'It has constantly disclaimed all intention whatever of interfering, in the smallest degree, with the rights of property.' * * 'The Society, from considerations like these, whilst it disclaims the remotest idea of ever disturbing the _right of property_ in slaves,' &c. * * 'It is not the object of this Society to liberate slaves, or touch the rights of _property_.' * * 'Honorable instances might be adduced of _disinterested benevolence_ on the part of the owners of slaves, and of their _sacrificing property_ to a large amount, in their enfranchisement and restoration to the land of their ancestors.' * * 'The American Society has disclaimed from the first moment of its institution, all intention of interfering with _rights of property_.' * * 'The federal government has no control over this subject: it concerns rights of property secured by the federal compact, upon which our civil liberties mainly depend; it is a part of the same collection of political rights; and _any invasion of it would impair the tenure by which every other is held_.' * * 'It is equally plain and undeniable, that the Society in the prosecution of this work, has never interfered or evinced even a disposition to interfere in any way with the _rights of proprietors of slaves_.' * * 'The slaveholder, so far from having just cause to complain of the Colonization Society, has reason to congratulate himself, that in this Institution a channel is opened up, in which the public feeling and public action can flow on, without doing violence to his _rights_.'--[African Repository, vol. vi. pp. 13, 69, 81, 153, 165, 169, 205, 363.] 'It was proper again and again to repeat, that it was far from the intention of the Society to affect, in any manner, the tenure by which a _certain species of property_ is held. He was himself a slaveholder; _and he considered that kind of property as inviolable as any other in the country_.'--[Speech of Henry Clay.--First Annual Report.] 'Your committee would not thus favorably regard the prayer of the memorialists, if it sought to impair, _in the slightest degree, the rights of private property_.'--[Report of the committee of the House of Representatives of the United States, on the memorial of the President and Board of Managers of the Colonization Society.--Second Annual Report.] 'The Society has at all times recognised the constitutional and LEGITIMATE existence of slavery.'--[Tenth Annual Report.] 'The Society protests that it has no designs on the rights of the master in the slave--or the property in his slave, which the laws guarantee to him.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report.]