ed
to the community, is an inherent vice in the composition of
society; pregnant with baneful consequences, both moral and
political, and demanding the utmost exertions of human energy and
foresight to remedy or remove it. If this maxim be true in the
general, it applies with peculiar force to the relative condition
of the free people of colour in the United States; between whom and
the rest of the community, a combination of causes, political,
physical and moral, has created distinctions, unavoidable in their
origin, and most unfortunate in their consequences. The actual and
prospective condition of that class of people; their anomalous and
indefinite relations to the political institutions and social ties
of the community; their deprivation of most of those independent,
political, and social rights, so indispensable to the progressive
melioration of our nature, rendered, by systematic exclusion from
all the higher rewards of excellence, dead to all the elevating
hopes that might prompt a generous ambition to excel; all these
considerations demonstrate, that it equally imports the public
good, as the individual and social happiness of the persons more
immediately concerned, that it is equally a debt of patriotism and
of humanity, to provide some adequate and effectual remedy. The
evil has become so apparent, and the necessity for a remedy so
palpable, that some of the most considerable of the slave-holding
states have been induced to impose restraints upon the practice of
emancipation, by annexing conditions, which have the effect to
transfer the evil from one state to another; or, by inducing other
states to adopt countervailing regulations, and in the total
abrogation of a right, which benevolent or conscientious
proprietors had long enjoyed under all the sanctions of positive
law and of ancient usage. Your Memorialists beg leave, with all
deference, to suggest, that the fairest and most inviting
opportunities are now presented to the general government, for
repairing a great evil in our social and political institutions,
and at the same time for elevating, from a low and hopeless
condition, a numerous and rapidly increasing race of men, who want
nothing but a proper theatre, to enter upon the pursuit of
happiness and independence, in the or