universe; full of wrath-impurity-ignorance-brutality—and awful impiety; full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; full of temporal suffering and eternal damnation. It is, says Pitt, a mass, a system of enormities, which incontrovertibly bid defiance to every regulation which ingenuity can devise, or power effect, but a total extinction; a system of incurable injustice, the complication of every species of iniquity, the greatest practical evil that ever has afflicted the human race, and the severest and most extensive calamity recorded in the history of the world. Fox calls it a most unjust and horrible persecution of our fellow creatures. The Rev. Dr. Thomson declares it is a system hostile to the original and essential rights of humanity—contrary to the inflexible and paramount demands of moral justice at eternal variance with the spirit and maxims of revealed religion-inimical to all that is merciful in the heart, and holy in the conduct and on these accounts, necessarily exposed and subject to the curse of Almighty God. It is, says Rowland Hill, made up of every crime that treachery, cruelty and murder can invent. Wilberforce says, it is the full measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its detestable pre-eminence. In this country, slavery is a system which leaves the chastity of one million females without any protection! which condemns more than two millions of human beings to remediless bondage! which authorises their sale at public vendue in company with horses, sheep and hogs, or in a private manner, at the pleasure of their owners! which, under penalty of imprisonment, and even death, forbids their being taught the lowest rudiments of knowledge! which, by the exclusion of their testimony in courts, subjects them to worse than brutal treatment! which recognizes no connubial obligations, ruthlessly severs the holiest relations of life, tears the scarcely weaned babe from the arms of. its mother, wives from their husbands, and parents from their children! But who is adequate to the task of delineating its t horrors, or recording its atrocities, in full? Who can number the stripes which it inflicts, the groans and tears and imprecations which it extorts, the cruel murders which it perpetrates ?

or who measure the innocent blood which it spills, or the degradation which it imposes, or the guilt which it accumulates? or who reveal the waste of property, the perversion of intellect, the loss of happiness, the burial of mind, to which it is accessary ? or who trace its poisonous influence and soul-destroying tendency back for two hundred years down to the end of time? None-none but God himself! It is corrupt as death—black as perdition-cruel and insatiate as the grave. To adopt the pervous language of another :-The thing I say is true. I speak the truth, though it is most lamentable. I dare not hide it, I dare not palliate it; else the horror with which it covereth me would make me do so. Wo unto such a system! wo unto the men of this land who have been brought under its operation! It is not felt to be evil, it is not acknowledged to be evil, it is not preached against as evil; and, therefore, it is only the more inveterate and fearful an evil.* It hath become constitutional. IT IS FED FROM THE STREAM OF OUR LIFE, and it will grow more and more excessive, until it can no longer be endured by God, nor borne with by man.

And this is the system, with which, as the reader has seen, the American Colonization Society is resolved not to interfere; and with the upholders of which, ministers of the gospel and professors of religion of all denominations have made a treaty of peace! Tell it not abroad-publish it not in the capitals of Europe-lest the despots of the old world take courage, and infidelity strengthen its stakes!

If men who are reputedly wise and good-if religious teachers and political leaders, those whose opinions are almost implicitly adopted, and whose examples are readily followed by the mass of the people—if such men suppress their voices on this momentous subject, and turn their eyes from its contemplation, and give the right hand of fellowship to the buyers and sellers of human flesh, is there not cause for lamentation and alarm? The pulpit is false to its trust, and a moral paralysis

*The term evil is used here in a criminal sense. I know that colonizationists regard slavery as an evil; but an evil which has been entailed upon this land, for the existence of which we are no more to blame than for the prevalence of plague or famine.

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has seized the vitals of the church. The sanctity of religion is thrown, like a mantle, over the horrid system. Under its auspices, robbery and oppression have become popular and flourishing. The press, too, by its profound silence, or selfish neutrality, or equivocal course, or active partizanship, is enlisted in the cause of tyranny-the mighty press, which has power,, if exerted aright, to break every fetter, and emancipate the land. If this state of things be not speedily reversed, we be all dead men.' Unless the pulpit lift up the voice of warning, supplication and wo, with a fidelity which no emolument can bribe, and no threat intimidate; unless the church organise and plan for the redemption of the benighted slaves, and directly assault the strong holds of despotism; unless the press awake to its duty, or desist from its bloody co-operation; as sure as Jehovah lives and is unchangeable, he will pour out his indignation upon us, and consume us with the fire of his wrath, and our own way recompense upon our heads. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters! When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.'

