best and most valuable citizens, and exiled from our shores, those whose hearts are bound to their country by no common bonds, even by the holy bonds of sympathy for their "countrymen in chains." A project which would have poured upon the shores of Pagan Africa, a broken hearted population, prepared by mental suffering to sink into a premature grave. A band of exiles, who had been exposed against their judgment and their will, to all the nameless trials which belong to the settlement of colonial establishments, and all that anguish which must have been endured under the reflection that they had been banished from the land of their birth, merely to gratify an unhallowed prejudice when their country needed their services, when there was abundant room in the land, though not in the hearts of their countrymen. We admire your noble and uncompromising resistance to this scheme of oppression, and your children will thank you to the latest generation. We honor you for the undaunted and generous resolutions which you passed soon after the Colonization Society came into existence, when the spontaneous language of your hearts was embodied in the following sentiments:

"Whereas, our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we their descendants, feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil, which their blood and sweat manured, and that any measure, or system of measures, having a tendency to banish us from her bosom, would not only be cruel, but would be in direct violation of those principles which have been the boast of this republic.

Resolved, That we view with deep abhorrence the unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation of the free people of color, by the promoters of this measure, "that they are a dangerous and useless part of the community." When in the state of disfranchisement in which they live, in the hour of danger they ceased to remember their wrongs, and rallied round the standard of their country.

Resolved, That we will never separate ourselves from the slave population in this country: they are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity, of suffering, and of wrong; and we feel that there is more virtue in suffering privations with them, than enjoying fancied advantages for a season.

Resolved, That having the strongest confidence in the justice of God, and in the philanthropy of the free states, we cheerfully submit our destinies to the guidance of Him who suffers not a sparrow to fall to the ground without his special Providence."

We praise the Lord, that while the white man slumbered over the wrongs of his enslaved countrymen, or stretched out his hands to rivet the bondman's chains, or to thrust his brother from his side, your sympathy and your compassion, like that of the beneficent Redeemer, was wakeful and active, and called forth from the depths of your souls the following soul-stirring appeal. Where, oh! where were the hearts of Americans, that they responded not to your call?

"We humbly, respectfully, and fervently entreat and beseech your disapprobation of the plan of colonization now offered by the "American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States." Here, in the city of Philadelphia, where the voice of the suffering sons of Africa was first heard—where was first commenced the work of abolition on which heaven has smiled (for it could have success only from the great Master); let not a purpose be assisted which will stay the cause of the entire abolition of slavery in the United States, and which may defeat it altogether—which proffers to those who do not ask for them what it calls benefits, but which they consider injuries—and which must ensure to the multitude, whose prayers can only reach you through us, misery, sufferings, and perpetual slavery."

Nor can we pass by unnoticed the noble conduct of our sister in Ohio, who, when her father proposed to bring her to the North, where she might pass for a white woman, and settle upon her a comfortable independence, replied that she would never forsake her people—that she would rather suffer with them than enjoy all the advantages he promised. We do homage to the virtue which preferred to endure affliction with the oppressed, rather than to bask in the sunshine of worldly prosperity and popular favor.

But for the dignified opposition which you manifested—but for the developments which you made of the real designs and fearful consequences of colonization, your guilty country would probably have added to her manifold transgressions against the descendants of Africa, the transcendant crime of banishing from her shores those whom she has deeply injured, and whom she is bound by every law of justice and of mercy to cherish with peculiar tenderness. But for your virtuous and uncompromising hostility to the Colonization Society, a portion of our countrymen might never have been disabused of the idle and fallacious expectation, that this scheme would cure the moral evil of slavery, and put an end to the horrible slave traffic carried on on the coast of Africa. You saw that the root of the evil was in our own land, and that the expatriation of the best part of our colored population, so far from abolishing slavery, would render the condition of the enslaved tenfold more hopeless. You saw that the only means of destroying the slave trade, was to destroy the spirit of slavery; and how just have been your conclusions, let the following testimonies declare—we extract from an official communication to the secretary of the Navy, by Captain Joseph J. Nicholson of the Navy:—"The slave trade, within the last three years, has seriously injured the colony. Not only has it diverted the industry of the natives, but it has effectually cut off the communication with the interior. The war parties being in the habit of plundering and kidnapping for slaves all whom they meet, whether parties to the war or not, the daring of the slaver increases with the demand for slaves, which could not of late be supplied by the usual means; and within a year four slave factories have been established almost within sight of the Colony."

The following statement is taken from the "Colored American:"—A vessel arrived at Halifax on the 12th ult., from Kingston, Jamaica, which reports, that when two days out she fell in with a Spanish slaver bound to Havana, having four hundred poor wretched beings on board, in a state of starvation. Forty had died for want of food. The captain stated that the poor creatures had, during the past month, subsisted on rice water." Had we not been blinded by interest and by prejudice, our reason might have taught us that as long as the republic of the U. S. is a mart where human flesh and souls of men are bought and sold, so long will European and American cupidity furnish human merchandise for this detestable commerce. Thousands of slaves have been introduced into the United States through the island of Cuba, since the slave trade was declared piracy by our national legislature. We stand before the world as a nation of hypocrites, and you are equally concerned, as American citizens, to labor to bring your country to a sense of her crimes. You are equally concerned to do all that can be done, to arrest the progress of the spirit of colonization, which takes our countrymen from their native land without their consent, by giving them the cruel alternative of slavery or banishment, breaks up the tenderest ties of nature and casts them on a foreign soil. And what is our international slave trade, but compulsory colonization. "There have been transported—doubtless