Page:Africa's redemption.djvu/43

Rh interworking of these antagonistic principles in our nation, especially as it affects the condition and prospects of the negro race.

The God whose province it is to bring good out of evil, and whose administrative policy seems, in many of its aspects, to be a system of checks and balances, has made even abolitionism an incidental advantage, in some respects, to both colonization and emancipation, just in the way which those under the influence of the mania least expected. Had there been no abolition furor against the scheme of African colonization, it would doubtless have soon become popular with the free blacks who are much influenced by their cruel friends, and then the infant colony would have been overrun with emigrants, and been thrown into confusion by the unwieldy, incoherent mass put upon it. The colony has increased nearly as fast as was consistent with solidity and permanency. The hard and lasting woods are those which grow slowly The same cause prevented the slaveholders from liberating as fast as they would otherwise have done, which has been no disadvantage. It has had, too, a winnowing action upon emigration, tending to check the weak and ignorant, and unenterprising, and to send only those of a superior order, who were not to be daunted by passionate abuse and misrepresentation, nor by the inconveniences of the new country And it may be that God allowed the abolition party to rise up as a check to the general work of slave emancipation, to keep the slave where he was taken care of, until his home was ready for 6