dinary paths which a benign
Providence has left open to the human race. Those great ends, it is
conceived, may be accomplished by making adequate provision for
planting, in some salubrious and fertile region, a colony, to be
composed of such of the above description of persons as may choose
to emigrate; and for extending to it the authority and protection
of the United States, until it shall have attained sufficient
strength and consistency to be left in a state of independence.

Independently of the motives derived from political foresight and
civil prudence on the one hand, and from moral justice and
philanthropy on the other; there are additional considerations, and
more expanded views to engage the sympathies and excite the ardour
of a liberal and enlightened people. It may be resolved for our
government (the first to denounce an inhuman and abominable
traffic, in the guilt and disgrace of which most of the civilized
nations of the world were partakers) to become the honourable
instrument, under Divine Providence, of conferring a still higher
blessing upon the large and interesting portion of mankind,
benefited by that deed of justice; by demonstrating that a race of
men, composing numerous tribes, spread over a continent of vast and
unexplored extent, fertility and riches; known to the enlightened
nations of antiquity; and who had yet made no progress in the
refinements of civilization; for whom history has preserved no
monuments of arts or arms; that even this hitherto ill-fated face
may cherish the hope of beholding, at last, the orient star
revealing the best and highest aims and attributes of man. Out of
such materials, to rear the glorious edifices of well ordered and
polished society, upon the deep and sure foundations of equal laws
and diffusive education, would give a sufficient title to be
enrolled among the illustrious benefactors of mankind; whilst it
afforded a precious and consolatory evidence of the all-prevailing
power of liberty, enlightened by knowledge and corrected by
religion. If the experiment, in its remote consequences, should
ultimately tend to the diffusion of similar blessings through those
vast regions and unnumbered tribes yet obscured in primeval
darkness; reclaim the rude wanderer, from a life of wretchedness,