the first that peopled this country; their sweat and their tears have been the means, in a measure, of raising our country to its present standing. Many of them fought, and bled, and died for the gaining of her liberties; and shall we forsake their tombs, and flee to an unknown land? No! let us remain over them and weep, until the day arrives when Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands to God. We were born and nurtured in this Christian land; and are surrounded by Christians, whose sacred creed is, to do unto all men as ye would they should do unto you to love our neighbours as ourselves; and which expressly declares, if we have respect to persons, we commit sin. Let us, Brethren, invoke the Christian's God in our behalf, to do away the prejudices of our brethren, that they may adopt the solemn truths of the gospel, and acknowledge that God is no respecter of personsthat he has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth-that they may no longer bring their reasonings in contact with the omniscience of Deity; and insinuate to the public, that our intellect and faculties are measurably inferior to those of our fairer brethren. Because adversity has thrown a veil over us, and we, whom God has created to worship, admire and adore his divine attributes, shall we be held in a state of wretchedness and degradation, with monkeys, baboons, slaves, and cattle, because we possess a darker hue?

We feel it our duty ever to remain true to the constitution of our country, and to protect it, as we have always done, from foreign aggressions. Although more than three hundred thousand of us are virtually deprived of the rights and immunities of citizens, and more than two millions held in abject slavery, yet we know that God is just and ever true to his purpose. Before him the whole world stands in awe, and at his command nations must obey. He who has lately pleaded the Indian's cause in our land, and who has brought about many signal events, to the astonishment of our generation, we believe is in the whirlwind, and will soon bring about the time when the sable sons of America will join with their fairer brethren, and re-echo liberty and equal rights in all parts of Columbia's soil.

We pray the Lord to hasten the day, when prejudice, inferiority, degradation, and oppression shall be done away, and the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God and his Christ.'

Are these the men whom the proud republicans of America are anxious to expatriate? to send to the pestilential shores of a barbarous and heathen land, on the lying pretext that Africa is their native land? When the Spaniards expelled the Moors, a difference of religion supplied a powerful reason, in those days of intolerance; while something like retribution may be traced in the calamities which befel the cruel persecutors of the Jews of the peninsula; and those who refused to submit to baptism, found an asylum on the opposite coast, among their brethren in Morocco. But the coloured Americans are of the same religion as the whites, and have deserved well at their hands. Their only crime lies in the darker hue of their skin. 'God has put a mark', it is

VOL. IX.-N.S.

R

said, 'upon the black man. The God of nature intended they 'should be a distinct, free, and independent community.' (NewHaven Palladium.) If so, what shall be said of those who frustrate the Divine intention by holding them in bondage? But what is this mark of distinction? Is it meant that a black skin is the distinctive mark of an African? that Africa is the only region where people are born black? The consummate ignorance betrayed in such a notion, is surprising. The Arab, the Hindoo, the Asiatic Portuguese, the Indian Jew, has a skin as dark as any Mandingo or Angola negro; and among the black races, the physical varieties are as numerous and as broadly distinguished as among the whites. While the white races were yet barbarous, the black races were advancing in civilization; and from India and Africa, the parent countries of Gentile science, emanated the light which irradiated the ancient world. The Blacks', remarks an enlightened American writer, had a long and glorious day; and after what they have been and done, it argues not so much a 'mistaken theory, as sheer ignorance of the most notorious 'historical facts, to pretend that they are naturally inferior to the 'whites.'

6

But the hypocrisy and wickedness of this shallow plea become still more manifest, when it is considered, how utterly this distinctive mark of complexion is disregarded by the slave-holder. Does the lawfulness of holding men in bondage depend upon their colour or their race? What shall be said, then, of retaining in slavery, numbers whose skin is not many shades darker than that of their masters; betraying a mixture of white blood which well nigh obliterates the pretended distinctive mark, and gives the lie to the blasphemy. If Africa were the native country of the American black, we might still ask, which is the native country of the mulatto? Surely, as Mr. Garrison argues, it would be as unnatural to send white blood to Africa, as to keep black blood ' in America.

Now, most unfortunately for colonizationists, the spirit of amalgamation has been so active for a long series of years,-especially in the slave States, that there are comparatively few, besides those who are annually smuggled into the South from Africa, whose blood is not tainted with a foreign ingredient. Here, then is a difficulty! What shall be done? All black blood must be sent to Africa; but how to collect it is the question. What shall be done? Why, we must resort to phlebotomy.

"Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh;
-nor cut thou less nor more,

But just a pound of flesh.""

But, in employing the terms, white blood and black blood, we are reminded of the emphatic contradiction which the word of

God supplies to the notion, that there is any essential difference between them. The Creator of all has "made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth"; and he who practically denies this, "maketh God a liar". How admirably does the proud spirit which leads the white American to revolt at worshipping his Maker in the same church with his sable fellow Christian, harmonize with the apostolic exhortation, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus," who "is not ashamed to call us"-men of every hue, partakers of the same flesh and blood-" his brethren "! Had Our Lord himself appeared to the American nation" in the form of a servant ", with a skin of darker hue than their own, they would have exclaimed with one voice, "Crucify him."

No one who is aware of the intense, the almost savage antipathy which inspires an American towards the coloured races, will accuse us of exaggeration. In this respect, our own West Indians, with all their faults, discover a less unconquerable prejudice. It seems inherited less, indeed, from the European, than from the aboriginal Indian, between whom and the negro there exists a peculiar mutual repugnance, as there is also the most extreme physical contrariety. The very sight of a gentleman of colour, whatever his wealth and intelligence, at the same dinner-table, in the same box of a theatre, still more at the same altar, would, even in this country, throw an American into the agitation of suppressed rage. The well authenticated anecdotes we have heard, illustrative of this fact, would be simply amusing, were it not for the serious consequences of this absurd prejudice. When we find such a spirit as this in Christians, we may well cease to wonder at the haughty prejudice of the ancient Jews towards the Gentiles, which led them to resent Our Saviour's eating with "publicans and sinners," and to exclaim respecting the Apostle of the Gentiles," Away with this fellow he is not fit to live." The conduct of the Brahmins towards the inferior castes, finds its counterpart, in the nineteenth century, among the philosophic republicans of America. In proof of this, we shall transcribe a few sentences from the publications of the advocates of Colonization.

