The Liberator

THOUGHTS ON COLONIZATION.

Extract of a letter from a clergyman in a neighboring State.

I have been employed in reading your work on the Colonization Society. So far as I have read it, I like it: the spirit of it is good, and it will cost our opponents much labor to get over the truth and arguments there presented. It will do much to correct public opinion; and circumstances, which must be operating more and more to show the falsity of their doctrines generally and the bad spirit of their productions, will corroborate your statements and arguments. Your argument against the utility of the colony as a means of advancing christianity, if not at once perfectly convincing, is exceedingly fair and forcible, and will throw much light on the minds of those who are supporting it primarily to that end.

Rest assured that you have not written in vain, nor exposed the hypocrisy, ignorance and folly of many of the grand abettors of colonization. They will try to evade the force of your charges, but the testimony against them, as a whole, is unequivocal. The south will undoubtedly come into the scheme more and more—the north must withdraw, and then the machine will work on principles of selfishness and oppression, and will only help to make up the cup of trembling which is in the hand of the oppressors, and is ready to run over with destruction. The north, I trust, will enter upon the abolition of slavery and the improvement of the people of color here, and will establish missions among the natives of Africa. One half the money spent in direct missionary efforts in Africa, would, I believe, have converted, under God, more natives than the Colonization Society has sent emigrants to Africa; and these natives, many of them, might be preaching and distributing tracts and bibles in many parts of Africa. I have longed for the establishment of a missionary station in Africa, and am quite anxious that a Missionary Society should be established for that continent. The colored people would have confidence in such a plan, and so would the christian public. I have perhaps $20 collected at our monthly concert for foreign mission, particularly in Africa; but we know not what course to take with it, as there is no missionary society in the country which has missionaries among the natives.