protest against it as unchristian, hurtful and ungenerous. To prejudge and condemn an individual, on vague and apocryphal rumors, without listening to his defence or examining evidence, is tyranny. Perhaps I am in error-perhaps I deserve unqualified condemnation; but I am at least entitled to a privilege which is granted to the vilest criminals, namely, the privilege of a fair trial. I ask nothing more. To accuse me of heresy, madness and sedition, is one thing; to substantiate the accusation, another.

Should this work chance to fall into the hands of those who have thus ignorantly reprobated my course, I appeal to their sense of rectitude whether they are not bound to give it a candid and deliberate perusal; and if they shall find in my writings nothing contrary to the immutable principles of justice, whether they ought not to be as strenuous in my defence as they have been hitherto in seeking my overthrow.

To show that I do not vacate any pledge which I have given to the public, I shall here insert all the specifications, which, from time to time, I have brought against the American Colonization Society. In The Liberator' of April 23, 1831, is the following serious compend :

'I am prepared to show, that those who have entered into this CONSPIRACY AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS are unanimous in abusing their victims; unanimous in their mode of attack; unanimous in proclaiming the absurdity, that our free blacks are natives of Africa; unanimous in propagating the libel, that they cannot be elevated and improved in this country; unanimous in opposing their instruction; unanimous in exciting the prejudices of the people against them; unanimous in apologising for the crime of slavery; unanimous in conceding the right of the planters to hold their slaves in a limited bondage; unanimous in their hollow pretence for colonizing, namely, to evangelize Africa; unanimous in their truc motive for the measure-a terror lest the blacks should rise to avenge their accumulated wrongs. It is a conspiracy to send the free people of color to Africa under a benevolent pretence, but really that the slaves may be held more securely in bondage. It is a conspiracy based upon fear, oppression and falsehood, which draws its aliment from the prejudices of the people, which is sustained by duplicity, which really upholds the slave system, which fascinates while it destroys, which endangers the safety and happiness of the country, which no precept of the bible can justify, which is implacable in its spirit, which should be annihilated at a blow.

These are my accusations; and if I do not substantiate them, I am willing to be covered with reproach.'

The following is copied from an editorial article of July 9, 1831 :

• The superstructure of the Colonization Society rests upon the following pil

lars :

1st. Persecution. It declares that the whole colored population must be removed to Africa; but as the free portion are almost unanimously opposed to a removal, it seems to be the determination of the Society to make their situations so uncomfortable and degraded here, as to compel them to migrate : consequently it discourages their education and improvement in this their native home. This is persecution.

2d. Falsehood. It stigmatises our colored citizens as being natives of Africa, and talks of sending them to their native land; when they are no more related to Africa than we are to Great Britain.

3d. Cowardice. It avows as a prominent reason why colored citizens ought to be removed, that their continuance among us will be dangerous to us as a people! This is a libel upon their character. Instead of demanding justice for this oppressed class, the Society calls for their removal !

4th. Infidelity. It boldly denies that there is power enough in the gospel to melt down the prejudices of men, and insists, that, so long as the people of color remain among us, we must be their enemies!—Every honest man should abhor the doctrine.'

In The Liberator' of July 30, 1831, alluding to the pres ent work, I used the following language:

'I shall be willing to stake my reputation upon it for honesty, prudence, benevolence, truth and sagacity. If I do not prove the Colonization Society to be a creature without heart, without brains, eyeless, unnatural, hypocritical, relentless, unjust, then nothing is capable of demonstration-then let me be covered with confusion of face.'

