cause of inflicting upon the inhabitants of Africa, we can
transmit to her the blessing of our arts, our civilization, and our
religion, may we not hope that America will extinguish a great portion
of that moral debt which she has contracted to that unfortunate
continent? Can there be a nobler cause than that which, whilst it
proposes, &c. contemplates the spreading of the arts of civilized life,
and the possible redemption from ignorance and barbarism of a benighted
quarter of the globe?

"It was proper and necessary distinctly to state, that he understood it
constituted no part of the object of this Meeting to touch or agitate in
the slightest degree, a delicate question connected with another
portion of the coloured population of our country. It was not proposed
to deliberate upon, or consider at all, any question of emancipation, or
that was connected with the abolition of slavery. It was upon that
condition alone, he was sure, that many gentlemen from the south and the
west, whom he saw present, had attended, or could be expected to
co-operate. It was upon that condition, only, that he had himself
attended."

* * * * *

Extracts from the speech of ELIAS B. CALDWELL, Esq. of the District of
Columbia.

"The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you
cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them, in their
present state. You give them a higher relish for those privileges which
they can never attain, and turn what we intend for a blessing into a
curse. No, if they must remain in their present situation, keep them in
the lowest state of degradation and ignorance. The nearer you bring them
to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of
possessing their apathy. Surely, Americans ought to be the last people
on earth, to advocate such slavish doctrines, to cry peace and
contentment to those who are deprived of the privileges of civil
liberty. They who have so largely partaken of its blessings--who know so
well how to estimate its value, ought to be among the foremost to extend
it to others."

These sentiments, it will be readily perceived, clash diametrically with
those which I had previously advanced in paragraph 30, on the subject of
extending mental cultivation to the African race in this country. And
notwithstanding I have no inclination to retract the sentiments which I
have heretofore had occasion to express, concerning the practical