THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY IS THE DISPARAGER OF THE FREE BLACKS.
The leaders in the African colonization crusade seem to dwell with a
malignant satisfaction upon the poverty and degradation of the free
people of color, and are careful never to let an opportunity pass
without heaping their abuse and contempt upon them. It is a common
device of theirs to contrast the condition of the slaves with that of
this class, and invariably to strike the balance heavily in favor of the
former! In this manner, thousands are led to look upon slavery as a
benevolent system, and to deprecate the manumission of its victims.
Nothing but a love of falsehood, or an utter disregard of facts, could
embolden these calumniators to deal so extensively in fiction. What! the
slaves more happy, more moral, more industrious, more orderly, more
comfortable, more exalted, than the free blacks! A more enormous
exaggeration, a more heinous libel, a wider departure from truth, was
never fabricated, or uttered, or known. The slaves, as a body, are in
the lowest state of degradation; they possess no property; they cannot
read; they are as ignorant, as their masters are reckless, of moral
obligation; they have no motive for exertion; they are thieves from
necessity and usage; their bodies are cruelly lacerated by the
cart-whip; and they are disposable property. And yet these poor
miserable, perishing, mutilated creatures are placed above our free
colored population in dignity, in enjoyment, in privilege, in
usefulness, in respectability!!
'There is a class, however, more numerous than all these,
introduced amongst us by violence, notoriously ignorant,
degraded and miserable, mentally diseased, broken-spirited,
_acted upon by no motives to honorable exertions_, SCARCELY
REACHED IN THEIR DEBASEMENT BY THE HEAVENLY LIGHT; yet where is
the sympathy and effort which a view of their condition ought to
excite? They wander unsettled and unbefriended through our land,
or sit indolent, abject and sorrowful, by the "streams which
witness their captivity." Their freedom is _licentiousness_, and
to many RESTRAINT WOULD PROVE A BLESSING. To this remark there
are exceptions; exceptions proving that to change their state
would be to elevate their character; that virtue and enterprise
are absent, only, because absent are the causes which create the
one, and the motives which produce the other.'--[African
Repository, vol. i. p. 68.]
'Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves
themselves.' * * * 'They knew that where slavery had been
abolished it had operated to the advantage of the masters, not
of the slaves: they saw this fact most strikingly illustrated in
the case of the free negroes of Boston. If, on the anniversary
celebrated by the free people of color, of the day on which
slavery was abolished, they looked abroad, what did they see?
Not freemen, in the enjoyment of every attribute of freedom,
with the stamp of liberty upon their brows! No, Sir; they saw a
ragged set, crying out liberty! for whom liberty had nothing to
bestow, and whose enjoyment of it was but in name. He spoke of
the great body of the blacks; there were some few honorable
exceptions, he knew, which only proved what might be done for
all.'--[African Repository, vol. ii. p. 328.]
'Although there are individual exceptions distinguished by high
moral and intellectual worth, yet the free blacks in our country
are, as a body, more vicious and degraded than any other which
our population embraces.' * * * 'If, then, they are a useless
and dangerous species of population, we would ask, is it
generous in our southern friends to burthen us with them?
Knowing themselves the evils of slavery, can they wish to impose
upon us an evil scarcely less tolerable? We think it a mistaken
philanthropy, which would liberate the slave, unfitted by
education and habit for freedom, and cast him upon a merciless
and despising world, where his only fortune must be poverty, his
only distinction degradation, and his only comfort
insensibility.' * * * 'I will look no farther when I seek for
the _most degraded, the most abandoned race on the earth_, but
rest my eyes on this people. What but sorrow can we feel at the
_misguided piety_ which has set free so many of them by
death-bed devise or sudden conviction of injustice? Better, far
better, for us, had they been kept in bondage, where the
opportunity, the inducements, the necessity of vice would not
have been so great. Deplorable necessity, indeed, to one borne
down with the consciousness of the violence we have done. Yet I
am clear that, whether we consider it with reference to the
welfare of the State, or the happiness of the blacks, it were
better to have left them in chains, than to have liberated them
to receive such freedom as they enjoy, and greater freedom _we
cannot, must not_ allow them.' * * 'There is not a State in the
Union not at this moment groaning under the evil of this class
of persons, a curse and a contagion whereever they reside.' * *
'The increase of a free black population among us has been
regarded as a greater evil than the increase of
slaves.'--[African Repository, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25, 197, 203,
374.]
