ADDRESS OF RT. REV. THOMAS M. CLARK, D.D. BISHOP OF PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, RHODE ISLAND. WE celebrate the present anniversary of the American Colonization Society under peculiar and interesting auspices. Fifty years ago a few far-sighted Christian men, actuated by a pure and earnest faith, and having in view simply the elevation of the African and the rescue of Africa from barbarism, laid the foundation of an enterprise which has ever since pursued its quiet and unobtrusive way, gradually gaining favor and influence, and commending itself more and more to the favor of the judicious and the good. It has not failed to encounter some opposition, and this has come from very different quarters. On the one hand, it has been objected that the policy of the Society tended to rivet the chains of African slavery, and, on the other, that it must result in disturbing and making insecure the relations of the master and the slave. Both of these objections could hardly be valid; and now that, in the providence of God, the institution of slavery in this Republic no longer exists, both have ceased to have any pertinence, as indeed neither ever had any foundation. The cause of African colonization stands before the nation to-day in a new and most important aspect. By a process which, ten years ago, no one dreamed of or thought possible, four millions of slaves have been suddenly emancipated. The freedom of the African has been purchased at a terrible price; and the wrongs which our fathers inflicted upon these people when they tore them from their native homes, and brought them here to labor and die on a foreign shore, we have been made to expiate in tears and blood. Neither has this great end been accomplished without the endurance of terrible suffering on the part of the slaves themselves. Thousands upon thousands have perished by the highway, of cold and hunger; and, in this bleak January night, tens of thousands are wanderers without a roof to shelter them. What is to be done for this great multitude of human beings, thus suddenly cast upon their own resources? How are the new relations in which they stand to society to be adjusted? What is to be their social condition and their final destiny? These are questions involving one of the most delicate, difficult, and solemn problems ever presented to the consideration of man. They demand the broadest, profoundest, and most impartial judgment. It is unfortunate for the country, and unpropitious to the liberated slave, that they have become so intimately identified with political controversy, and, therefore, so much in danger of being handled mainly with a view to political and party ends. The call is all the more imperative upon those who really have at heart the welfare of the African, and honestly desire his elevation, to rally in his behalf, and, if possible, save him from being crushed between the Northern and the Southern mill-stone. The opinions of men as to the probable future of the African in this country are various and discordant. The remark most common upon the lips of those whom you meet in ordinary intercourse is, that the race will, sooner or later, fade away and become extinct. All history, we are told, shows that it is impossible for two distinct races to dwell together on terms of equality in the same land; and the inferior must yield either to the process of absorption or extermination. The statistics of our Northern cities are cited in confirmation of this theory. When the census of 1860 was taken in Philadelphia, it was found that, during a period of six months, there were among this people only one hundred and forty-eight births to three hundred and six deaths; the deaths being more than double the births. In Boston, from the years 1855 to 1862, there were three hundred and four births and five hundred deaths. This ratio, of course, is very much affected by the laws of climate. The North is not the natural home of the African, and he can hardly be expected to thrive there; but the returns from the whole United States show that while the rate of annual deaths among the whites is less than two and three-quarters per cent, or about one in every thirty-seven of the living, among the colored, it is |