blishments at Liberia, which they deem to be essential to h and religious improvement. On such annunciations, an ag Mr. Birney's former zeal for Colonization might surely hav peal not likely to be disregarded by Christian slaveholders. It may be noticed as one of many illustrations of Mr. sistency in reasoning, that though he had shortly before laws in some slaveholding State or States prohibiting the slaves, and though in this dialogue the complaint is repea mediate connexion with the renewal of the reproach, he e how great is the absurdity to educate in bonds those who a be free!" If he means to abandon the complaint, and to sta culation, he must be understood to denounce, not only in g struction, whether religious or moral, of slaves, but even in the owner intends their speedy manumission. If Mr. B. were not rather too nervous for imitation, we might say, h "absurdity" of making slaves free, without having used and opportunity could be obtained to qualify them by ed fullest enjoyment of the blessings of liberty!

We come now to the second general head of Mr. Birney

"I now propose," says Mr. B., "in the second place to speak of th spirit of colonization upon the free people of color. It will be admitted. one acquainted with its history, that it originated in feelings of kindne lored people as well as in prospects of future good to the whites.* So Mr. Jefferson proposed to the Legislature of Virginia, that all the offspr after that time, should be free at their birth-brought up at public expe cording to their geniuses, to the arts, sciences, or tillage-and furnishe venience for emigration to such a place as might be provided for ther

SON WAS BUT A LITTLE DISTANCE IN THE REAR OF THE ABOLITIONI SENT DAY-HIS SCHEME EMBRACING AN IMMEDIATE ABROGATION CEPT IN REFERENCE TO THE SLAVES THEN IN BEING; AND LEAVING IT WOULD SEEM RIGHT IT SHOULD BE, ENTIRELY TO THE OPTION O

MAN. It did not wring from the weak their "consent" to removal, by ternative of hopeless slavery on the one hand, and banishment from th the other; but LEFT THEM FREE, TO CHOOSE WHETHER THEY WOU AS FREEMEN, OR MIGRATE, IN THE SAME CHARACTER, TO ANOT WOULD PLEASE THEM BETTER. This plan, taken in connexion wi sentiments expressed elsewhere, on the subject of slavery, leaves no d mordia of colonization originated in charitable feelings towards those w before his eyes: for, whatever may have been Mr. Jefferson's sentime jects, wherever human liberty or national justice was restrained, he w advocate of all from whom it was withheld, be they white or red or black

The stress here laid on Mr. Jefferson's authority, has in certain by reference to his writings the grounds of the clain parent, "pulchrioris filia," of modern Abolitionism, and o that his views of manumission did not involve deportation. attention is requested to the portions of the foregoing ext have caused to be printed in capital letters.

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1832, 18mo. p. 280,) Mr. Jefferson thus describes a part of the plan proposed in 1777 for revising the laws of that Commonwealth:

"To emancipate all slaves born after passing the Act. The bill reported by the re'visors does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was pre'pared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up at the public expense, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be 'COLONIZED to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of household and handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c., to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they have acquired strength; and to send ' vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed. 'It will probably be asked, why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying by impcrtation of white settlers the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances will divide us into parties, and • produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermmation of one or the other race. To these objections, which are political, may be added others which are physical and moral."

In a letter dated January 21, 1811, to Mr. John Lynd, Mr. Jefferson says:

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"You have asked my opinion on the proposition of Ann Mifflin, to take measures for procuring on the coast of Africa, an establishment, to which the people of color of these United States might, from time to time, be colonized, under the auspices of different governments. Having long ago made up my mind on this subject, I have no hesitation in "saying, that I have ever thought that the most desirable measure that could be adopted, for gradually drawing off this part of our population-most advantageous for themselves as well as for us; going from a country possessing all the useful arts, they might be the means of transplanting them among the inhabitants of Africa; and would thus carry back to the country of their origin, the seeds of civilization; which might render their sojournment here a blessing, in the end, to that country."

The writer then states, that in the year 1805, he had received a letter from the Governor of Virginia, consulting him "at the request of the legis lature of that State*, on the means of procuring some such asylum to which these people might be occasionally sent;" and mentions his unsuccessful overtures to the Sierra Leone company and to the Portuguese government. The letter concludes with the following words. "Indeed, nothing is more to ‹ be wished, than that the United States would, themselves, undertake to make 'such an establishment on the coast of Africa.†”

In the letter to Mr. John Holmes, before quoted, dated April 22, 1820, Mr. Jefferson says, on the subject of slavery in the United States:

"I can say with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The ⚫cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and gradually and with due sacrifices, I think it might be."-[Jefferson's Works, Vol. 4, p. 324.