'Mr. Mercer adverted to the situation of his native State, and
the condition of the free black population existing there, whom
he described as a horde of miserable people--the objects of
universal suspicion; _subsisting by plunder_.'--[Idem, vol. iv.
p. 363.]
'They leave a country in which though born and reared, they are
strangers and aliens; where _severe necessity_ places them in a
class of degraded beings; where they are free without the
blessings and privileges of liberty; where in ceasing to be
slaves of one, they have become subservient to many; where,
neither freemen nor slaves, but placed in an anomalous grade
which they do not understand and others disregard; where no kind
instructer, no hope of preferment, no honorable emulation
prompts them to virtue or deters from vice; their industry
waste, not accumulation; their regular vocation, any thing or
nothing as it may happen; their greater security, sufferance;
their highest reward, forgiveness; vicious themselves and the
cause of vice in others; discontented and exciting discontent;
scorned by one class and _foolishly envied by another_; thus,
and WORSE CIRCUMSTANCED, they, cannot but choose to
move.'--[Idem, vol. v. p. 238.]
'Of all the descriptions of our population, _and of either
portion of the African race_, the free people of color are, by
far, as a class, the MOST CORRUPT, DEPRAVED, AND ABANDONED. The
laws, it is true, proclaim them free; but prejudices, more
powerful than any laws, deny them the privileges of freemen.
They occupy a middle station between the free white population
and the slaves of the United States, and the tendency of their
habits is to corrupt both.' * * * 'That the free colored
population of our country is a great and constantly increasing
evil must be readily acknowledged. Averse to labor, with no
incentives to industry or motives to self-respect, they maintain
a precarious existence by petty thefts and plunder, themselves,
or by inciting our domestics, not free, to rob their owners to
supply their wants.' * * * 'If there is in the whole world, a
more wretched class of human beings than the free people of
color in this country, I do not know where they are to be found.
They have no home, no country, no kindred, no friends. They are
lazy and indolent, because they have no motives to prompt them
to be industrious. They are in general destitute of principle,
because they have nothing to stimulate them to honorable and
praise-worthy conduct. Let them be maltreated ever so much, the
law gives them no redress unless some white person happens to be
present, to be a witness in the case. If they acquire property,
they hold it by the courtesy of every vagabond in the country;
and sooner or later, are sure to have it filched from
them.'--[Idem, vol. vi. pp. 12, 135, 228.]
'The existence, within the very bosom of our country, of an
anomalous race of beings, THE MOST DEBASED UPON EARTH, who
neither enjoy the blessings of freedom, nor are yet in the bonds
of slavery, is a great national evil, which every friend of his
country most deeply deplores.... Tax your utmost powers of
imagination, and you cannot conceive one motive to honorable
effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the
conduct of a free black in this country. Let him toil from youth
to age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom--let him store his
mind with the most valuable researches of science and
literature--and let him add to a highly gifted and cultivated
intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and "unspotted from the
world"--it is all nothing: he would not be received into the
very lowest walks of society. If we were constrained to admire
so uncommon a being, our very admiration would mingle with
disgust, because, in the physical organization of his frame, we
meet an insurmountable barrier, even to an approach to social
intercourse, and in the Egyptian color, which nature has stamped
upon his features, a principle of repulsion so strong as to
forbid the idea of a communion either of interest or of feeling,
as utterly abhorrent. Whether these feelings are founded in
reason or not, we will not now inquire--perhaps they are not.
