Chapter II: Part 2

"It is the false notion of honour which has unhappily possessed the
minds of men, placing all dignity in the pageantry of state and the
tinsel of office, which produces those collisions, jostlings, and
acrimony of contending factions which sometimes shake the fabric of
society to its very foundations: it is by the maddening influence
of this false notion that men, whose claim to respectful notoriety
is inversely as their desire to be conspicuous, are sometimes urged
to abandon their obscure but appropriate position in the line, and
to rush into the foremost ranks. When men shall have learned
wherein true honour lies--when men shall have formed correct ideas
of true and sober dignity, then we shall see all the ranks of
society united as by a golden chain--then Ephraim shall not envy
Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim;--then the occupant of the palace and
of the cottage--then the man in lawn and the man in rags will, like
the parts of a well-adjusted machine, act in perfect unison.
Considering, then, the influence which in every community a few
men are found to possess--considering, also, that each one of these
influential men is sure to be followed by a party, we can hardly
appreciate the obligation which rests upon them, to abandon all
jealousies and suspicions--to merge every private and personal
consideration in thoughts for the public good--and to bring a mind
untrammelled, and free from every party predilection, to a solemn
deliberation on the great objects of public utility.

"The education of our youth is the next subject to which I would
direct your attention. 'Knowledge is power'--is an old proverb--but
not the less true because it is old. This is the spring that
regulates the movements of society--this is at once the lever and
the safety-valve of human institutions. Without it society will
either not move at all, or, like an unbalanced, unhelmed ship, move
in a direction and at a rate that must eventually destroy it.
Education corrects vice--cures disorders--abates jealousies--adorns
virtue--commands the winds--triumphs over the waves--scales the
heavens. In a word, education lays all nature under tribute, and
forces her to administer to the comfort and happiness of man. Nor
is this all that education does. It ennobles and elevates the mind,
and urges the soul upward and animates it to deeds of high and
lasting renown. Education opens sources of pure, refined, and
exquisite enjoyment--it unlocks the temple of nature, and admits
the awe-stricken soul, to behold and admire the wondrous work of
God. An ignorant, vicious, idle community, has the elements of
destruction already in its bosom. On the very first application of
a torch they will explode and lay the whole fabric in ruins. A
virtuous, orderly, educated people, have all the elements of
national greatness and national perpetuity.--Would we be happy at
home and respected abroad, we must educate our youth.

"In professing to notice those things which are necessary to our
prosperity--to the advancement of our prosperity, and the
perpetuity of our prosperity, it is natural that you should expect
that agricultural industry will be brought prominently into view.
I think it may be safely affirmed, that the virtue and independence
of a people will be inversely as their attention is wholly given to
commerce--that their virtue and independence is evermore to be
measured by their pursuits of the wholesome and pleasing and
primitive employment of agriculture and husbandry. Go into the
countries of Europe--examine their large manufacturing and
commercial towns and cities. Then visit the rural, agricultural
districts--compare the quiet, tranquillity, order, virtue, plenty
of the latter, with the bustle, confusion, vice, and general
dependence and poverty of the other, and you cannot fail to be
struck, and deeply affected, by the frightful contrast. And
wherefore? Is not commerce called the great civiliser of the world?
Is it not the means by which nations become acquainted and hold
communion with each other? Is it not by this means that the great
and master-minds of one nation commune with kindred minds of other
nations? Is it not the channel through which improvements in art,
in science, in literature, in all that adorns, dignifies, and
ennobles human nature, flow as on the wings of the wind from
country to country? Grant it. It is not my purpose to pronounce a
wholesale anathema upon commerce. I appreciate its high importance
in improving our race. It is excess I would discourage--it is the
wretched deteriorating influence it will exert upon a people, when,
by absorbing their whole attention, it keeps them looking
constantly abroad to the neglect of the improvement of their own
country. It is to this I would call your attention. Again;--Let it
not be forgotten, that if commerce imports improvements, it imports
vices also. It offers the same facility for the transmission of
both. The same vessel that brings us the Book of God brings us also
the Age of Reason--and in one and the same ship, we not
unfrequently find the devoted self-sacrificing missionary, and that
accursed thing which a celebrated orator with characteristic energy
has styled 'liquid fire and distilled damnation!!'