In his memoir of his own life, begun in 1821, Mr. Jefferson, referring to his plan of emancipation, says:

* For a correspondence on this subject between the Governor of Virginia and President Jefferson, beginning in the year 1801, and certain proceedings of the Legislature of that State connected with it, see African Repository, Vol. 8, p 97-106.

†This letter will be found in the first Report of the American Colonization Society, p. 13, 14.

"The bill on the subject of slaves, was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting 'them, without any intimation of a plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment, 'whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment, however, 'were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and DEPORTA'TION at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposi'tion, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear ' and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of 'fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally 'free, CANNOT LIVE IN THE SAME GOVERNMENT. Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu, filled up by free white labourers." [Jefferson's Works, Vol. 1, p. 39, 40.

In a letter to Mr. Jared Sparks, dated February 4, 1834, Mr. Jefferson says, "The article" [in the North American Review] "on the African Colonization of the people of color, to which you invite my attention, I have read with great consideration. It is, indeed, a fine one, and will do 'much good. I learn from it more, too, than I had before known, of the 'success and promise of that Colony." After mentioning as one rational object of establishing a colony on the coast of Africa, the introduction among the Aborigines of "the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of 'civilization and science;" he says, "to fulfil this object, the colony of 'Sierra Leone promises well, and that of Mesurado adds to our prospect of 'success." -Ibid. Vol. 4, p. 388.

He then states as the other rational object of African Colonization, the removal to Africa of the whole colored population of the United States; and assigns his reasons for the opinion that it cannot be effected by a location on the coast of Africa; refers to his own plan of emancipation; and indicates St. Domingo as a suitable place for colonizing the deported individuals. But we hear nothing from Mr. Jefferson about the American Colonization Society's "wringing from the weak their 'consent' to removal." In the same letter, speaking again of his plan for getting rid of slavery, Mr. Jefferson says that it is

"By emancipating the after born, leaving them on due compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age for DEPORTATION. This was the result of my reflections on the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to conceive any other practicable plan." "In the plan sketched in the Notes on Virginia, no * particular place of asylum was specified; because it was thought possible, that in the revolutionary state of America, then commenced, events might open to us some one 'within practicable distance."—[Ibid. Vol. 4, p. 389, 390.

*

From the foregoing citations it appears that in 1777, Mr. Jefferson proposed a plan for emancipating the slaves, of which one feature was, that at defined periods "they should be cOLONIZED to such places as the circumstances of the time should render most proper:" that he considered the emancipation of the slaves and their continued residence in the same country with the whites, as forbidden by invincible objections, and that such a project would be followed "by convulsions which [would] probably never end but in the ex'termination of the one or the other race:" that twenty-eight years afterwards, while filling the office of President of the United States, he entered into negotiations to procure a Colonial asylum for manumitted slaves: that a years subsequently he described Colonization to be "the most desirable measure that could be adopted for gradually drawing off" our coloured population, and strongly advised "that the United States would themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of Africa:" that in 1820 he referred to a "general emancipation and expatriation," in terms showing that he regarded their union in the same scheme as being the only "practicable

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way" of relieving his country from the "heavy reproach" of African Slavery:* that in 1821, he characterized his plan as combining emancipation and "deportation," and emphatically expressed the opinion that the black and white "races, equally free, CANNOT live in the same government:" and that three years after the last named period, referring again to the same plan, he speaks of DEPORTATION as a part of it. And yet, in the teeth of all these declarations, Mr. James G. Birney comes forward and asserts before the world that

"Mr. Jefferson was but a little distance in the rear of the abolitionists of the present day; that his scheme embraced an abrogation of slavery, except in reference to the slaves then in being; and LEAVING EMIGRATION, as it would seem right it should be, ENTIRELY TO THE OPTION OF THE COLORED MAN;" and that it left the colored People "free to choose whether THEY WOULD REMAIN HERE AS FREEMEN, or migrate, in the same character, to another home that would please them better”!

