Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/158

144 could possibly be expected, when we consider that the emigrants are almost universally ignorant and vicious, without property, and without habits of industry or enterprise. The colored people in our slave States must, almost without exception, be destitute of information; and in choosing negroes to send away, the masters would be very apt to select the most helpless and the most refractory. Hence the superintendents of Liberia have made reiterated complaints of being flooded with ship-loads of "vagrants." These causes are powerful drawbacks. But the negroes in Liberia have schools and churches, and they have freedom, which, wherever it exists, is always striving to work its upward way.

There is a palpable contradiction in some of the statements of this Society.

"We are told that the Colonization Society is to civilize and evangelize Africa. Each emigrant,' says Henry Clay, the ablest advocate which the Society has yet found, is a missionary, carrying with him credentials in the holy cause of civilization, religion and free institutions!!'"

"Who are these emigrants—these missionaries?"

"The Free people of color. 'They, and they only,' says the African Repository, the Society's organ, 'are for colonizing Africa.'"

"What are their qualifications? Let the Society answer in its own words:

"'Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves themselves.'"—African Repository, vol. ii. p. 328.

"’A horde of miserable people—the objects of universal suspicion—subsisting by plunder.'"—C. F. Mercer.

"'An anomalous race of beings, the most debased upon earth.'"—African Repository, vol. vii. p. 230.

"’Of all classes of our population the most vicious is that of the free colored.'"—Tenth Annual Report of Colonization Society.

An Education Society has been formed in connection with the Colonization Society, and their complaint is principally that they cannot find proper subjects for instruction. Why cannot such subjects be found?