Page:An address to the free people of color of the state of Maryland.djvu/5



some degree, your shadowy rights and privileges. And is there any prospect that this policy of the State will be soon changed? None. In your social relations to the whites, do you see any indications of improvements? I venture to assert, none—on the contrary, the line of separation becomes broader and broader every year. The more you advance in intelligence, the more you elevate yourselves, the nearer you assume an erect, independent position, the more obnoxious you become to the dominant race. Hence, your exclusion from many employments in the free cities of the North, and hence, the Legislation in various Northern States preventing your immigration. As you can never be citizens, you must be considered aliens, although born on the soil, and the Legislature of the State consider your residence in it prejudicial to its interest; and although they freely give thousands and hundreds of thousands to remove you from it, and improve your condition when so removed, they will never consent that your residence here will be made more tolerable than at present. This seems to be the settled, acknowledged policy of the State under whose Government you live. Now, can you do anything to change this policy, or have you ever attempted it? No, notwithstanding the increasing stringency of the laws, you have never yet ventured to address the Legislature for relief—the surest evidence of your utter want of hope in this respect. As you have failed to petition or remonstrate, 'tis not to be supposed that you could ever entertain the thought of resistance. The alternatives, therefore, are, to continue a life of base subordination, or to flee. The case is fairly put to each and every one of you. and each and every one is responsible for the course he pursues. Individually, you may say, you have a right to remain, that your local attachments amid your indolence overbalance the spirit of manhood in you, and you will remain. To a certain extent, and in a certain sense, as individuals, you may have this right, but collectively—not. As a body of people, under the like circumstances, your cause is one, and each one is bound to act for the good of all. Each head of a family is bound to act for the good of that family, and the parent, who permits his children to grow up under influences that tend to destroy every thing noble and great in them, has much to answer for, more than he can answer satisfactorily, even to himself, if he will but reflect. Just suppose, for a moment, that the remaining here affected the body instead of the mind and spirit; that it became dwarfed and stooping; that the limbs crooked, the senses paralizedparalyzed [sic], and the whole skin foul and scaly—who would hesitate, for a moment, to leave a climate so detestable. Yet the effect on the mind is analogous. Your children are told that they can never arrive at any honorable distinction; that they can never perform any of the functions of government; that all the avenues of the higher walks of life, and even the mechanic arts, are shut to them; that, however great their capacities, they are doomed to a life of servitude in the lowest callings, that the basest white man living is politically and socially their superior, that from such a one they are liable to the grossest insults, which they dare not resist; in a word, that they are of a doomed