Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/151

Rh country than England is ours, —nay, it is less so, because there is no community of language or habits:—besides, we cannot say to them, as Gilpin said to his horse, " 'Twas for your pleasure you came here, you shall go back for mine."

In the Virginia Debate of 1832 it was agreed that very few of the free colored people would be willing to go to Africa; and this is proved by several petitions from them, praying for leave to remain. One of the Virginian legislators said, "either moral or physical force must be used to compel them to go;" some of them advised immediate coercion; others recommended persuasion first, until their numbers were thinned, and coercion afterward. I believe the resolution finally passed the House without any proviso of this sort; and I mention it merely to show that it was generally supposed the colored people would be unwilling to go.

The planters are resolved to drive the free blacks away; and it is another evil of the Colonization Society that their funds and their influence coöperate with them in this project. They do not indeed thrust the free negroes off, at the point of the bayonet; but they make their laws and customs so very unequal and oppressive, that the poor fellows are surrounded by raging fires on every side, and must leap into the Atlantic for safety. In slave ethics I suppose this is called "moral force." If the slave population is left to its own natural increase, the crisis will soon come; for labor will be so very cheap that slavery will not be for the interest of the whites. Why should we retard this crisis?

In the next place, many of the Colonizationists, (I do not suppose it applies to all) are averse to giving the blacks a good education; and they are not friendly to the establishment of schools and colleges for that purpose. Now I would ask any candid person why colored