But education and habit, and prejudice have so firmly riveted
them upon us, that they have become as strong as nature
itself--and to expect their removal, or even their slightest
modification, would be as idle and preposterous as to expect
that we could reach forth our hands, and remove the mountains
from their foundations into the vallies, which are beneath
them.'--[African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 230, 331.]
'We have been charged with wishing only to remove our free
blacks, that we may the more effectually rivet the chains of the
slave. But the class we first seek to remove, are neither
freemen nor slaves; _but between both_, AND MORE MISERABLE THAN
EITHER.' * * * 'Who is there, that does not know something of
the condition of the blacks in the northern and middle States?
They may be seen in our cities and larger towns, wandering like
foreigners and outcasts, in the land which gave them birth. They
may be seen in our penitentiaries, and jails, and poor-houses.
They may be found inhabiting the abodes of poverty, and the
haunts of vice. But if we look for them in the society of the
honest and respectable--if we visit the schools in which it is
our boast that the meanest citizen can enjoy the benefits of
instruction--we might also add, if we visit the sanctuaries
which are open for all to worship,[S] and to hear the word of
God; we shall not find them there.' * * 'Leaving slavery and its
subjects for the moment entirely out of view, there are in the
United States 238,000 blacks denominated free, but whose freedom
confers on them, we might say, no privilege but the _privilege
of being more vicious and miserable than slaves can
be_.'--[Seventh Annual Report, pp. 12, 87, 99.]
'Placed midway between freedom and slavery, they know neither
the incentives of the one, nor the restraints of the other; but
are alike injurious by their conduct and example, to all other
classes of society.'--[Eight Annual Report.]
'Of all classes of our population, the most vicious is that of
the free colored. It is the inevitable result of their moral,
political, and civil degradation. Contaminated themselves, they
extend their vices to all around them, to the slaves and to the
whites.'--[Tenth Annual Report.]
'The question arises, where shall these outcasts go? Ohio, and
the free States of the West, which formerly invited them into
their bosom, no longer offer them a welcome home. Disgusted with
their laziness and vice, the inevitable concomitants of the
anomalous relation in which they stand to society, the
authorities of those States are seeking to get rid of what they
find, too late, to be a curse to any settlement of whites--a
thriftless race of vagabonds, whose footsteps are the sure
precursors of indigence and crime. One of the most intelligent
gentlemen of Ohio, (Mr Charles Hammond,) in a recent notice of
this subject, says, "This dangerous class of population has
increased considerably within a few years past, and the slaves
States cannot too soon adopt efficient measures to get rid of
it. Emigrations to Liberia ought to be provided for, and
insisted upon, and the legislatures should pass laws to prevent
emancipation, without adequate provision for the transportation
of the manumitted."'--[Lynchburg Virginian.]
'As it is now, they are for the most part in a debased and
wretched condition. They have the vices of our community without
its virtues. And what is worse, I speak of the majority, they
have no desire to rise from their state of abject depression--no
wish to gain a respectable elevation of character. Consequently
it is difficult, if not impossible, to present them motives
Which shall incite them to enter on a course of industry and
virtue.' * * * 'Bound by no political ties to the community in
which they dwell, and excluded for the most part from exercising
the rights and privileges of freemen, on the ground of their
alleged inferiority and worthlessness, they have no inducements
to abandon lives of indolence, sensuality and recklessness, or
to support the laws and institutions of the government placed
over them. Nothing but the fear of suffering the penalty of
violated law, can prevent them from preying on those among whom
they live.'--[Middletown (Ct.) Gazette.]
'They have taken the free black that, as a class, dwells among
us a living nuisance, nominally free, but bowed to the ground by
public opinion--IN ONE PART OF THE COUNTRY DULL AS A BRUTISH
BEAST, IN ANOTHER THE WILD STIRRER UP OF SEDITION AND
INSURRECTION--they have shewn him to be capable of quiet and
judicious self-government.-- ... We cannot shut our eyes any
longer upon the disadvantages of our black population, whether
in slavery or freedom. It is a sword perpetually suspended over
our heads by a single hair; it is the fountain of bitter waters
that poisons all our enjoyments.'--[Speeches of J. R. Townsend,
Esq. and W. W. Campbell, Esq. New-York city.]
