ee affecting what they call 'a certain species of property in
slaves.' There are men of all sorts and descriptions concerned in this
Colonization Society: some exceedingly humane, weak-minded men, who
really have no other than the professed objects in view, and who
honestly believe them both useful and attainable; some speculators in
official profits and honors, which a colonial establishment would of
course produce; some speculators in political popularity, who think to
please the abolitionists by their zeal for emancipation, and the
slaveholders by the flattering hope of ridding them of the free colored
people at the public expense; lastly, some cunning slaveholders, who
see that the plan may be carried far enough to produce the effect of
raising the market price of their slaves. But, of all its other
difficulties, the most objectionable is that it obviously includes the
engrafting a colonial establishment upon the constitution of the United
States, and thereby an accession of power to the national government
transcending all its other powers."

The friends of the measure urged in its favor that it had been
recommended by the Legislature of Virginia. They enlarged on the happy
condition of slaves in that state, on the kindness with which they were
treated, and on the attachment subsisting between them and their
masters. They stated that the feeling against slavery was so strong that
shortly after the close of the Revolution many persons had voluntarily
emancipated their slaves. This had introduced a class of very dangerous
people,--the free blacks,--who lived by pilfering, corrupted the slaves,
and produced such pernicious consequences that the Legislature was
obliged to prohibit their further emancipation by law. The important
object now was to remove the free blacks, and provide a place to which
the emancipated slaves might go; in which case, the legal obstacles to
emancipation being withdrawn, Virginia, at least, might in time be
relieved from her black population.

A committee from the Colonial Society also waited on Mr. Adams,
repeating the same topics, and maintaining that the slave-trade act
contained a clear authority to settle a colony in Africa; and that the
purchase of Louisiana, and the settlement at the mouth of Columbia
River, placed beyond all question the right of acquiring territory as
existing in the government of the United States. Mr. Adams, in reply,
successfully maintained that the slave-trade a