f our union,
hundreds, and even thousands of proprietors, who would gladly
give liberty to their slaves, but are deterred by the
apprehension of doing injury to their country, and perhaps to
the slaves themselves.'--[Discourse by the Rev. Dr.
Dana.--African Repository, vol. i. p. 145.]

'Guarding that system, the existence of which, though
_unfortunate_, THEY DEEM NECESSARY.'--[African Repository, vol.
i. p. 227.]

'We all know from a variety of considerations which it is
unnecessary to name, and in consequence of the policy which is
obliged to be pursued in the southern States, that it is
extremely difficult to free a slave, and hence the enactment of
those laws _which a fatal necessity seems to demand_.'--[African
Repository, vol. ii. p. 12.]

'They are convinced, that there are now hundreds of masters who
are so only from _necessity_.'--[Memorial of the Society to the
several States.--A. R. vol. ii. p. 60.]

'_I do not condemn_, let me be understood, _their detention in
bondage_ under the circumstances which are yet existing.'--['The
Colonization Society Vindicated.'--Idem, vol. iii. p. 201.]

'A third point in which the first promoters of this object were
united, is, that few individual slaveholders can, in the present
state of things, emancipate their slaves if they would. There is
a certain relation between the proprietor of slaves and the
beings thus thrown upon him, which is far more complicated, and
far less easily dissolved, than a mind unacquainted with the
subject is ready to imagine. The relation is one which, where it
exists, grows out of the very structure of society, and for the
existence of which, the master is ordinarily as little
accountable as the slave.'

'He [the planter] looks around him and sees that the condition
of the great mass of emancipated Africans is one _in comparison
with which the condition of his slaves is enviable_;--and he is
convinced that if he withdraws from his slaves his authority,
his support, his protection, and leaves them to shift for
themselves, he turns them out to be vagabonds, and paupers, and
felons, and to find in the work-house and the penitentiary, the
home which they ought to have retained on his paternal
acres.--Hundreds of humane and Christian slaveholders retain
their fellow-men in bond