Thus far the work went on in the order of Divine Providence. The voluntary principle was discriminating. Those who were in the moral condition of freedom gladly embraced the opportunity. Those who were below that condition were deaf to the call. But this divinely sanctioned process was quite too slow for the fiery zeal of emancipationists. The door of Providence did not open fast enough! Encouraged by past successes, they attempted to hasten the work. Forgetful of the original and avowed objects of the Society--the colonization of the free people of color, _with their own consent_--the friends of colonization began to preach manumission to the owners of slaves. Many hearkened to the call as a Macedonian appeal to their feelings of benevolence. The slaves upon large plantations were emancipated, and funds placed at the disposal of the Society, to remove and settle them as free citizens in the new colony. They were sent off in considerable numbers, for several years. The result was disastrous. It threatened speedily to reduce the whole colony to a savage state. They were not in the moral condition of freedom--they were not prepared for that degree or form of self-government. They could not be absorbed by the body politic, without imparting their character to the body. The full measure of their golden dreams was simply liberty to do nothing. We need only glance at the results. Mr. Ashman, at that time Governor of the colony, remonstrated, in official communications, with the Colonization Society in this country: the officers generally, and other eminent citizens, also remonstrated in private letters to their friends--all begging to be spared the calamities that awaited them from so great an influx of population, evidently unprepared for freedom, and praying that they might be strengthened, as heretofore, by a judicious selection of persons in some degree, at least, qualified for civil liberty! If the colonization experiment has proved the capacity of the African, under suitable developments, for self-government, (which, in our view, it has very satisfactorily done,) it has proved, with equal clearness, that without those developments he is wholly unfit for it; and that the masses of the race are, as yet, undeveloped, and consequently unfit for political sovereignty.