The following paragraph is extracted from The Liberator' of November 19, 1831:

'It is the enemy of immediate restitution to the slaves; it courts and receives the approbation of notorious slave owners; it deprecates any interference with slave property; it discourages the improvement of the colored population, except they are removed to the shores of Africa; it is lulling the country into a fatal sleep, pretending to be something when it is nothing; it is utterly chimerical, as well as intolerant, in its design; it serves to increase the value of the slaves, and to make brisk the foreign and domestic slave trade; it nourishes and justifies the most cruel prejudices against color; it sneers at those who advocate the bestowal of equal rights upon our colored countrymen; it contends for an indefinite, dilatory, far-off emancipation; it expressly declares that it is more humane to keep the slaves in chains, than to give them freedom in this country! In short, it is the most compendious and best adapted scheme to uphold the slave

■ystem that human ingenuity can invent. Moreover, it is utterly and irreconeileably opposed to the wishes and sentiments of the great body of the free people of color, repeatedly expressed in the most public manner, but cruelly disregarded by it.'

The following passages are taken from my Address to the People of Color, delivered in various places in June, 1831 :

Let me briefly examine the doctrines of colonizationists. They generally agree in publishing the misstatement, that you are strangers and foreigners. Surely they know better. They know, that, as a body, you are no more natives of Africa, than they themselves are natives of Great Britain. Yet they repeat the absurd charge; and they do so, in order to cover their anti-republican' crusade. But suppose you were foreigners: would such an accident justify this persecution and removal? And, if so, then all foreigners must come under the same ban, and must prepare to depart. There would be, in that case, a most alarming deduction from our population. Suppose a philanthropic and religious crusade were got up against the Dutch, the French, the Swiss, the Irish, among us, to remove them to New Holland, to enlighten and civilize her cannibals ? Who would not laugh at the scheme--who would not actively oppose it? Would any one blame the above classes for steadfastly resisting it? Just so, then, in regard to African colonization. But our colored population are not aliens; they were born on our soil; they are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; their fathers fought bravely to achieve our independence during the revolutionary war, without immediate or subsequent compensation; they spilt their blood freely during the last war; they are entitled, in fact, to every inch of our southern, and much of our western territory, having worn themselves out in its cultivation, and received nothing but wounds and bruises in return. Are these the men to stigmatize as foreigners ?

'Colonizationists generally agree in asserting that the people of color cannot be elevated in this country, nor be admitted to equal privileges with the whites. Is not this a libel upon humanity and justice-a libel upon republicanism—a libel upon the Declaration of Independence-a libel upon christianity? “All men are born equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What is the meaning of that declaration? That all men possess these rights-whether they are six feet five inches high, or three feet two and a half-whether they weigh three hundred or one hundred pounds-whether they parade in broadcloth or flutter in rags-whether their skins are jet black or lily white-whether their hair is straight or woolly, auburn or red, black or gray-does it not? Wc, who are present, differ from each other in our looks, in our color, in height, and in bulk; we have all shades, and aspects, and sizes. Now, would it not be anti-republican and anti-christian for us to quarrel about sitting on this seat or that, because this man's complexion is too dark, or that man's looks are too ugly? and to put others out of the house, because they happen to be ignorant, or poor, or helpless? To commit this violence would be evidently wrong: then to do it in a large assemblage-in a community, in a state, or in a nation, it is equally un

just. But is not this the colonization principle? Who are the individuals that applaud, that justify, that advocate this exclusion? Who are they that venture to tell the American people, that they have neither honesty enough, nor patriotism enough, nor morality enough, nor religion enough, to treat their colored brethren as countrymen and citizens? Some of them-I am sorry to say-are professedly ministers of the gospel; others are christian professors; others are judges and lawyers; others are our Senators and Representatives; others are editors of newspapers. These ministers and christians dishonor the gospel which they profess; these judges and lawyers are the men spoken of by the Saviour, who bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. These Senators and Representatives ought not to receive the suffrages of the people. These editors are unworthy of public patronage.

'Colonizationists too generally agree in discouraging your instruction and elevation at home. They pretend that ignorance is bliss; and therefore 't is folly to be wise. They pretend that knowledge is a dangerous thing in the head of a colored man; they pretend that you have no ambition; they pretend that you have no brains; in fine, they pretend a thousand other absurd things-they are a combination of pretences. What tyranny is this! Shutting up the human intellect-binding with chains the inward man-and perpetuating ignorance. May we not address them in the language of Christ? "Wo unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in ! Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith."