'The fact was most glaring, without an inquiry, that the same
shackles which bound them, fastened them also to the resources
of the soil, and the interests of the community; and when these
were broken, and the incentives of authority removed, the weight
of ignorance, the want of better incentives, and the fatal and
untried power of grateful but ruinous idleness, sunk them to a
state, which, however elevated in theory, was in fact more
degraded and more miserable than that of bondage. In addition to
all this, pauperism, with the numerous evils of corrupt and
corrupting indolence, threatened to impose its sluggish weight
upon a groaning community. Hence, the progress of emancipation
was, for the time, most righteously arrested.'--[Address of the
Board of Managers of the African Education Society.]
'Who are the free people of color in the United States? In what
circumstances does philanthropy find them! There are indeed
individuals and families, who are sober, industrious, pious. But
what are the remainder, the mass? Every one knows that their
condition is deep and wretched degradation; but, only a few have
ever formed any accurate conception of the reality. The fact is,
that as a class they are branded. They have no home, no country,
no such personal interest in the welfare of the community, as
gives a certain degree of manliness to almost every white
man.... Three hundred thousand freemen in this country, are
freemen only in name, forming only little else than a mass of
pauperism and crime.... Here the black man is paralysed and
crushed by the constant sense of inferiority. He has no
effectual incentives to manly enterprise. He stands in a
degraded class of society; and out of that class he never dreams
of rising.'--[Christian Spectator.]
'This is the true condition of the free colored population of
our land. They are placed mid way between freedom and slavery;
they feel neither the moral stimulants of the one, nor the
restraints of the other, and are alike injurious to every other
class of the community.'--[Southern Religious Telegraph.]
I repel these charges against the free people of color, as unmerited,
wanton and untrue. It would be absurd to pretend, that, as a class,
they maintain a high character: it would be equally foolish to deny,
that intemperance, indolence and crime prevail among them to a mournful
extent. But I do not hesitate to assert, from an intimate acquaintance
with their condition, that they are more temperate and more industrious
than that class of whites who are in as indigent circumstances, but who
have certainly far greater incentives to labor and excel; that they are
superior in their habits to the hosts of foreign emigrants who are
crowding to our shores, and poisoning our moral atmosphere; and that
their advancement in intelligence, in wealth, and in morality,
considering the numberless and almost insurmountable difficulties under
which they have labored, has been remarkable. I am informed that
twenty-five or thirty years ago, the colored inhabitants of Philadelphia
scarcely owned a dollar's worth of real estate, whereas they now own
enough to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. This fact speaks
volumes in praise of their industry and economy; for, be it remembered,
they have had to accumulate this property in small sums, by shaving the
beards, cleaning the boots and clothes, and being the servants of their
white contemners, and in other menial employments. In Baltimore,
Philadelphia, New-York, and other places, there are several colored
persons whose individual property is worth from ten thousand to one
hundred thousand dollars;[T] and in all those cities, there are primary
and high schools for the education of the colored
population--flourishing churches of various denominations--and numerous
societies for mutual assistance and improvement, &c. In Philadelphia
alone, I believe, there are nearly fifty colored associations for
benevolent, literary, scientific and moral purposes.[U] Yet these are
the people of whom it is said, 'they are acted upon by no motives to
honorable exertions;' that they are 'scarcely reached in their
debasement by the heavenly light' (almost a denial of the power of the
Holy Ghost); that 'their freedom is licentiousness;' that 'they are a
greater nuisance than even the slaves themselves;' that they are 'the
most degraded, the most abandoned race on the earth;' that they are
'worse circumstanced than the slave population;' that they have 'no
privilege but the privilege of being more vicious and miserable than
slaves can be;' and that they are 'a thriftless race of vagabonds, whose
footsteps are the sure precursors of indigence and crime.' And these
false and infamous charges are brought against them by a Society which
professes to cherish for them the highest regard, and to be anxious to
give them respectability in the eyes of the world!
