ld be reduced, for no new
plantations could be opened there as in a growing country like Liberia. It
would be impossible, therefore, for the Negroes immigrating there to take
up land and develop a class of small farmers as they were doing in Africa.
Under such circumstances, they contended, the Negroes in the West Indies
could not feel any of the "elevating influences of nationality of
character," as the white men would limit the influence of the Negroes by
retaining practically all of the wealth of the islands. The inducements,
therefore, offered the free Negroes in the United States were merely
intended to use them in supplying in the British dominions the need of men
to do drudgery scarcely more elevating than the toil of slaves.[l7]

Determined to interest a larger number of persons in diverting the
attention of the free Negroes from the West Indies, the colonizationists
took higher ground. They asserted that the interests of the millions of
white men in this country were then at stake, and even if it would be
better for the three million Negroes of the country gradually to emigrate
to the British dominions, it would eventually prove prejudicial to the
interests of the United States. They showed how the Negroes immigrating
into the West Indies would be made to believe that the refusal to extend
to them here social and political equality was cruel oppression and the
immigrants, therefore, would carry with them no good will to this country.
When they arrived in the West Indies their circumstances would increase
this hostility, alienate their affections and estrange them wholly from
the United States. Taught to regard the British as the exclusive friends
of their race, devoted to its elevation, they would become British in
spirit. As such, these Negroes would be controlled by British influence
and would increase the wealth and commerce of the British and as soldiers
would greatly strengthen British power.[l8]

It was better, therefore, they argued, to direct the Negroes to Liberia,
for those who went there with a feeling of hostility against the white
people were placed in circumstances operating to remove that feeling, in
that the kind solicitude for their welfare would be extended them in their
new home so as to overcome their prejudices, win their confidence, and
secure their attachment. Looking to this country as their fatherland and
the home of their benefactors, the Liberians would develop a nation,
taking the re