1860.] OP THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES.          583

other use of the remaining $5,000 than to apply it to the ac-
tual expenses, per capita, at prescribed rates, of such emi-
grants as they might actually send out to Africa. Of this
appropriation made by the act of 1858 not one dollar has yet
been drawn by the Board of State Managers from the Trea-
sury, for reasons to which I respectfully beg leave briefly to
refer.

The great mass of the free colored population of the State have
at all times manifested a strong indisposition to remove from
their old homes to a distant clime, whatever might be the
prospect of bettering their own condition and that of their
children by so doing. For a number of years past this in-
disposition has continued to manifest itself more and more
strongly; and those who best know them have been satisfied,
that the most untiring efforts have been made by those
opposed to the scheme of colonization, both white and colored,
to foster the prejudices and to add to the fears of all who
have from time to time manifested any disposition to emigrate.
Many have been persuaded by ignorant or designing persons,
that if they remain here their condition of social and political
inferiority to the white population will in time be ameliorated;
and those who have manifested any intention to leave the
country, have even been denounced as traitors to their race,
because they are told that their deliverance from the evils of
which they complain, will be due to the expected increase in
their aggregate number, and that thus every man who leaves
the State, retards to that extent the consummation they are
taught to look for. The friends of the cause of colonization
on the other hand have always held that the true interests of
the free colored people would be best promoted by their re-
moval from all contact with a superior and dominant race;
and that even under the circumstances which have long ex-
isted here, the African colonies offered to them homes where
they could enjoy far greater prospects of happiness and ad-
vancement than they could ever hope for in this country.
And whilst we have never advocated any attempt to compel
them by stringent measures to remove, we have always
avowed our belief that the time was rapidly approaching
when the growing pressure upon them, arising from the in-
crease of the white population, and the consequent competi-
tion for the means of livelihood, would require them to leave
the State, whether such departure were hastened by unfriendly
legislation or not. In anticipation of such a state of things,
the Colonization Society has confined its efforts, to aiding in
the removal of such of the free people of color as it could find
willing to emigrate, but chiefly in the preparation and estab-
lishment on the coast of Africa, of a Colony, adequate to the
reception of as many as may hereafter resort to it. The So-