The truth is, the traducers of the free blacks have no adequate
conception of the amount of good sense, sterling piety, moral honesty,
virtuous pride of character, and domestic enjoyment, which exists among
this class. The spirited remarks of the colored citizens of New-York, in
their address to the public, (_vide_ PART II. p. 16,) in reference to
their calumniators, are exceedingly apposite: 'Their patrician
principles prevent an intercourse with men in the middle walks of life,
among whom a large portion of our people may be classed. We ask them to
visit the dwellings of the respectable part of our people, and we are
satisfied that they will discover more civilization and refinement, than
will be found among the same number of white families of an equal
standing.' A personal examination enables me to say that this challenge
is neither presumptuous nor boastful. I confess, I have been most
agreeably, nay, wonderfully disappointed, in my intercourse with them,
which is daily elevating them in my estimation. Many of their number I
proudly rank among my most familiar friends and correspondents.
With regard to the 'ragged set in Boston, crying out liberty!' every
candid resident will testify that this is a libellous representation;
that our free blacks are a quiet, orderly, well-dressed, and (as far as
they can obtain employment) industrious class of citizens; and that
their improvement is rapid and constant. Every curious observer who
visits their houses of worship, will be surprised at the general
neatness of attire and propriety of manners of the worshippers. 'A
ragged set,' forsooth! The slander may be uttered in the city of
Washington, at an anniversary of the American Colonization Society; but
no man, who regards his character for veracity and intelligence, _dare_
publish it in Boston.
The effects of this reiterated abuse are eminently mischievous. It
serves to kindle the fires of persecution, to strengthen prejudice, to
drive its victims to despair, and to increase the desire for their
banishment. 'Tax your utmost powers of imagination,' says one of the
colonization advocates, 'and you cannot conceive _one motive_ to
honorable effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the
conduct of the free black in this country'! Is this language calculated
to allay animosity, or beget confidence, or suppress contempt, or heal
division, or excite sympathy? Far otherwise. Are there not thousands of
living witnesses to prove the falsity of this assertion; thousands who
adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour, and whose 'motives to honorable
effort' are higher than heaven and vast as eternity; thousands, who,
though their enemies spare no efforts to crush them in the dust, and in
despite of mountains of difficulties, rise up with a giant's strength to
respectability and usefulness? 'No motive to honorable effort'! Perish
the calumny!
Again, they are stigmatized as the 'wild stirrers up of sedition and
insurrection.' This charge is even more malignant than the other, and
utterly groundless. Its propagation, however, tends directly to excite a
persecution which may drive the accused to sedition, in self-defence.
There is no evidence that any free man of color was enlisted in the late
bloody struggle in Virginia, or in any manner accessary thereto. On the
contrary, it was deprecated by our colored citizens generally, not only
on account of its sanguinary acts, but because they knew it would
operate to their own disadvantage by being placed to their account. The
following honorable expression of feeling was made at a public meeting
of the people of color in Wilmington, Delaware, about that period:
'The subscribers, having a knowledge of the alarm which prevails
in the minds of some of the citizens of this place, on account
of various reports which some mischievous person or persons have
circulated, in regard to the colored population, beg leave to
represent, on behalf of themselves and brethren, that having
made inquiry into the subject, they have found said reports to
be without the least foundation; and they owe it to themselves
further to declare, that, so far from any disposition on the
part of the colored people to disturb the peace and good order
of the community, they are, on the contrary, fully aware that it
consists not less with their interests than their duty to
refrain from every art that would excite commotion or disorder,
in which the colored people would have every thing to lose and
nothing to gain. We have been treated by the citizens of
Wilmington and its vicinity with kindness, for which we ought to
be grateful, and it is our solemn purpose to pursue such a
course of conduct as may merit a continuance of their favor and
confidence. Should any among us be found so wicked and blinded
as to enter into plots and contrivances, inimical to the present
harmony, we thus solemnly pledge ourselves to our white friends
and neighbors, that we will be among the first to sound the
alarm, and unite in effecting their apprehension and
suppression.'
