m ranker.

HAMLET, _Act III, Scene 3d_.

When doctrines meet with general approbation,
It is not heresy, but reformation.

GARRICK.

So much excitement prevails with regard to these two societies at
present, that it will be difficult to present a view of them which will
be perfectly satisfactory to all. I shall say what appears to me to be
candid and true, without any anxiety as to whom it may please, and whom
it may displease. I need not say that I have a decided predilection,
because it has been sufficiently betrayed in the preceding pages; and
I allude to it for the sake of perfect sincerity, rather than from any
idea that my opinion is important.

The American Colonization Society was organized a little more than
sixteen years ago at the city of Washington, chosen as the most central
place in the Union. Auxiliary institutions have since been formed in
almost every part of the country; and nearly all the distinguished men
belong to it. The doing away of slavery in the United States, by
gradually removing all the blacks to Africa, has been generally supposed
to be its object. The project at first excited some jealousy in the
Southern States; and the Society, in order to allay this, were anxious
to make all possible concessions to slave-owners, in their Addresses,
Reports, &c. In Mr. Clay's speech, printed in the first Annual Report
of the Society, he said, "It is far from the intention of this Society
to affect, in _any manner_, the tenure by which a certain species of
property is held. I am myself a slaveholder, and I consider that kind
of property as inviolable as any other in the country. I would resist
encroachment upon it as soon, and with as much firmness, as I would upon
any other property that I hold. Nor am I prepared to go as far as the
gentleman who has just spoken, (Mr. Mercer) in saying that I would
emancipate my slaves, if the means were provided of sending them from
the country."

At the same meeting Mr. Randolph said, "He thought it necessary, being
himself a slaveholder, to show that so far from being in the _smallest
degree_ connected with the abolition of slavery, the proposed Society
_would prove one of the greatest securities to enable the master to keep
in possession his own property_."

In Mr. Clay's speech, in the second Annual Report, he declares: "It is
not proposed to deliberate upon, or consider at all, any question of
emancipation, or any that is _connected_ with the abo