Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/155

Rh of citizens—and all this is because the prejudice is so great.

"The Managers consider it clear that causes exist and are operating to prevent their (the blacks) improvement and elevation to any considerable extent as a class, in this country, which are fixed, not only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, but of any human power. Christianity will not do for them here, what it will do for them in Africa. This is not the fault of the colored man, nor Christianity; but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than the laws of Nature!"—Last Annual Report of American Colonization Society.

"The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society—prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education,, can subdue—mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society; and from that station , be his talents, his enterprise, his virtues what they may. They constitute a class by themselves—a class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which none can be depressed."—African Repository, vol. iv. pp. 118, 119.

This is shaking hands with iniquity, and covering sin with a silver veil. Our prejudice against the blacks is founded in sheer pride; and it originates in the circumstance that people of their color only, are universally allowed to be slaves. We made slavery, and slavery makes the prejudice. No Christian, who questions his own conscience, can justify himself in indulging the feeling. The removal of this prejudice is not a matter of opinion—it is a matter of duty. We have no right to palliate a feeling, sinful in itself, and highly injurious to a large number of our fellow beings. Let us no longer act upon the narrow-minded idea, that we must always continue to do wrong, because we have so long been in the habit of doing it. That there is no necessity for the prejudice is shown by facts. In England, it exists to a much less degree than it does here. If a respectable