disposition among the owners of slaves to give them freedom voluntarily and without compensation, and allow them to be sent to the land of their fathers; so that you have many thousands redeemed, without any cost of their redemption. To me this is truly astonishing. Can this have taken place without the intervention of the Spirit of God?" A distinguished British nobleman, Lord Althorp, publicly pronounced the foundation of the Colony of Liberia "one of the greatest events of modern times." A society in aid of the cause was formed in England, headed by persons of the first distinction, denominated the "British African Colonization Society." The framers of this Association, it was declared, "consider the plan of the American Colonization Society as admirably adapted to introduce Christianity and civilization among the natives of Africa, and to extirpate the slave-trade, which the moral efforts of Great Britain and other powers have been unable to suppress."[1]
The cause, it is true, met with opposition in some quarters, — as what good cause ever did not? The violent defenders of slavery were opposed to it, because it tended towards the emancipation of the slaves; while, on the other hand, the over-zealous opponents of slavery attacked it, on the ground that its tendency was to check emancipation — an astonishing assertion, in view of the fact stated above by Clarkson, namely, that the effect of it had already been to cause numbers of slaves to be voluntarily emancipated. This opposi-
- ↑ Freeman's Plea for Africa, Conversation XX. At a later period, Clarkson and many other English friends of African colonization, cooled in their zeal for the cause; but it was through the misrepresentations of its enemies.
