slaveholders regard the free blacks
as dangerous to the subordination of their slaves, and are contemplating
their forcible removal. Think you, Sir, Mr. Webster was mindful of the
agreement you have discovered, when, on the 7th of last March, in his
place in the Senate, he proposed his magnificent scheme of taxing the
whole nation untold millions to give additional security to property in
human beings? "If," said the Massachusetts Senator, "any gentleman from
the _South_ shall propose a scheme of colonization to be carried on by
_this government_ upon a large scale, for the transportation of free
colored people to any colony or _any place in the world_, I should be
quite disposed to incur almost any degree of expense to accomplish the
object." The magnitude of the scheme, and the cost at which it is to be
accomplished, are thus hinted:--"There have been received into the
treasury of the United States EIGHTY MILLIONS of dollars, the proceeds
of the sales of the public lands ceded by Virginia. If the residue
should be sold at the same rate, the whole aggregate will exceed TWO
HUNDRED MILLIONS of dollars. If _Virginia and the South_ see fit to
adopt any proposition to _relieve_ themselves from the free people of
color among them, they have my free consent that the _government_ shall
pay _them_ any sum of money out of the proceeds which may be adequate
for the purpose." Will you, Sir, please to point out the article of the
agreement of 1787, which, while it restricts Congress from having any
thing to do with slavery, sanctions an appropriation not exceeding two
hundred millions of dollars, for the purpose of strengthening the
institution of slavery, by _relieving_ the slaveholders from the
presence of free people of color, and forcibly transporting to any place
in the world hundreds of thousands of native-born Americans, who have as
good a constitutional right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and
happiness on their native soil, as Mr. Webster himself? Mr. Webster, it
seems, now views the subject of negro colonization in precisely the same
light that he did thirty years since, although his _intentions_ on this,
as on various other points, have undergone marvellous changes. We learn
from a Massachusetts paper (_Congregationalist_, 6 July, 1849), that
this gentleman was in 1822 appointed by a public meeting to draft a
constitution for the State Colonization Society. After considerable
discussion in the committee he rose and said