Palpable as this misrepresentation is, Mr. Birney's character forbids the conclusion that it is wilful. But it displays such gross inaccuracy, as to require from every reader, whose object is "the advancement of truth," suspicious scrutiny into all the statements and reasonings of a writer who can, in any instance, fall into such "indefensible error."

It will not escape the reader's observation, that even had Mr. Jefferson expressed the opinion ascribed to him by Mr. B., and even, what is more important, were that opinion correct, it would not, nevertheless, sustain the objection which is raised. The offer of the Society to the Free People of Colour, is to send to Liberia such of them as are willing to go thither. Now, as their residence in the United States is, by general admission, attended with many vexatious circumstances, what harm does the Society do by proposing an alternative, even supposing such alternative to be ineligible?Their free choice between remaining as they are and accepting it, is not controlled by the fact of its being proposed. And so, too, in regard to such of the manumissions resulting from the incidental operation of the Society's scheme, as are conditioned on removal to the Colony. Is the slave injured by the option extended to him of continuing a slave or emigrating to Liberia? Surely not, though his deliberations may end in a preference of slaThe Colonization Society, it should always be borne in mind, has neither, on the one hand, professed the doctrine that no slave ought to be manumitted except on the condition of deportation; nor has it, on the other, undertaken to condemn such laws of the State governments as prescribe that condition. By pursuing either of these courses, it would have deliberately infringed its own Constitution, and have been a volunteer impotent except for mischief.

very.

After some compliments to the late venerable Dr. Finley's heart, and a counteracting depreciation of his understanding; a suggestion that he held opinions "mingled with indefensible error and prejudice''(!!); an account of his colonizing plan; an allusion to that hack of poets and novelists, the Upas tree; and a contrast, equally original, between the government of Turkey and that of the United States; Mr. B. declares that in the former country,

In the memorial of the American Colonization Society, subscribed by its President, the lamented Judge Washington, and submitted to the Congress of the United States in 1817, by Mr. John Randolph, of Virginia, the following language is held:

"The existence of distinct and separate casts or classes, forming exceptions to the gene⚫ral system of polity adapted to the community, is an inherent vice in the composition of • society, pregnant with baleful consequences, both moral and political, and demanding the utmost exertion of human energy and foresight to remedy or remove."-[African Repository, Vol. 3, p. 176.

a "conscience-calming expedient for the present exigency. tlemen persist in involving a practical question in the meshes they ought at least to exhibit fully and fairly the bearings principle on which they rest. Now, did it never occur to it undoubtedly must have done to the signers of the Decla pendence, that the "inalienable rights" of individuals are n by their social union? that self-preservation is an inalienabl ciety? that it may properly apply this principle to the grant of accessions to itself? or that the people of the United Stat right to judge of the tendency of any system or project to aff or happiness, and to determine accordingly on accepting or system or project? Will Mr. B. affirm that they have prond able judgment on any plan, except that of Colonization, whi to been devised for the benefit of the African race? He has the Colonizing scheme has obtained great popularity in the When, therefore, he urges the withdrawal of public confid scheme, instead of raising a hue and cry against it, he should and particularly, his substitute. To say that the liberated sla eral plan of emancipation, will consent "to take a lowly United States, assumes the very point in controversy, namely take either a lofty or a lowly station there, with safety t selves or the whites. It is not our business, though it ough Mr. Birney's, to argue this question.

T

Mr. B. having tried his hand at soliloquies and dialogue this part of the letter, in another dramatic variety entitled " 'free-man of-colour's most probable train of reflections." of this episode is rather more wordy than that of the residue and considerably more mischievous. What good purpose white or the coloured race can be accomplished by such infl tense and strife stirring appeals, it is for their authors to expl means, Mr. Birney boasts, the free blacks have been made h nization. If so, those who have excited these unfortunate I the only scheme which has done any thing for their relief, b fearful responsibility. Mr. B. gives a statement, the correc we shall not stop to examine, of the expeditions to Liberia, in "that the free coloured people have almost entirely abandone of Colonization. The proof of this proposition is, that t number of emigrants by four recent expeditions were 260, were manumitted slaves. But this is also evidence that the Society tends to promote emancipation; a doctrine which, membered Mr. Birney had called in question. The emb either the cause or the advocate must be extreme, when th one part of it so often refutes the argument in another.

The only feature of reasoning observable in the "train