he New England Spectator, in consequence of a remark made
by Mr. Gurley, during the debate in Boston.

PHILADELPHIA, June 10th, 1835.

REV. W. S. PORTER,--Dear Sir,--I cheerfully comply with the
request contained in your note of the 3d inst., to give you a
brief statement of a meeting held in 1817, by the people of
color in this city, to express their opinion on the Liberia
project. It was the largest meeting of colored persons ever
convened in Philadelphia,--I will say 3000, though I might
safely add 500 more. To show you the deep interest evinced,
this large assemblage remained in almost breathless and fixed
attention during the reading of the resolutions and the other
business of the meeting; and when the question was put in the
affirmative you might have heard a pin drop, so profound was
the silence. But when in the negative, one long, loud, ay,
tremendous NO, from this vast audience, seemed as if it would
bring down the walls of the building. Never did there appear
a more unanimous opinion. Every heart seemed to feel that it
was a life and death question. Yes, even then, at the very
onset, when the monster came in a guise to deceive some of
our firmest friends, who hailed it as the dawning of a
brighter day for our oppressed race,--even then we penetrated
through its thickly-laid covering, and beheld it
prospectively as the scourge which in after years was to
grind us to the earth, and, by a series of unrelenting
persecution, force us into involuntary exile.

I was not a little surprised to learn that Mr. Gurley
professed to be ignorant of this fact; for in the African
Repository he reviewed Mr. Garrison's Thoughts on African
Colonization; and a whole chapter of the work, if I mistake
not, is taken up with the sentiments of the people of color
on colonization, commencing with the Philadelphia meeting.
Perhaps Mr. Gurley did not read that chapter. But if his
memory is not very treacherous, he ought to have known the
circumstance, for I related it to him myself in a
conversation which I had with him at my house one evening, in
company with the Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, and our beloved
friend, William Lloyd Garrison. The subject of colonization
was warmly discussed; and I well recollect bringing our
meeting of 1817 forward as a proof