Chapter VIII: Conclusion: Of This Chapter

We have before shown that although the only object of the Colonization Society is to restore the free man of colour to the land of his fathers, yet that the accomplishment of this very object necessarily involves the removal of the actual cause of slavery itself, and of all its horrors, viz. _the African slave-trade_. In this respect alone, if it did no more, it as far exceeds in utility, the Abolition Scheme, as the light of the sun exceeds that of a taper. Moreover this one fact, and this alone, ought to secure for it the patronage of every friend of humanity; and would no doubt long since have done so, and have procured for it ample funds from the good people of this country and of England, had its objects not been misrepresented, particularly in the latter place, where there is no one sufficiently acquainted with the merits of the case to refute and put to silence those who were, and are employed, by the Anti-Slavery Society, for the express purpose of vilifying and calumniating, before a British public, some of the greatest benefactors this country ever had. It is well known how that indefatigable and disinterested friend of the coloured man, Elliott Cresson, Esq., after he went to England, at his own expense, for the express purpose of promoting this cause in that country, was vilified, calumniated, and misrepresented by American Abolition Agents!

Let any man take a map of Africa in his hand, and ask himself the question, what Powers on earth could effectually stop a trade carried on along a coast of at least seven thousand miles, including the various bays and inlets, &c.? Could the combined naval forces of Europe and America accomplish it, not even taking into consideration the enormous annual expense of such an enterprise? The very idea is preposterously absurd! We all recollect the difficulty encountered last winter in attempting to guard the Canadian frontier of only a few hundred miles!

Are fifty millions of Africans to be left exposed to the demoralising influence, and the unspeakable horrors of the _slave-trade_? And are we to talk of _humanity_ and allow ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND miserable human beings to be annually dragged from their native land--from their homes--from their parents--from their friends--and be subjected to the horrors described in pages 41, 42? What means, what power, what system, except the Colonization Society, can check this climax of human barbarity? And by what means are the glorious truths of divine revelation to be disseminated amongst upwards of fifty millions of our fellow creatures except by the pure word of God, the Bible, which black man hands to black man, African hands to African--and so on, till _this_ man of sin be consumed by the brightness of the Gospel, and the Ethiopian be enabled to lift up his hand to the living God?

The Colonization Society has, as already shown, done much in this work--and all that it has not done is justly attributable to the effects of the misrepresentations of the Abolition Champions, who are, in this sense, not only the slave-holders of thousands of slaves, but the PROTECTORS of the African Slave-trade!