tical projects of its
authors? No: this is impossible. Yet such is the language of
intemperate opposition, with which this Society has been
assailed by its enemies.' * * * 'Equally absurd and false is the
objection, that this Society seeks indirectly to disturb the
rights of property, and to interfere with the well-established
relation subsisting between master and slave. The man who avows
such monstrous purposes as these, and seeks to shelter himself
under the sanction and authority of the American Colonization
Society, is a base traitor to the cause which it seeks to
advance--AN ENEMY OF THE WORST AND MOST DANGEROUS STAMP, because
he assumes the specious garb of a friend and coadjutor. Let him
stand, or let him fall, by the verdict of an insulted and
outraged community--but do not make liable for his acts a great
Institution, whose real friends will be the first to reject and
discountenance him, and to mark upon his forehead in indelible
characters, "This is a traitor to the cause of his country and
the cause of humanity."--It is true that the friends of the
American Colonization Society have permitted themselves to
entertain the high and exalted hope, that, by its influences,
ultimate and remote, the burdens which are incident to slavery
may be greatly mitigated, and possibly the evil itself at some
future day be entirely removed. But mark, Mr President, and mark
well, ye hearers, the grounds upon which this hope is founded.
It could not be sustained by any effort, direct or indirect, to
invade the rights of the slaveholding community, for the plain
and palpable reason, that the effort itself would furnish the
most certain means of defeating the object in view, even
supposing the friends of the Society reckless enough to
entertain it. It would denote on the part of those who made it,
an extremity of madness and folly, wholly unprecedented in the
history of the world, and if persevered in, would dissolve the
government into its original elements, even though the principle
of union which holds it together were a thousand-fold stronger
than it is.' * * * 'Surely the friends of the Colonization
Society have done nought either to alarm the honest fears of the
patriot, or excite the morbid sensibilities of the
slaveholder.'--[Address delivered before the Lynchburg Auxiliary