Page:A memoir of Granville Sharp.djvu/80

76 double share of sympathy. The suffering people of color, as peculiarly outraged and afflicted, were objects of peculiar compassion to them. The hearts of Englishmen were their home, even while colonial guilt made England, also, a house of bondage to them—but the British mind, after writhing for a while under the abomination, threw it finally and forever off, as we have seen in 1772. England remained their country, as it is the country of every man in the world, who flies to it from oppression. No white man is more honored there, than brown men, or sallow, or yellow men—or pale men, or red men; or white haired, or red haired, or black haired, or yellow haired, or brown haired, or curly haired, or long haired men—the only difference being, moral character and conduct. The black man; the man of mixed blood; the man, whose mother had been oppressed, not criminal—as honored and protected there, as a man of any possible tinge which a blanco-idolater could fabricate, even were he endowed with the powers of creation. When the American Colonization Society was formed, what was the United States' mind? What is it now?

Full of color-phobia! The land is full of it. It is exhibited in legislation, in custom and in feeling. The man is deemed a fool or a villain who is free from it. It is, above all, exhibited in its perfection, when thorough Colonizationists try to disprove it. Even the kind couple with whom I am now boarding, full of general kindness as they are, are full of it. "What! a colored man to be equal to me!! me, of the orthodox blood; (though browner than many of them!!) What! a colored man, tinged with the blood of suffering and of wrong, endured, not perpetrated, to be equal with me!!" Oh, horrible! Does not nature itself, cry out against it!!!

Some years ago, (not many) the King of Persia, hearing the United States mentioned, exclaimed, "The United States! What is the United States? Where is it? How big is it? Is it under ground or above ground? What kind of people inhabit it? Are they black or white, civilized or savage?" Was the King of Persia to be admired ? Yet he spoke the feeling of his country—and there are