Page:Africa's redemption.djvu/23

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AFRICA'S REDEMPTION.
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skeptical as to the practicability of ever removing large numbers of the coloured population from this country to Africa, consider, in the light of European immigration to the United States, and the mighty rush of people to Australia and California, how easily similar motives would empty this land of the free black population. And wherever the negro goes from America, he will be accompanied, in some form or other, by a pure Christianity, and to a great extent by its resulting civilization. As long as America remains enlightened and civilized, she will not permit the negro colonies, who have gone out from her bosom, to sink far below the level of her own attainments. I have great faith in the self-sustaining powers of the improved negro race, but however faithless one may be as to this point, who can suppose the people of the United States to be so recreant to the peculiar relations they sustain to the race, as ever to withdraw their fostering care, or even to fail in affording the most liberal encouragement to all communities formed on the coast of Africa by negroes who have gone out from this country; and who could imagine anything but the most active possible co-operation of the Christian public, in elevating and saving the whole native population! We are the providentially designated guardians of Africa, and as soon might we expect the conscientious parent to see ignorance, degradation, and ruin fasten upon his son without using every effort to save him, as to see America allow the decadence of Liberia, as long as it was possible to save her. However strangely the