Page:The A. B. C. of Colonization.djvu/19

14 Several Gentlemen feeling a benevolent interest in Colonization have also kindly consented to favour the meeting with their presence. When parties have thus satisfied their minds, and have resolved to emigrate, then they may be enrolled into groups, and their "references" entered into a roll-book, and to, which each may have access. Here the first link may be formed of an acquaintance which may be cemented by friendship by the time they arrive at the antipodes. Here they might make arrangements for their mutual comfort and advantage; their wives and children would be there; a lively sympathy would be created; honourable feelings would be awakened; the pride of an Englishman would be roused: men would feel as men; mothers would look with pride upon their children; that gaunt figure that haunts the poor man's door, pauperism, would at these meetings be shut out. Parents and husbands would feel, not with shame, but with honourable pride, the position they stood in—that a benevolent public was ready to co-operate with them, and thought them worthy to be entrusted with the means to transplant themselves and their children to a land where they hoped soon to be enabled, by their industry and frugality, to repay the advances made to them. This I would call Christian fraternity. How many kind feelings would then be struggling for mastery in the human heart. Those constituting these groups would feel a desire, a longing to do something worthy the confidence placed in them by the nation; they would experience the wish to have an opportunity of testifying their gratitude to a benevolent public, and to a merciful Providence, who had thus moved the hearts of the rich to aid them in their struggles. The opportunity is at hand, it is before them. Let the poor take comfort; Providence is wonderfully