ports of cotton amounted to 93,900,000 lbs. War with Great Britain,
soon afterward, checked both our exports and her manufacture of the
article; but the year 1817, memorable in this connection, from its being
the date of the organization of the Colonization Society, found our
exports augmented to 95,660,000 lbs., and her consumption enlarged to
126,240,000 lbs. Carding and spinning machinery had now reached a good
degree of perfection, and the power loom was brought into general use in
England, and was also introduced into the United States. Steamboats,
too, were coming into use, in both countries; and great activity
prevailed in commerce, manufactures, and the cultivation of cotton.

But how fared it with the free colored people during all this time? To
obtain a true answer to this question we must revert to the days of the
Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

With freedom to the slave, came anxieties among the whites as to the
results. Nine years after Pennsylvania and Massachusetts had taken the
lead in the trial of emancipation, Franklin issued an appeal for aid to
enable his society to form a plan for the promotion of industry,
intelligence, and morality among the free blacks; and he zealously urged
the measure on public attention, as essential to their well-being, and
indispensable to the safety of society. He expressed his belief, that
such is the debasing influence of slavery on human nature, that its very
extirpation, if not performed with care, may sometimes open a source of
serious evils; and that so far as emancipation should be promoted by the
society, it was a duty incumbent on its members to instruct, to advise,
to qualify those restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of
civil liberty.

How far Franklin's influence failed to promote the humane object he had
in view, may be inferred from the fact, that forty-seven years after
Pennsylvania passed her act of emancipation, and thirty-eight after he
issued his appeal, _one-third_ of the convicts in her penitentiary were
colored men; though the preceding census showed that her slave
population had almost wholly disappeared--there being but _two hundred
and eleven_ of them remaining, while her free colored people had
increased in number to more than _thirty thousand_. Few of the other
free States were more fortunate, and some of them were even in a worse
condition--_one-half_ of the convicts in the penitentiary of New Jersey
being colored men.

But t