therefore most palpably manifest, that if our slaves are ever to enjoy all the blessings of liberty, they must not only be liberated from the chains of bondage, but at the same time, be placed in a situation in which they may aspire to all the advantages and distinctions of civilized life. Footnote 2: In some of the states, even where slavery is abolished, the blacks are disfranchised of the rights of citizens. To the eternal disgrace of our own state, the despotick principles of our Constitution have been multiplied instead of being diminished by the late Convention. By the old Constitution, only one class of citizens were divested of certain natural rights without having committed any crime to forfeit them. But by the present Constitution there are two. And the reasons in both cases are very similar; in the one, _wearing a black coat_, and in the other, _a black skin_. But the operation of these regulations is much more oppressive in the latter, than in the former case. The colour of a man’s dress depends on his own will; but, “_the Ethiopian_ CANNOT _change his skin_,” if he would. This is the immediate object of the Colonization Society. Nor is it a mere matter of doubtful experiment. A similar attempt has long since been made by the British nation, at Sierra Leone, and the result has fully proven to the world, that the minds of black men are as capable as the whites, when placed under equal circumstances of improvement. The same results are beginning to be realized in the infant colony planted by our own countrymen at Cape Mesurado. And nothing is wanting, but the patronage of our own citizens, to extend the same advantages to hundreds and thousands of the degraded and oppressed sons of Africa, who are still in our land. In further confirmation of the same views, it may be observed, that in the slave-holding states there are many owners of slaves who would gladly emancipate them, but are expressly prohibited. It is impossible, therefore, for them to proclaim “liberty to the captives,” unless they can transport them without the limits of the state. What then can such benevolent masters do with their slaves? To turn them out into our western wilds, would be to expose them to certain starvation; or if any survived, they would be hunted down as wild beasts, by a herd of brutal kidnappers, and carried back and sold to less merciful masters than they served before. To transport them to a foreign shore, if any individual were able to incur the expense, without any concert of action, would be to expose them to immediate death by barbarous hands. It is therefore impossible to afford those who are disposed, an opportunity to emancipate their slaves, without such a concert of action as shall protect the colony in its infantile state, till it shall acquire strength and ability to defend itself. Such is the object of the Colonization Society.