:

Among the twelve millions who make up our census, two millions are Africans-separated from the possessors of the soil by birth, by the brand of indelible ignominy, by prejudices, mutual, deep, incurable, by an irreconcileable diversity of interests. They are aliens and outcasts; -they are, as a body, degraded beneath the influence of nearly all the motives which prompt other men to enterprise, and almost below the sphere of virtuous affections. Whatever may be attempted for the general improvement of society, their wants are untouched. Whatever may be effected for elevating the mass of the nation in the scale of happiness, or of intellectual and moral character, their degradation

is the same,-dark, and deep, and hopeless. Benevolence seems to overlook them, or struggles for their benefit in vain. Patriotism forgets them, or remembers them only with shame for what has been, and with dire forebodings of what is yet to come... In every part of the United States, there is a broad and impassable line of demarcation between every man who has one drop of African blood in his veins, and every other class in the community. The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society-prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion itself can subdue-mark the people of colour, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society; and from that station he can never rise, be his talents, his enterprise, his virtues what they may.... They constitute a class by themselves-a class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which none can be depressed.' African Repository. Vol. IV. pp. 117-119.

Here, invincible prejudices exclude them from the enjoyment of the society of the whites, and deny them all the advantages of free men. The bar, the pulpit, and our legislative halls are shut to them by the irresistible force of public_sentiment. No talents however great, no piety however pure and devoted, no patriotism however ardent, can secure their admission. They constantly hear the accents, and behold the triumph of a liberty which here they can never enjoy.' Ib. Vol. VI. p. 17.

Is it not wise then, for the free people of colour and their friends to admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of colour must, in this country, remain for ages, probably for ever, a separate and inferior caste, weighed down by causes powerful, universal, inevitable, which neither legislation nor Christianity can remove?' Let the free black in this country toil from youth to age in the honourable pursuit of wisdom-let him store his mind with the most valuable researches of science and literature-and let him add to a highly gifted and cultivated intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and "unspotted from the world"—it is all nothing: he would not be received into the very lowest walks of society. If we were constrained to admire so uncommon a being, our admiration would mingle with disgust, because, in the physical organization of his frame, we meet an insurmountable barrier even to an approach to social intercourse; and in the Egyptian colour which nature has stamped upon his features, a principle of repulsion so strong as to forbid the idea of a communion either of interest or of feeling, as utterly abhorrent. Whether these feelings are founded in reason or not, we will not now inquire-perhaps, they are not. But education, and habit, and prejudice have so firmly riveted them upon us, that they have become as strong as nature itself. And to expect their removal, or even their slightest modification, would be as idle and preposterous as to expect that we could reach forth our hands, and remove the mountains from their foundations into the valleys which are beneath them.' Ib. Vol. VII. pp. 195, 231.

The Soodra is not further separated from the Brahmin, in regard to all his privileges, civil, intellectual, and moral, than the negro is from the white man, by the prejudices which result from the difference

made between them by the God of nature.' of Col. Soc.

Seventh Annual Report

Christianity cannot do for them here, what it will do for them in Africa. This is not the fault of the coloured man, nor of the white man, nor of Christianity; but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than a law of nature.' Fifteenth An. Rep.

The coloured people are subject to legal disabilities, more or less galling and severe, in almost every State of the Union. Who has not deeply regretted their late harsh expulsion from the State of Ohio, and their being forced to abandon the country of their birth, which had profited by their labours, and to take refuge in a foreign land? Severe regulations have been recently passed in Louisiana, to prevent the introduction of free people of colour into the State. Wherever they appear, they are to be banished in 60 days. The strong opposition to a negro college in New Haven, speaks in a language not to be mistaken, the jealousy with which they are regarded. And there is no reason to expect that the lapse of centuries will make any change in this respect.' Matthew Carey's "Reflections".

With us, Colour is the bar. Nature has raised up barriers between the races, which no man with a proper sense of the dignity of his species, desires to see surmounted. Speeches at the formation of a Col. Soc. in New York. pp. 135-140.

And this in America! These are the fruits of reason and philosophy, in a republic founded on the rights of man', and glorying in the political equality of its citizens, while every sixth individual is a soodra, the victim of a prejudice as senseless, of injustice as enormous, as ever disgraced a heathen nation. Talk of freedom, of toleration, of justice, in a country where a free citizen may be expelled from his native soil, because of his complexion! Why Russia and its autocrat appear to advantage in comparison with this ruthless, irresponsible despotism. And then, think of the blasphemy of making the Deity an accomplice in this cruelty and injustice, by resolving it into an ordination of Pro'vidence,' a law of the God of nature', which defies the utmost power of Christianity, which religion cannot, that is, shall not subdue! How must this language of obstinate determination and defiance sound in the ears of Heaven! How righteously will the refusal to inquire whether these feelings be founded in reason or not, whether they be consonant with justice and religion or not, be visited with a rebuke of fearful indignation! When we read such expressions, we are forcibly reminded of the emphatic words of President Jefferson in reference to slavery: 'I tremble for my 'country, when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice 'cannot sleep for ever."

But what shall we say to such language from ministers of the Gospel? Let us for one moment imagine St. Paul revisiting the earth, and passing from the extreme western limit of his former labours to the shores of the new world, colonised by those who