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Untitled Article
the plan . This is no less than the actual transportation across the Atlantic of the whole of the free coloured population , and ultimately of the whole negro population of the United States . And why ? Because ( I quote their own words ) * American whites
cannot help recoiling with horror at the idea of an intimate union with American blacks . Be their industry ever so great , their conduct ever so correct , whatever property they may acquire , and
whatever respect we may feel for their character , we could never consent , and they could never hope , to see the two races placed on a footing of perfect equality with each other . ' Such , for page after page , are the feelings towards their black countrymen which these patriots and philanthropists acknowledge in themselves , and both by their language and proceedings , encourage in the whites universally . They acknowledge that they are prejudices ; but they say , it is idle to trace their causes , and worse than idle to tell them , what they know full well , that they are unreasonable , unjust , and inhuman . Nevertheless , no dream , ' we are assured , ' can be more wild , than that of emancipating slaves , who are to
remain among them free . ' The plan , therefore , is , * draw off the free blacks to Liberia , then give freedom to the slaves , and let them follow / But , supposing this were practicable , what , I would ask , becomes of the other part of the plan—the benefit of Africa ? You profess a desire to diffuse among the natives of that continent the blessings of Christian institutions and civilized
society ; and for that purpose you propose to send thither an overwhelming multitude , who , by your own account of them , are * a
living pestilence' among yourselves , ' a greater nuisance than even the slaves / the very scum and offscouring of your population , kept down by your own absurd prejudices at the very bottom of the social scale , and , as it were , compelled to contract the idleness and the vices with which you reproach them . Are these the missionaries you would select in preference , to preach and
exemplify the blessings of civilization ? Are these the hands to which you propose to intrust the aacred message of the Gospel ? What can be reasonably expected but that a community formed out of such elements will be found deeply imbued with all the corruption which an education in ignorance and vice , excluded by common consent from all that is called or miscalled respectable in social infercourse , is calculated to create ?
Besides , what would be the effect of such a proceeding upon the natives ? They view with pleasure ( at least , for the roost part , they have hitherto viewed with pleasure ) the arrival among them of a few thousands of their own race , p eaceable and inoffensive , displaying the blessings of commerce , of knowledge , of religion ;—and we are even informed that a numerous body of them have already flocked in , to partake of these benefits under the immediate patronage of the Society . But the case would be widely different , if you were to pour in upon them successive hosts of the very
Untitled Article
American Colonization Society . 155
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 155, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/11/
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