I know the covert behind which colonizationists take refuge. They profess to be—and, doubtless, in many instances areaiming at the ultimate emancipation of the slaves; but they are all for gradual abolition-all too courteous to give offence-too sober to be madmen-too discreet to adopt rash measures. But I shall show, in the progress of this work, that they not only shield the holders of slaves from reproach, (and thus, by assuring them of their innocence, destroy all motives for repentance,) but earnestly dissuade them from emancipating their slaves without an immediate expulsion. Fine conceptions of justice! Enemies of slavery, with a vengeance!

Suppose a similar course had been pursued by the friends of Temperance-when would have commenced that mighty reformation which has taken place before our eyes-unparalleled in extent, completeness and rapidity? Suppose, instead of exposing the guilt of trafficking in ardent spirits, and demanding instant and entire abstinence, they had associated themselves together for the exclusive purpose of colonizing all the drunkards in the land, as a class dangerous to our safety and irremediably degraded, on a spot where they could not obtain the poisonous alcohol, but could rise to respect and affluence-how would such an enterprise have been received? Suppose they had pledged themselves not to meddle' with the business of the traders in spirituous liquors, or to injure the 'property' of distillers, and had dwelt upon the folly and danger of 'immediate' abstinence, and had denounced the advocates of this doctrine as madmen and fanatics, and had endeavored, moreover, to suppress inquiry into the lawfulness of rum-selling-how many importers, makers and venders of the liquid poison would have abandoned their occupation, or how many of the four hundred thousand individuals, who are now enrolled under the banner of entire abstinence, would have been united in this great enterprise? Suppose, further, that, in a lapse of fifteen years, this association had transported two thousand drunkards, and the tide of intemperance had continued to rise higher and higher, and some faithful watchmen had given the alarm and showed the fatal delusion which rested upon the land, and the Society should have defended itself by pointing to the two thousand sots who had been saved by its instrumentality—would the public attention have been successfully diverted from the immense evil to the partial good? Suppose, once more, that this Society, composed indiscriminately of rum-sellers and sober, pious men, on being charged with perpetuating the evils of intemperance, with removing only some of the fruits thereof instead of the tree itself, should have indignantly repelled the charge, and said We are as much opposed to drunkenness, and as heartily deprecate its existence, as any of our violent, fanatical opposers; but the holders of ardent spirit have invested their capital in it, and to destroy its sale would invade the right of

property; policy at least, bids us not to assail their conduct, as otherwise we might exasperate them, and so lose their aid in colonizing the tipplers.' What would have been accomplished ? But no such logic was used: the duty of immediate reform was constantly pressed upon the people, and a mighty reform took place.

Colonizationists boast inordinately of having emancipated three or four hundred slaves by their scheme, and contemptuously inquire of abolitionists, What have you effected?' Many persons have been deceived by this show of success, and deem it conclusive evidence of the usefulness of the Colonization Society. But, in the first place, it is very certain that none of these slaves were liberated in consequence of the faithful appeals of the Society to the consciences of the masters; for it has never troubled their consciences by any such appeals. Secondly, it is obvious that these manumissions are the fruits of the uncompromising doctrines of abolitionists; for they are calculated to bring slaveholders to repentance, and they will yet liberate other slaves to be caught up and claimed by the Society as trophies of its success. Thirdly, it has been shown that while this Society (allowing it the utmost that it claims) is effecting very little and very doubtful good, it is inflicting upon the nation great and positive evil, by refusing to arraign the oppressors at the bar of eternal justice, and by obstructing the formation of abolition societies. It rivets a thousand fetters where it breaks one. It annually removes, on an average, two hundred of our colored population, whereas the annual increase is about seventy thousand. It releases some scores of slaves, and says to the owners of more than two millions- Hold on! do n't emancipate too fast!'

What have the abolitionists done? They have done more, during the past year, to overthrow the system of slavery, than has been accomplished by the gradualists in half a century. They have succeeded in fastening the attention of the nation upon its enormities, and in piercing the callous consciences of the planters. They are reforming and consolidating public opinion, dispelling the mists of error, inspiring the hearts of the timid, enlightening the eyes of the blind, and disturbing the