'It is painful to state, that the Managers have reason to believe that the slave trade is still prosecuted, to a great extent, and with circumstances of undiminished atrocity. The fact, that much was done by Mr Ashmun to banish it from the territory, under the colonial jurisdiction, is unquestionable; but, _it now exists, even on this territory_; and a little to the north and south of Liberia, it is seen in its true characters--of fraud, rapine, and blood! In the opinion of the late Agent, the present efforts to suppress this trade must prove abortive.'--[Thirteenth Annual Report.] 'Some appalling facts in regard to the slave trade have come to the knowledge of the Board of Managers during the last year. _With undiminished atrocity and activity_ is this odious traffic now carried on _all along the African coast_. Slave factories are established _in the immediate vicinity of the Colony_, and at the Gallinas (between Liberia and Sierra Leone) not less than nine hundred slaves were shipped during the last summer, in the space of three weeks.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report, 1831.] 'In defiance of all laws enacted, it is estimated that no less than _fifty thousand_ Africans were, during the last year, (1831,) carried into foreign slavery. During the months of February and March of the same year, two thousand were landed on the island of Cuba.'--[Circular published by the Massachusetts Colonization Society for 1832.] Here, then, is the acknowledgment of the Society, that it has accomplished _nothing_ toward the suppression of the slave trade in fifteen years! Nor has the settlement at Sierra Leone effected aught in thirty years! Nor have the untiring labors of Wilberforce and Clarkson, for a longer period, produced any visible effect! The accursed traffic still continues to increase--and why? Simply _because the market for slaves is not destroyed_. Break up this market, and you annihilate the slave trade. Keep it open, and you may line the shores of Africa and America with naval ships and armed troops, and the trade will continue. No proposition in Euclid is plainer. So long as there is a brisk market for goods, that market will be supplied. The assertion has been made in Congress by Mr Mercer of Virginia, (one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society,) that these horrible cargoes are smuggled into our southern states to a deplorable extent. In 1819, Mr Middleton, of South Carolina, declared it to be his belief 'that 13,000 Africans were annually smuggled into our southern states.' Mr Wright of Virginia estimated the number at 15,000!!!--[_Vide_ Seventh Annual Report--app.]--This number is seven times as great as that which the Colonization Society has transported in fifteen years![AD] By letting the system of slavery alone, then, and striving to protect it, the Society is encouraging and perpetuating the foreign slave trade! FOOTNOTES: