een, its president. It was one of the
most cherished objects of his direct care and consideration, and the
association of his name with it has probably been its very greatest
collateral support. He considered it no demerit in the society that it
tended to relieve the slave-holders from the troublesome presence of
the free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his
estimation. In the same speech from which we have quoted he says:

"There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children,
whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and
violence. Transplanted in a foreign land, they will carry back to their
native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law, and liberty.
May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the universe, whose
ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals, thus to transform an
original crime into a signal blessing to that most unfortunate portion of
the globe?"

This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race
and African continent was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding
year has added strength to the hope of its realization. May it indeed be
realized. Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and his hosts were
lost in the Red Sea, for striving to retain a captive people who had
already served them more than four hundred years. May like disasters never
befall us! If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming
generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our
land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same time in
restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland with bright
prospects for the future, and this too so gradually that neither races
nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a
glorious consummation. And if to such a consummation the efforts of Mr.
Clay shall have contributed, it will be what he most ardently wished, and
none of his labors will have been more valuable to his country and his
kind.

But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country
is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has
been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have
demanded, and such in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone.
Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of
Divine Providence, trusting that in