that it will soon fall
into ruin. It is but candid to suppose that the colony is going on as
well as could possibly be expected, when we consider that the emigrants
are almost universally ignorant and vicious, without property, and
without habits of industry or enterprise. The colored people in
our slave States must, almost without exception, be destitute of
information; and in choosing negroes to send away, the masters would
be very apt to select the most helpless and the most refractory. Hence
the superintendents of Liberia have made reiterated complaints of
being flooded with shiploads of "vagrants." These causes are powerful
drawbacks. But the negroes in Liberia have schools and churches, and
they have freedom, which, wherever it exists, is always striving to work
its upward way.

There is a palpable contradiction in some of the statements of this
Society.

"We are told that the Colonization Society is to civilize and evangelize
Africa. '_Each emigrant_,' says Henry Clay, the ablest advocate which
the Society has yet found, '_is a missionary_, carrying with him
_credentials_ in the holy cause of civilization, religion and free
institutions!!'"

"Who are these emigrants--these _missionaries_?"

"The Free people of color. 'They, and they _only_,' says the African
Repository, 'are QUALIFIED for colonizing Africa.'"

What are their _qualifications_? Let the Society answer in its own words:

"'Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves
themselves.'"--_African Repository_, vol. ii, p. 328.

"'A horde of miserable people--the objects of universal
suspicion--subsisting by plunder.'"--_C. F. Mercer._

"'An anomalous race of beings, the most debased upon earth.'"--_African
Repository_, vol. vii, p. 230.

"'Of all classes of our population the most vicious is that of the free
colored.'"--_Tenth Annual Report of Colonization Society._

An Education Society has been formed in connection with the Colonization
Society, and their complaint is principally that they cannot find proper
subjects for instruction. Why cannot such subjects be found? Simply
because our ferocious prejudices compel the colored children to grow
up in ignorance and vicious companionship, and when we seek to educate
them, we find their minds closed against the genial influence of
knowledge.

When I heard of the Education Society, I did hope to find one instance
of _sincere_, _thorough disinterested_ good-will for the blacks. But in
the