eel a
concussion, and no one can count the costs of the contest.'
* * * 'By means of our colony, they may remove their slaves and
restore them to freedom--and at the same time no way jeopardize
the safety of themselves or their _property_.'--[Proceedings of
the First Annual Meeting of the New-Jersey Colonization
Society.]

'The establishment of our colony will afford facilities to
proprietors for completing in Africa the exercise of the _right
which can only be partially exercised in this country, of
disposing of our property, in our own way, without injury to the
community_.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report.]

What audacity do those advocates of the Society exhibit, who use, in
reference to beings made a little lower than the angels, language like
this--'disposing of _our property_ in _our own way_'--'we hold their
_slaves_, as we hold their other _property_, SACRED'!![L] If they really
mean and believe what they say, it is something more heinous than
impertinence to urge the planters to dispossess themselves of their
property by colonization; and if the slaves belong _of right_ to
them,--are on a par with goods and chattels,--how idle, how supremely
ridiculous it is to mourn over their _wretched condition_, to sigh for
their emancipation, to declaim against the evil and wickedness of
slavery, or even to denounce the slave trade! But the unfortunate blacks
are not now, and never can be, the property of the planters;
consequently the claims of their pretended owners are no better than
those of the pirate or highway robber.

FOOTNOTES:

[K] The owners of slaves are licensed robbers, and not the just
proprietors of what they claim: freeing them is not depriving them of
property, but restoring it to the right owner; it is suffering the
unlawful captive to escape. It is not wronging the master, but doing
justice to the slave, restoring him to himself. Emancipation would only
take away property that is its own property, and not ours; property that
has the same right to possess us, as we have to possess it; property
that has the same right to convert our children into dogs and calves and
colts, as we have to convert theirs into these beasts; property that may
transfer our children to strangers, by the same right that we transfer
theirs.--_Rice._

[L] 'Is there no difference between a vested interest in a house or a
tenement, and a vested interest in a human being? No difference