we ask no more than the age in
which we live demands, and which this nation, as republicans and
christians, should not refuse to grant.

Signed in behalf of the meeting.

RICHARD JOHNSON, Chairman.

R. G. OVERING, Secretary.

The foregoing resolutions and addresses are given in plain, it may be
occasionally in severe language; and display an intensity of feeling, a
depth of abhorrence, and a firmness of purpose, honorable to men who
appreciate their rights and love their country. Before I proceed,
however, to comment upon these important proceedings, I shall make some
quotations from the essays and addresses of colored writers, in order to
sustain my assertion that the American Colonization Society is directly
opposed to the wishes of our free colored population.

'A COLORED BALTIMOREAN'[AH] records his sentiments in the following
style:

'We believe, sirs, that the people of color in the United States
will never be prevailed over to abandon the land of their birth,
and every thing vernacular with them--to forego many advantages
which they now possess, and many more which they have in
prospect, for the imaginary, or if real, the fleeting and
short-lived honors held out to them by our "Americo-African
empire." Why should we exchange a temperate and salubrious
climate, adapted to our constitutions as Americans, for one, to
us, fraught with disease and death? Why should we leave a land
in which the arts and sciences are flourishing, and which is
beginning to yield to our research, for one, where the
irradiating beams of the sun of science have yet to be announced
by the bright star of hope? Why should we leave a land
illuminated with the blaze of gospel light, for one enshrouded
in pagan gloom? Why should we, who are in tolerable
circumstances in America, who enjoy many of the comforts of
life, and are evidently on the advanced march of mind, cast away
these certain, real, and growing advantages, for those which are
precarious and chimerical? Why should we abandon our firesides,
and every thing associated with the dear name of _home_--undergo
the fatigues of a perilous voyage, and expose ourselves, our
wives, and our little ones, to the deleterious influences of an
uncongenial sun, for the enjoyment of a liberty divested of its
usual accompaniments, surrounded with circumstances which
dimi