Page:The A. B. C. of Colonization.djvu/10

5 the Royal Arms of England, modest British matrons should be asked the question, "Whether any increase to the family is expected, and when?"

I consider it a gross outrage to humanity—a violent rending of the tenderest ties of nature, and injurious to morality, that heads of families above 40 years of age and those who have a certain number of children under ten years of age, should be excluded from the advantages and rights of emigration—that under other rules children beyond a certain number should be taxed £7. each on account of passage-money—that again single men passed the age of 35 should not be considered eligible, and that the "candidates most acceptable are young married couples without children." These, indeed, are evils, trials, temptations, and stumbling-blocks thrown in the way of weak human nature, which ought not to be; humanity should forbid it, and religion ought to raise her voice against it; the aged, if able to go, should not be left to pass the remainder of their days round a lonely and cheerless hearth, or to find their way to the workhouse. These evils, however, must not be charged to the Commissioners, for they are only the agents of a system, and I should not be doing justice to those Gentlemen, or to my own feelings, if I did not here acknowledge the many obligations I am under to them. But the country which had cheerfully paid twenty millions sterling to strike off the cankering chains of slavery, is not likely to countenance this violence to the dearest feelings of our nature. Colonization then, must be the instrument which must be used for breaking asunder these barriers thrown up against the natural egress of the people. Viewing it in a political light, I consider it highly injudicious for a Government to be in connection with an