of the free people of color while they remain in the United
States. _The charge is not true._' I reiterate the charge; and the
evidence of its correctness is before the reader. The Society prevents
the education of this class in the most insidious and effectual manner,
by constantly asserting that they must always be a degraded people in
this country, and that the cultivation of their minds will avail them
nothing. Who does not readily perceive that the prevalence of this
opinion must at once paralyze every effort for their improvement? For it
would be a waste of time and means, and unpardonable folly, for us to
attempt the accomplishment of an impossible work--of that which we know
will result in disappointment. Every discriminating and candid mind must
see and acknowledge, that, to perpetuate their ignorance, it is only
necessary to make the belief prevalent that they 'must be for ever
debased, for ever useless, for ever an inferior race,' and their
thraldom is sure.

I am aware that a school has been established for the education of
colored youth, under the auspices of the Society; but it is sufficient
to state that none but those who consent to emigrate to Liberia are
embraced in its provisions.

In the Appendix to the Seventh Annual Report, p. 94, the position is
assumed that 'it is a well established point, that the public safety
forbids either the emancipation or _general instruction_ of the slaves.'
The recent enactment of laws in some of the slave States, prohibiting
the instruction of free colored persons as well as slaves, has received
something more than a tacit approval from the organ of the Society. A
prominent advocate of the Society, (G. P. Disosway, Esq.,) in an oration
on the fourth of July, 1831, alluding to these laws, says,--'The public
safety of our brethren at the South requires them [the slaves] to be
kept ignorant and uninstructed.' The Editor of the Southern Religious
Telegraph, who is a clergyman and a warm friend of the colonization
scheme, remarking upon the instruction of the colored population of
Virginia, says:

'Teaching a servant to read, is not teaching him the religion of
Christ. The great majority of the white people of our country
are taught to read; but probably not one in five, of those who
have the Bible, is _a christian_, in the legitimate sense of the
term. If black people are as depraved and as averse to true
religion as the white people are--and we