CHAPTER V.
COLONIZATION SOCIETY, AND ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.
It is not madness
That I have utter'd:——For love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
While rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to Heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker.Hamlet, Act III, Scene 3d.
When doctrines meet with general approbation,
It is not heresy, but reformation.Garrick.
So much excitement prevails with regard to these two societies at present, that it will be difficult to present a view of them which will be perfectly satisfactory to all. I shall say what appears to me, to be candid and true, without any anxiety as to whom it may please, and whom it may displease. I need not say that I have a decided predilection, because it has been sufficiently betrayed in the preceding pages; and I allude to it for the sake of perfect sincerity, rather than from any idea that my opinion is important.
The American Colonization Society was organized a little more than sixteen years ago at the city of Washington, chosen as the most central place in the Union.—Auxiliary institutions have since been formed in almost every part of the country; and nearly all the distinguished men belong to it. The doing away of slavery in the United States, by gradually removing all the blacks to Africa, has been generally supposed to be its object.—The project at first excited some jealousy in the Southern States; and the Society in order to allay this, were anxious to make all possible concessions to slave owners, in their Addresses, Reports, &c. In Mr Clay's speech, printed in the first Annual Report of the Society, he said,
