here an anti-slavery man needs the confidence and encouragement of
friends, I take Washington to be that place.

Let me now call attention to the social influences which are operating
and cooperating with the slavery party of the country, designed to
contribute to one or all of the grand objects aimed at by that party.
We see here the black man attacked in his vital interests; prejudice and
hate are excited against him; enmity is stirred up between him and other
laborers. The Irish people, warm-hearted, generous, and sympathizing
with the oppressed everywhere, when they stand upon their own green
island, are instantly taught, on arriving in this Christian country, to
hate and despise the colored people. They are taught to believe that we
eat the bread which of right belongs to them. The cruel lie is told the
Irish, that our adversity is essential to their prosperity. Sir, the
Irish-American will find out his mistake one day. He will find that in
assuming our avocation he also has assumed our degradation. But for
the present we are sufferers. The old employments by which we have
heretofore gained our livelihood, are gradually, and it may be
inevitably, passing into other hands. Every hour sees us elbowed out of
some employment to make room perhaps for some newly-arrived emigrants,
whose hunger and color are thought to give them a title to especial
favor. White men are becoming house-servants, cooks, and stewards,
common laborers, and flunkeys to our gentry, and, for aught I see, they
adjust themselves to their stations with all becoming obsequiousness.
This fact proves that if we cannot rise to the whites, the whites can
fall to us. Now, sir, look once more. While the colored people are
thus elbowed out of employment; while the enmity of emigrants is being
excited against us; while state after state enacts laws against us;
while we are hunted down, like wild game, and oppressed with a general
feeling of insecurity--the American colonization society--that old
offender against the best interests and slanderer of the colored
people--awakens to new life, and vigorously presses its scheme upon
the consideration of the people and the government. New papers are
started--some for the north and some for the south--and each in its
tone adapting itself to its latitude. Government, state and national, is
called upon for appropriations to enable the society to send us out of
the country by steam! They want steamers to carry letters an