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, "It is far from the intention of this Society to affect, in _any manner_, the tenure by which a certain species of property is held. I am myself a slaveholder, and I consider that kind of property as inviolable as any other in the country. I would resist encroachment upon it as soon, and with as much firmness, as I would upon any other property that I hold. Nor am I prepared to go as far as the gentleman who has just spoken, (Mr. Mercer) in saying that I would emancipate my slaves, if the means were provided of sending them from the country." At the same meeting Mr. Randolph said, "He thought it necessary, being himself a slaveholder, to show that so far from being in the _smallest degree_ connected with the abolition of slavery, the proposed Society _would prove one of the greatest securities to enable the master to keep in possession his own property_." In Mr. Clay's speech, in the second Annual Report, he declares: "It is not proposed to deliberate upon, or consider at all, any question of emancipation, or any that is _connected_ with the abolition of slavery. On this condition alone gentlemen from the South and West can be expected to co-operate. On this condition only, I have myself attended." In the seventh Annual Report it is said, "An effort for the benefit of the blacks, in which all parts of the country can unite, of course must not have the abolition of slavery for its immediate object; _nor may it aim directly at the instruction of the blacks_." Mr. Archer, of Virginia, fifteenth Annual Report, says: "The object of the Society, if I understand it aright, involves no intrusion on property, _nor even upon prejudice_."