The free colored citizens of Baltimore, Maryland, also came out unitedly
in the following pacific and truly exemplary spirit:
'Whereas, there has prevailed in this city, during the past
week, a very unpleasant excitement, originating from suspicions
and reports totally without foundation, and highly derogatory to
our good sense; and whereas this excitement, though
unnecessarily created, may, in its ultimate tendency, prove
prejudicial to the interests of the free colored population of
this State. Therefore,
'Resolved, That we challenge the most rigid investigation as to
the truth of those evil reports, which have recently been so
industriously propagated in this city by the credulous, and
those who are totally unacquainted with the character of colored
Baltimoreans.
'Resolved, That we are not so reckless of our true interest, so
blind to utter helplessness--not to say so devoid of humanity,
as to entertain the hostile designs, or to cherish the fiendish
passions, which it seems have been, by the unthinking, so
unjustly attributed to us.
'Resolved, That we have been too long in the land of bibles, and
temples, and ministers, to look upon blood and carnage with
complacency--that we have been too long in this enlightened
metropolis, to think of the amelioration of our condition, in
any other way than that sanctioned by the Gospel of Peace.
'Resolved, That we rely upon a peaceable and upright conduct, for
a continuance of that favor and protection which we have
hitherto enjoyed, and which, the liberal, the wise, and the
good, are ever ready to accord.'
How impolitic, then, as well as unjust, to brand this meek and
magnanimous class as 'the wild stirrers up of sedition and
insurrection'!
This treatment, I repeat, is impolitic--nay, suicidal. To abuse,
proscribe and exasperate them, to trample them under our feet, to goad
them on the right hand and on the left, is not the way to secure their
loyalty, but rather to make them revengeful, desperate and seditious.
Our true policy is, to meliorate their condition, invigorate their
hopes, instruct their ignorant minds, admit them to an equality of
privileges with ourselves, nourish and patronise their genius, and, by
giving them mechanical trades and mercantile advantages, open to them
the avenue to competence and wealth. We shall thus make them contented
and happy, and place them in a situation which will lead them still more
heartily to deprecate any insurrectionary movements among our slave
population. The following is the conciliatory and generous language of
a man, who has been denounced as a blood-hound and a monster. It will be
well for us if we profit by it.
'Americans! notwithstanding you have and do continue to treat us
more cruel than any heathen nation ever did a people it had
subjected to the same condition that you have us, let us reason.
Had you not better take our body, while you have it in your
power, and while we are yet ignorant and wretched, not knowing
but little, give us education, and teach us the pure religion of
our Lord and Master, which is calculated to make the lion lie
down in peace with the lamb, and which millions of you have
beaten us nearly to death for trying to obtain since we have
been among you, and thus at once gain our affection while we are
ignorant? Throw away your fears and prejudices then, and
enlighten us and treat us like men, and we will like you more
than we do now hate you. And tell us now no more about
colonization; for America is as much our country as it is yours.
