Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/150

136 owners of slaves are willing to sanction any schemes of benevolence. The "Colonization Society may be a part of the grand system of the Ruler of the Universe, to provide for the transfer of negroes to their mother country. Their introduction into this land may have been one of the inscrutable ways of Providence to confer blessings upon that race—it may have been decreed that they shall be the means of conveying to the minds of their benighted countrymen, the blessing of religious and civil liberty. But I fear there is little ground to believe the means have yet been created to effect so glorious a result, or that the present race of slaves are to be benefited by such a removal. I shall trust that many of them may he carried to the southwestern States as slaves. Should this door be closed, how can Virginia get rid of so large a number as are now annually deported to the different States and Territories where slaves are wanted? Can the gentlemen show us how from twelve thousand to twenty thousand can be annually carried to Liberia?"

Yet notwithstanding such numbers of mothers and children are yearly sent from a single State, "separately or in lots," to supply the demands of the internal slave trade, Mr Hayne, speaking of freeing these people and sending them away, says: "It is wholly irreconcilable with our notions of humanity to tear asunder the tender ties, which they had formed among us, to gratify the feelings of a false philanthropy"!

As for the removal of blacks from this country, the real fact is this; the slave States are very desirous to get rid of their troublesome surplus of colored population, and they are willing that we should help to pay for the transportation. A double purpose is served by this; for the active benevolence which is eager to work in the cause, is thus turned into a harmless and convenient channel. Neither the planters nor the Colonization Society, seem to ask what right we have to remove people from the places where they have been born and brought up,—where they have a home, which, however miserable, is still their home,—and where their relatives and acquaintances all reside. Africa is no more their native