e who
are in servitude by turning them loose upon the country, and a dread of
increasing the number of their enemies. It creates and nourishes the
bitterest animosity against the free blacks. It has spread an alarm
among all classes of society, in all parts of the country; and, acting
under this fearful impulse, they begin to persecute, believing
self-preservation imperiously calls for this severe treatment. The
legislative enactment of Ohio, which not long since drove many of the
colored inhabitants of that State into Upper Canada, was the legitimate
fruit of the anathemas of the Colonization Society. A bill has been
reported in the same legislature for preventing free people of color
from participating in the benefit of the common school fund, in order to
hasten their expulsion from the State! Other States are multiplying
similar disabilities, and hanging heavier weights upon their free
colored population. The Legislature of Louisiana has enacted that
whosoever shall make use of language, in any public discourse, from the
bar, the bench, the pulpit, the stage, or in any other place whatsoever
shall make use of language, in any private discourses, or shall make use
of signs or actions having a tendency to produce discontent among the
colored population, shall suffer imprisonment at hard labor, not less
than three years, nor more than twenty-one years, or DEATH, at the
discretion of the court!! It has also prohibited the instruction of the
blacks in Sabbath Schools--$500 penalty for the first offence--DEATH for
the second!! The Legislature of Virginia has passed a bill which
subjects all free negroes who shall be convicted of remaining in the
commonwealth contrary to law, to the liability of _being sold by the
sheriff_. All meetings of free negroes, at any school-house or
meeting-house, for teaching them reading or writing, are declared an
unlawful assembly; and it is made the duty of any justice of the peace
to issue his warrant to enter the house where such unlawful assemblage
is held, for the purpose of apprehending or dispersing such free
negroes. A fine is to be imposed on every white person who instructs at
such meetings. All emancipated slaves, who shall remain more than twelve
months, contrary to law, shall revert to the executors as assets. Laws
have been passed in Georgia and North Carolina, imposing a heavy tax or
imprisonment on every free person of color who shall come into their
ports in the capacity of ste