I would premise, that, like many others, I formerly supposed the Colonization Society was a praiseworthy association, although I always doubted its efficiency. This opinion was formed for me by others, upon whom I placed implicit confidence: it certainly was not based upon any research or knowledge of my own, as I had not at that time perused a single Report of the Society, nor a page in its organ, the African Repository. My approval was the offspring of credulity and ignorance. I am explicit on this point, because my opponents have accused me of inconsistency--though it ought not surely to disgrace a man, that, discovering himself to be in error, he promptly turns to the embrace of truth. As if opinions, once formed, must be as irrevocable as the laws of the Medes and Persians! If this were so, accountability would lose its hold on the conscience, and the light of knowledge be blown out, and reason degenerate into brutish instinct. Much stress has been laid upon the fact, that, in 1828, I delivered an address in Park-street meeting-house on the Fourth of July, on which occasion a collection was made in behalf of the American Colonization Society. It is true--but whereas I was then blind, now I see. My address, however, was far from being acceptable to the friends of colonization who were present, not only on account of my denunciation of slaveholders, but because I inserted only a single sentence in favor of the Society. In all my writings, I have never commended this combination in as many sentences as I have used in making this explanation. So much for my marvellous apostacy!