and laws allow to all. It is therefore with painful
solicitude, and sorrowing regret, we have seen a plan for colonizing the
free people of color of the United States on the coast of Africa,
brought forward under the auspices and sanction of gentlemen whose names
give value to all they recommend, and who certainly are among the
wisest, the best, and the most benevolent of men, in this great nation.

If the plan of colonizing is intended for our benefit; and those who now
promote it, will never seek our injury; we humbly and respectfully urge,
that it is not asked for by us; nor will it be required by any
circumstances, in our present or future condition; as long as we shall
be permitted to share the protection of the excellent laws and just
government which we now enjoy, in common with every individual of the
community.

We, therefore, a portion of those who are the objects of this plan, and
among those whose happiness, with that of others of our color, it is
intended to promote; with humble and grateful acknowledgments to those
who have devised it, renounce and disclaim every connexion with it; and
respectfully but firmly declare our determination not to participate in
any part of it.

If this plan of colonization now proposed, is intended to provide a
refuge and a dwelling for a portion of our brethren, who are now held in
slavery in the south, we have other and stronger objections to it, and
we entreat your consideration of them.

The ultimate and final abolition of slavery in the United States, by the
operation of various causes, is, under the guidance and protection of a
just God, progressing. Every year witnesses the release of numbers of
the victims of oppression, and affords new and safe assurances that the
freedom of all will be in the end accomplished. As they are thus by
degrees relieved from bondage, our brothers have opportunities for
instruction and improvement; and thus they become in some measure fitted
for their liberty. Every year, many of us have restored to us by the
gradual, but certain march of the cause of abolition--parents, from whom
we have been long separated--wives and children whom we had left in
servitude--and brothers, in blood as well as in early sufferings, from
whom we had been long parted.

But if the emancipation of our kindred shall, when the plan of
colonization shall go into effect, be attended with transportation to a
distant land, and shall be granted on no other condition;