s have recommended it. Contributions have poured into its
treasury from every quarter of the United States. Addresses in its favor
have been heard from all our pulpits. It has been in operation sixteen
years. During this period nearly one million human beings have died in
slavery: and the number of slaves has increased more than half a million,
or in round numbers, 550,000
The Colonization Society has been busily engaged all this while in
conveying the slaves to Africa; in other words, abolishing slavery. In
this very charitable occupation it has carried away of manumitted slaves
613
Balance against the society . . . . 549,387!
But enough of its abolition tendency. What has it done for amelioration?
Witness the newly enacted laws of some of the slave states, laws bloody
as the code of Draco, violating the laws of Cod and the unalienable
rights of His children?--(It will be seen that the society approves of
these laws.)--But why talk of amelioration? Amelioration of what? of
sin, of crime unutterable, of a system of wrong and outrage horrible in
the eye of God Why seek to mark the line of a selfish policy, a carnal
expediency between the criminality of hell and that repentance and its
fruits enjoined of heaven?
For the principles and views of the society we must look to its own
statements and admissions; to its Annual Reports; to those of its
auxiliaries; to the speeches and writings of its advocates; and to its
organ, the African Repository.
1. It excuses slavery and apologizes for slaveholders.
Proof. "Slavery is an evil entailed upon the present generation of
slave-holders, which they must suffer, whether they will or not!" "The
existence of slavery among us, though not at all to be objected to our
Southern brethren as a fault," etc? "It (the society) condemns no man
because he is a slave-holder." "Recognizing the constitutional and
legitimate existence of slavery, it seeks not to interfere, either
directly or indirectly, with the rights it creates. Acknowledging the
necessity by which its present continuance and the rigorous provisions
for its maintenance are justified," etc. "They (the Abolitionists)
confound the misfortunes of one generation with the crimes of another,
and would sacrifice both individual and public good to an unsubstantial
theory of the rights of man."
2. It pledges itself not to oppose the system of slavery.
Proof. "Our society and the friends of colonization wis
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