f the
colored people, an audience may be elicited for any purpose whatever, if
the expounder is to be a colored person; and the introduction of any
subject is treated with indifference, if not contempt, when the
originator is a colored person. Indeed, the most ordinary white person,
is almost revered, while the most qualified colored person is totally
neglected. Nothing from them is appreciated.

We have been standing comparatively still for years, following in the
footsteps of our friends, believing that what they promise us can be
accomplished, just because they say so, although our own knowledge
should long since, have satisfied us to the contrary. Because even were
it possible, with the present hate and jealousy that the whites have
towards us in this country, for us to gain equality of rights with them;
we never could have an equality of the exercise and enjoyment of those
rights--because, the great odds of numbers are against us. We might
indeed, as some at present, have the right of the elective
franchise--nay, it is not the elective franchise, because the _elective
franchise_ makes the enfranchised, _eligible_ to any position
attainable; but we may exercise the right of _voting_ only, which to us,
is but poor satisfaction; and we by no means care to cherish the
privilege of voting somebody into office, to help to make laws to
degrade us.

In religion--because they are both _translators_ and _commentators_, we
must believe nothing, however absurd, but what our oppressors tell us.
In Politics, nothing but such as they promulge; in Anti-Slavery, nothing
but what our white brethren and friends say we must; in the mode and
manner of our elevation, we must do nothing, but that which may be laid
down to be done by our white brethren from some quarter or other; and
now, even on the subject of emigration, there are some colored people to
be found, so lost to their own interest and self-respect, as to be
gulled by slave owners and colonizationists, who are led to believe
there is no other place in which they can become elevated, but Liberia,
a government of American slave-holders, as we have shown--simply,
because white men have told them so.

Upon the possibility, means, mode and manner, of our Elevation in the
United States--Our Original Rights and Claims as Citizens--Our
Determination not to be Driven from our Native Country--the Difficulties
in the Way of our Elevation--Our Position in Relation to our
Anti-Slavery