estibly tends to rivet their fetters more firmly, or make them the
victims of a relentless persecution.

FOOTNOTES:

[R] What right have we to an homestead in the red man's country? Let us
return to the land of our fathers, and leave this soil untarnished by
the footprint of him who hath a white skin! What right have the hosts of
foreign emigrants, who are flocking to our shores, to an homestead among
ourselves?

SECTION VIII.

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY IS THE DISPARAGER OF THE FREE BLACKS.

The leaders in the African colonization crusade seem to dwell with a
malignant satisfaction upon the poverty and degradation of the free
people of color, and are careful never to let an opportunity pass
without heaping their abuse and contempt upon them. It is a common
device of theirs to contrast the condition of the slaves with that of
this class, and invariably to strike the balance heavily in favor of the
former! In this manner, thousands are led to look upon slavery as a
benevolent system, and to deprecate the manumission of its victims.
Nothing but a love of falsehood, or an utter disregard of facts, could
embolden these calumniators to deal so extensively in fiction. What! the
slaves more happy, more moral, more industrious, more orderly, more
comfortable, more exalted, than the free blacks! A more enormous
exaggeration, a more heinous libel, a wider departure from truth, was
never fabricated, or uttered, or known. The slaves, as a body, are in
the lowest state of degradation; they possess no property; they cannot
read; they are as ignorant, as their masters are reckless, of moral
obligation; they have no motive for exertion; they are thieves from
necessity and usage; their bodies are cruelly lacerated by the
cart-whip; and they are disposable property. And yet these poor
miserable, perishing, mutilated creatures are placed above our free
colored population in dignity, in enjoyment, in privilege, in
usefulness, in respectability!!

'There is a class, however, more numerous than all these,
introduced amongst us by violence, notoriously ignorant,
degraded and miserable, mentally diseased, broken-spirited,
_acted upon by no motives to honorable exertions_, SCARCELY
REACHED IN THEIR DEBASEMENT BY THE HEAVENLY LIGHT; yet where is
the sympathy and effort which a view of their condition ought to
excite? They wander unsettled and unbefriended through our land,
or sit indolent, a