Treat us like men, and there is no danger but we will all live
in peace and happiness together; for we are not, like you,
hard-hearted, unmerciful, and unforgiving. What a happy country
this will be, if the whites will listen! What nation under
heaven, will be able to do any thing with us, unless God gives
us up into its hand? But, Americans, I declare to you, while you
keep us and our children in bondage, and treat us like brutes,
to make us support you and your families, we cannot be your
friends. You do not look for it, do you? Treat us then like men,
and we will be your friends. And there is not a doubt in my
mind, but that the whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion,
and we yet, under God, will become a united and happy
people.'[V]
FOOTNOTES:
[S] A cruel taunt. The wonder is not that colored persons do not more
generally visit our sanctuaries, but that they _ever_ should attend. If
they go, they are thrust into obscure, remote and unseemly pens or
boxes, as if they were not embraced in the offers of redeeming love, and
were indeed a part of the brute creation. It is an awful commentary upon
the pride of human nature. I never can look up to these scandalous
retreats for my colored brethren, without having my soul overwhelmed
with emotions of shame, indignation and sorrow. No black man, however
virtuous, respectable or pious he may be, can own or occupy a pew in a
central part of any of our houses of worship. And yet it is
reproachfully alleged--by a clergyman, too!--that 'if we visit the
sanctuaries which are _open to all_ (!) to worship, and to hear the word
of God, we shall not find them there'! No--I hope they will respect
themselves and the religion of Jesus more, than to occupy the places
alluded to.
[T] Francis Devany, the colored sheriff of Liberia, is reputed by
colonizationists to be worth property to the value of twenty-five
thousand dollars; and they have trumpeted the fact all over the country,
and so repeatedly as almost to lead one to imagine that he is the
greatest and wealthiest man in all the world! James Forten, the
reputable colored sail-maker of Philadelphia,--a gentleman of highly
polished manners and superior intelligence,--with whom Devany worked as
a journeyman, can _buy him out_ three or four times over. Joseph Cassey,
another estimable and intelligent man of color, or the widow of Bishop
Allen, both of Philadelphia, can purchase him. I mention their names,
not to extol them, but simply to show, that what begets fame in Liberia
is unproductive here.
[U] The following statement, recently published in the Philadelphia
'Friend and Advocate of Truth,' is very creditable to the colored
inhabitants of that city:
'Many erroneous opinions have prevailed, with regard to the true
character and condition of the free colored people of
Pennsylvania. They have been represented as an idle and
worthless class, furnishing inmates for our poor-houses and
penitentiaries. A few plain facts are sufficient to refute these
gratuitous allegations. In the city and suburbs of Philadelphia,
by the census of 1830, they constituted about eleven per cent.,
or one ninth of the whole population. From the account of the
guardians of the poor, printed by order of the board, it appears
that of the out-door poor receiving regular weekly supplies, in
the first month, 1830, the time of the greatest need, the people
of color were about one to twenty-three whites; or not quite
four per cent., a disproportion of whites to colored, of more
than two to one in favor of the latter. When it is considered
that they perform the lowest offices in the community--that the
avenues to what are esteemed the most honorable and profitable
professions in society, are in a great measure, if not wholly
closed against them, these facts are the more creditable to
them. One cause of this disproportion, which we presume is but
little known, but which is worthy of special notice, will be
found in the numerous societies among themselves for mutual aid.
These societies expended, in one year, about six thousand
dollars for the relief of the sick and the indigent of their own
color, from funds raised among themselves. Besides, the taxes
paid by the colored people of Philadelphia, exceed in amount the
sums expended out of the funds of the city for the relief of
their poor.'
It is also a fact that the proportion of whites in the alms-house in
New-York is greater than that of the blacks. I am aware that other
evidence, of a different kind, may be adduced in other places; but it is
in the highest degree unfair to measure the whole body of blacks by the
whole body of whites--for the privileges and advantages of the whites
are as ten thousand to one: they monopolise almost every branch of
business and every pursuit of life--they have all the means necessary to
make men virtuous, intelligent, active, and opulent. Far different is
the situation of the free blacks. How slender are their means! how mean
and limited their occupations! how inferior their advantages! Almost
every avenue to wealth, preferment and usefulness, is closed against
them. How are they persecuted! how avoided in the streets! how excluded
from the benefits of society! To point at them the finger of scorn, to
taunt them for their inferiority or helplessness, is like putting out
the eyes and clipping the wings of the eagle, and then reproaching him
because he can neither see nor fly. To boast of our superior refinement,
intelligence and virtue, is the extreme of vainglory, and adding insult
to injury. Shame! shame!