'Colonizationists generally agree in apologising for the crime of slavery. They get behind the contemptible subterfuge, that it was entailed upon the planters. As if the continuance of the horrid system were not criminal! as if the robberies of another generation justify the robberies of the present! as if the slaves had not an inalienable right to freedom! as if slavery were not an individual as well as a national crime! as if the tearing asunder families, limb from limb,-branding the flesh with red hot irons,-mangling the body with whips and knives,―feeding it on husks and clothing it with rags,-crushing the intellect and destroying the soul,—as if such inconceivable cruelty were not chargeable to those who inflict it!

'As to the effect of colonization upon slavery, it is rather favorable than injurious to the system. Now and then, indeed, there is a great flourish of trumpets, and glowing accounts of the willingness of planters to emancipate their slaves on condition of transportation to Africa. Now and then a slave is actually manumitted and removed, and the incident is dwelt upon for months. Why, my friends, hundreds of worn-out slaves are annually turned off to die, like old horses. No doubt their masters will thank the Colonization Society, or any one else, to send them out of the country; especially as they will gain much glorification in the newspapers, for their disinterested sacrifices. Let no man be deceived by these manœuvres.

My time is consumed—and yet I have scarcely entered upon the threshold of my argument. Now, what a spectacle is presented to the world!--the Amer

ican people, boasting of their free and equal rights-of their abhorrence of aristocratical distinctions of their republican equality; proclaiming on every wind, "that all men are born equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights,' and that this land is an asylum for the persecuted of all nations; and yet as loudly proclaiming that they are determined to deprive millions of their own countrymen of every political and social right, and to send them to a barbarous continent, because the Creator has given them a sable complexion. Where exists a more rigorous despotism? What conspiracy was ever more cruel? What hypocrisy and tergiversation so enormous ? The story is proclaimed in our pulpits, in our state and national assemblies, in courts of law, in religious and secular periodicals,—among all parties, and in all quarters of the country,— that there is a moral incapacity in the people to do justly, love mercy, and to walk uprightly—that they must always be the enemies and oppressors of the colored people that no love of liberty, no dictate of duty, no precept of republicanism, no dread of retribution, no claim of right, no injunction of the gospel, can possibly persuade them to do unto their colored countrymen, as they would that they should do unto them in a reversal of circumstances. Now, to these promulgators of unrighteousness, with the Declaration of Independence in one hand, and the Bible in the other, I fearlessly give battle. Rich and mighty and numerous as they are, by the help of the Lord I will put them to open shame. They shall not libel me, they shall not libel my country, with impunity. They shall not make our boasted republicanism a by-word and a hissing among all nations, nor sink the christian religion below heathen idolatry; and if they persist in publishing their scandalous proclamations, they shall be labelled as the enemies of their species and of the republic, and treated accordingly.

< The Colonization Society, therefore, instead of being a philanthropic and religious institution, is anti-republican and anti-christian in its tendency. Its pretences are false, its doctrines odious, its means contemptible. If we are to send away the colored population because they are profligate and vicious, what sort of missionaries will they make? Why not send away the vicious among the whites, for the same reason and the same purpose? If ignorance be a crime, where shall we begin to select? How much must a man know to save him from transportation? How white must he be? If we send away a mixed breed, how many will be left? If foreigners only, then the people of color must remain—for they are our countrymen. Would foreigners submit? No-not for an instant. Why should the American people make this enormous expenditure of life and money Why not use the funds of the Society to instruct and elevate our colored population at home? This would be rational and serviceable. Instead of removing men from a land of civilization and knowledge-of schools, and seminaries, and colleges to give them instruction in a land of darkness and desolation-would it not be wiser and better to reverse the case, and bring the ignorant here for cultivation?'

The foregoing accusations are grave, weighty, positive-involving a perilous responsibility, and requiring ample and irrefragable proof. They are expressed in vehement terms: but