452           JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 19,

ted soon becomes corrupted by the evil practices of the free
companion, and the master is compelled to dispose of him, or
he runs away by the aid of the free negro in combination
with abolitionists. In either event the slave is gone, but the
free negro remains.

All our past legislation respecting our free negro popula-
tion, seems to have been based on the hypothesis of their fit-
ness for civilization, Christianity, and the great problem of
autonomy. And notwithstanding the repeated failures
that have attended the efforts of Great Britain, France and
the United States, in this respect, there are still very many
whose missionary zeal blinds them to this fact. The history
of the West Indies, and that of colonization in Africa, bear
sad, yet ample testimony to the incapacity of the negro race
for attainments befitting a civilized people. The language of
Hayti and Jamaica, Sierra Leone and Liberia, all speak the
same truths and drive us to to the same conclusions. Slave-
ry is their normal condition, and for wise and beneficient pur-
poses, Deity marked them out as a distinct and servile race,
and adapted their habitudes to the uses and necessities of civ-
ilized and Christian nations. "Hath not the potter power
over the clay to make one vessel unto honor and another
unto dishonor?" Yet most men war against this striking
phase in the economy of God. Preferring their own views of
the fitness of things, they assume equality for the human fam-
ily, and torture themselves with inventions to overturn God's
arrangements. Such has been the history of colonization in
Africa; and such the basis of Abolitionism in this country.

The Rev. J. Leighton Wilson, a distinguished Missionary
in Africa for the last eighteen years, tells us that "the whole
of Western Africa is tending towards disorganization."—
Page 189. And this too the principal field of Missionary ef-
forts for the last two centuries. The same author, while
speaking of the colony in Liberia, says: "The want of dispo-
sition to cultivate the soil is, perhaps the most discouraging fea-
ture in the prospects of Liberia. Mercantile pursuits are fol-
lowed with zeal and energy, but comparatively few are wil-
ling to till the ground for means of subsistance."—Page 407.
From the same author, and others, we have repeated proofs
of the proneness of our free negroes to go back into heathen-
ism, when sent into Africa. Millions upon millions of dollars
have been raised since 1817, in aid of the American Coloni-
zation Society, and yet only 8,000 negroes have been sent there
since that time; and most of those were slaves set free upon
condition of their going—the free negro seldom goes. The
anniversary meetings of that society furnish occasions for or-
atorical displays of nicely rounded sentences well spoken,
scanning in the distance good times ahead, never to be re-
alized.