d break down
prejudice against color--schemes which were likely to be long in
progress, if we were to judge by the past--it seemed most
extraordinary that they should object to our efforts to take a portion
of these people out of the grasp of their present sorrows, and do for
them in Africa all that has been done for ourselves in America. Above
all things, is it not inexplicable, that they should consider slavery
on one side of the Atlantic, better than freedom on the other,--a
thought, proving him who held it unworthy of freedom anywhere. If this
was not a scheme, full of wisdom, of goodness and benevolence, he know
not what wisdom, goodness, or benevolence meant. They proposed to do
nothing without the free consent of the colored people. And now, if a
similar offer were made to every poor and unfortunate inhabitant of
Glasgow, and all of them chose to remain here, except one, and that
one were captivated by the account of some distant El Dorado, and
chose to push his fortune there, could the rest assume over this one
the right of saying, you shall not go; we are determined not to go,
and equally determined not to let you go. Yet the abolitionists have
been going about, from Dan to Beersheba, not only attacking and
vilifying the whites, for proposing to colonize the blacks with their
own free consent; but equally attacking the blacks for availing
themselves of the offer. And though the colony had been stigmatized as
a grave, as a place of skulls, it was the very place fitted by nature
for the black population, the land granted by God to their fathers. It
is in one sense, then, a matter of no moment, what the causes are
which induce the society to make the offer, or the black population to
emigrate to Africa--even on the showing of the abolitionists
themselves, the colored population are kept in a state of degradation;
and it is certainly just and good that means should be afforded them
for getting rid of that degradation. In the second place, he
maintained that this colonization scheme naturally tended to promote
the cause of general emancipation. To illustrate this, Mr.
Breckinridge read the following extract from the Maryland report of
1835, p. 17:--

The number of manumissions in the state reported to the board
since the last annual report, is two hundred and ninety-nine,
making the whole number reported as manumitted, since the
passage of the act of 1831, eleven hundred and one.

This extract sho