage such a course of conduct to-
ward them as shall extort their "consent" to
abandon the land of their birth.

The original, active, pervading principle of
the Colonization Society is, as Mr. Henry A.
Wise, with more frankness than prudence,
truly asserted, "FRIENDSHIP TO THE SLAVE-
HOLDERS." None are better acquainted with
this cardinal principle of colonization ef-
fort, nor more ready to avail themselves of it,
that our political aspirants. Hence Mr. Web-
ster in his famous and unhappy speech of
1850, himself an officer of the society, of-
fered the following magnificent bid for the
presidency:—

"If any gentleman from the SOUTH shall
propose a scheme of colonization to be car-
ried on by the government upon a large
scale, for the transportation of the free col-
ored people to any colony, or to any place
in the world, I should be quite disposed to
incur almost any degree of expense to ac-
complish that object. There have been re-
ceived into the treasury of the United States
eighty millions of dollars, the proceeds of
the public land ceded by Virginia, which have
already been sold: and if the residue shall be
sold at the same rate, the whole will amount
to TWO HUNDRED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Now, if
Virginia or the south see fit to make any pro-
position to RELIEVE themselves from the
BURDEN of their free colored population, they
have my free consent that this government
should pay them, out of these proceeds, ANY
sum of money adequate to that end."

Here we have no idle professions of sym-
pathy for the free blacks, subjected by our
own prejudices and cruelty to poverty, ignor-
ance, and degradation,—no visionary, but
benevolent predictions of their regeneration,
on being transferred from a land of Bibles
and churches to the darkenss and heathenism
of Africa,—no sickly, puerile sentimentality
about the diffusion of the arts and sciences
and the light of Christianity throughout a
benighted continent, by sending to it "a horde
of miserable wretches,"—"of all classes of
our population," to us[e] the language of Mr.
Clay, "the most vicious, who contaminated
themselves, extend their vices to all around
them." With boldness and directness of
purpose well calculated to conciliate southern
electors, he assumes that the free blacks are
a BURDEN to the slaveholders, and offers his
aid to RELIEVE them from it. He is ready
to levy on the while Union a tax of untold
millions to transport this burden to any