ple of justice, and every feeling of humanity, a century ago, Africa would have been, at the present day, 'redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, and the slavery of her children brought to an end. No pirates would now haunt her coast, to desolate her villages with fire and sword, in order to supply a Christian people with hewers of wood and drawers of water. How much has been needlessly lost to the world by this criminal neglect!

The conception of evangelizing a heathenish country by sending to it an illiterate, degraded and irreligious population, belongs exclusively to the advocates of African colonization. For absurdity and inaptitude, it stands, and must for ever stand, without a parallel. Of all the offspring of prejudice and oppression, it is the most shapeless and unnatural.

No man of refined sensibility can contemplate the fate of the aborigines of this country, without shuddering at the consequences of colonization; and if they melted away at the presence of the Pilgrims and their descendants, like frost before the meridian blaze of the sun,-if they fell to the earth like the leaves of the forest before the autumnal blast, by the settlement of men reputedly humane, wise and pious, in their vicinage,- what can be our hopes for the preservation of the Africans, associated with a population degraded by slavery, and, to a lamentable extent, destitute of religious and secular knowledge? The argument, that the difference of complexion between our forefathers and the aborigines (which is not a distinctive feature between the settlers at Liberia and the natives) was the real cause of this deadly enmity, is more specious than solid. Conduct, not color, secures friendship or excites antipathy, as it happens to be just or unjust. The venerated William Penn and his pacific followers furnish a case in point.

I avow it—the natural tendency of the colony at Liberia excites the most melancholy apprehensions in my mind. Its

birth was conceived in blood, and its footsteps will be marked with blood down to old age-the blood of the poor natives -unless a special interposition of Divine Providence prevent such a calamity. The emigrants will be eager in the acquisition of wealth, ease and power; and, having superior skill and discernment in trade, they will outwit and defraud the natives as often as occasion permits. This knavish treatment once detected,—as it surely will be, for even an uncivilized people may soon learn that they have been cheated,-will provoke retaliation, and stir up the worst passions of the human breast. Bloody conflicts will ensue, in which the colonists will be victorious. This success will serve to increase the enmity of the natives, and to perpetuate the murderous struggle, until, by their subjugation, the colonists obtain undisputed possession of the land.

Heaven grant that these fears may prove to be only the offspring of a distracted mind! May the colonists be so just in their intercourse with the Africans, as never to tarnish their own integrity; so pacific, as to disarm violence and perpetuate good will; so benevolent, as to excite gratitude and diffuse joy wherever their names shall be known; and so holy, as to exalt the Christian religion in the eyes of an idolatrous nation! But he must be grossly ignorant of human nature, or strangely infatuated, who believes that they will always, or commonly, present such an example.

Examine this scheme. More than one-sixth portion of the American people-confessedly the most vicious and dangerous portion are to be transported to the shores of Africa, by means which are hereafter to be considered, and at an expense which we shall not stop now to calculate, for the purpose of civilizing and evangelizing Africa, and of improv. ing their own condition! Here, then, are two ignorant and depraved nations to be regenerated instead of one-two huge and heterogeneous masses of moral contagion min

gled together benevolently for the preservation of each! One of these is so deplorably stupid, or so unfathomably deep in degradation, (such is the argument,) that, although surrounded by ten millions of people living under the full blaze of gospel light, who have every desirable facility to elevate and save it, it never can rise until it be removed at least four thousand miles from their vicinage !—and yet it is first to be evangelized in a barbarous land, by a feeble, inadequate process, before it can be qualified to evangelize the other nation! In other words, men who are intellectually and morally blind are violently removed from light effulgent into thick darkness, in order that they may obtain light themselves and diffuse light among others! Ignorance is sent to instruct ignorance, ungodliness to exhort ungodliness, vice to stop the progress of vice, and depravity to reform depravity! All that is abhorrent to our moral sense, or dangerous to our quietude, or villanous in human nature, we benevolently disgorge upon Africa, for her temporal and eternal welfare! We propose to build upon her shores, for her glory and defence, colonies framed of materials which we discard as worthless for our own use, and which possess no fitness or durability! Admirable consistency! surprising wisdom! unexampled benevolence! As rationally might we think of exhausting the ocean by multiplying the number of its tributaries, or extinguishing a fire by piling fuel upon it.

Lastly. Any scheme of proselytism, which requires for its protection the erection of forts and the use of murderous weapons, is opposed to the genius of Christianity, and radically wrong. If the gospel cannot be propagated but by the aid of the sword,-if its success is to depend upon the military science and prowess of its apostles,-it were better to leave the pagan world in darkness. Yet the first specimen of benevolence and piety, which the colonists gave to the

natives, was the building of a fort, and supplying it with arms and ammunition! This was an earnest manifestation of that peace on earth, good will to man,' which these expatriated missionaries were sent to inculcate ! How eminently calculated to inspire the confidence, excite the gratitude, and accelerate the conversion of the Africans! Their ' dread of the great guns of the Islanders,' (to adopt the language of Mr. Ashmun,) must from the beginning have made a deep and salutary impression upon their minds; and when, not long afterward, every shot' from these guns spent its force in a solid mass of living human flesh'-their own flesh-they must have experienced an entire regeneration! Bullets and cannon balls argue with resistless effect, and as easily convert a barbarous as a civilized people. One sanguinary conflict was sufficient to spread the glad tidings of salvation among a thousand tribes, almost with the rapidity of light!

But-says an objector-these reflections come too late. The colony is planted, whatever may be its influence. What do you recommend? Its immediate abandonment to want and ruin? Shall we not bestow upon it our charities, and commend it to the protection of Heaven? I answer. Let the colony continue to receive the aid, and elicit the prayers of the good and benevolent. Still let it remain within the pale of Christian sympathy. Blot it not out of existence. But let it henceforth develop itself naturally. Crowd not its population. Let transportation cease. Seek no longer to exile millions of our colored countrymen. For, assuredly, if the Colonization Society succeed in its efforts to remove thousands of their number annually, it cannot inflict a heavier curse upon Africa, or more speedily accomplish the entire subversion of the colony.

But the objector asks-how shall we evangelize Africa ? In the same manner as we have evangelized the Sandwich

and Society Islands, and portions of Burmah, Hindostan, and other lands. By sending missionaries of the Cross indeed, who shall neither build forts nor trust in weapons of war; who shall be actuated by a holy zeal and genuine love; who shall be qualified to instruct, admonish, enlighten, and convert; who shall not by their examples impugn the precepts, nor subject to suspicion the excellence of the Word of Life; who shall not be covered with pollution and shame as with a garment, nor add to the ignorance, sin and corruption of paganism; and who shall abhor dishonesty, violence and treachery. Such men have been found to volunteer their services for the redemption of a lost world; and such men may now be found to embark in the same glorious enterprise. A hundred evangelists like these, dispersed along the shores and in the interior of Africa, would destroy more idols, make more progress in civilizing the natives, suppress more wars, unite in amity more hostile tribes, and convert more souls to Christ, in ten years, than a colony of twenty thousand ignorant, uncultivated, selfish emigrants in a century. Such a mission would be consonant with reason and common sense; nor could it fail to receive the approbation of God. How simple and comprehensive was the command of the Saviour to his disciples! Not-' Drive out from among yourselves those whom you despise, or against whom you cherish a strong antipathy; those who need to be instructed and converted themselves; those who are the dregs of society, made vicious and helpless by oppression and public opinion; those who are beyond the reach of the gospel in a Christian land; those whose complexions are not precisely like yours; drive out these to evangelize the nations which are in heathenish darkness'! But- Go YE into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.'

But-says the objector-the climate of Africa is fatal to white men.