"In the natural, or, more properly, vegetable world, we have
sometimes seen exotics outstripping in rapidity of growth the
natural spontaneous productions of the soil. In this we have not a
very unhappy illustration of the rank growth of imported vices.
These baneful exotics, grafted on the tree of indigenous
corruption, seem to receive and impart unwonted vigour from the
contact: and the result is, a fruit of the most disorganising
potency. An examination into the moral state of towns and
districts, wholly given to commerce and manufactures, will fully
sustain this remark. How, let me ask you, can there be order, where
the very nature of the pursuits which engross all minds demand
ceaseless hurry, bustle, and confusion?--where to stop to breathe
is to be at once outdone, and where he who can move the most
swiftly amid the greatest confusion is thought to be the smartest
man! In respect of virtue,--is it to be thought of, except for the
purpose of holding it up to ridicule, in a place where the vicious
of all countries meet; and where females of every class and
character, far from the watchful eye of parental solicitude, are
huddled together in one promiscuous throng, and dependent for their
daily bread upon the freaks and fancies of unprincipled employers!
Lowell, in America, is, I believe, the only large manufacturing
town where virtue is held in the least esteem. What shall I say of
honesty and integrity? where the lowest, basest arts, are practised
for gain; where all is intrigue and circumvention--where the maxim
prevails, 'all is fair in trade'--where each regards the other as
lawful game--where one can gain only by the loss of the
other--where, in a word, rascality is fair-play, and villainy
systematic;--where, fellow-citizens, let me ask you, where, in such
a community, is there room for honesty? Can the heart fail, in such
circumstances, to become deadened to every feeling of
humanity--steeled against every kindly, generous, and ennobling
impulse? I will not venture to affirm, that the result we have just
now noticed is universal. I admit, with pleasure, there are
honourable exceptions--but I do affirm, that what I have said forms
the general rule.

"But let us turn from these scenes of noise and smoke and deep
depravity, and visit the quiet abode of the farmer and the
husbandman. What tranquillity reigns here, and order, and peace,
and virtue!! Behold the farmer, as he goes forth in the morning to
his daily task;--how firm and elastic his step; how cheerful his
sun-burnt countenance; how active his athletic arm!! Behold how
cheerfully he labours; how the fat valleys around him laugh with
corn; how the spacious plains teem with grain, and the ancient
forests fall beneath his resounding axe!! Follow him, when the
labour of the day is over, follow him to his humble home. See him
surrounded by an affectionate, industrious, frugal wife,
unsophisticated by the vices and dissipations of the fashionable
world, and by a prattling progeny blooming in health, and big with
promise of future usefulness. No cankering cares gnaw his peaceful
bosom; no uncertain speculation disturbs his quiet slumbers; no
revolutions in foreign lands, damming up the channels of trade,
cloud the calm serenity of his brow. Oh! if there be a spot on
earth, where true happiness is to be found, here is that spot.

"But we take a higher and a more extended view of this subject, and
regard it in its bearing on political economy. And my first remark
is, that no nation can be independent which subsists wholly by
commerce. And here let it be observed, once for all, that I use the
word independent in a sense altogether distinct from sovereignty. I
admit that there may be a temporary prosperity; that so long as
peace prevails amongst nations connected by commercial and
diplomatic relations,--so long as each acts in perfect faith, and
maintains in all their entireness and in all their integrity his
treaty stipulations, there may not be felt a want of the
necessaries or even of the luxuries of life. There may, perhaps, be
a large influx of the precious metals. Nothing, however, could be
more fallacious, than to regard this activity as an indication of
independence or permanent prosperity. For I remark, in the second
place, that so uncertain are the operations of trade--so suddenly
are its channels and outlets closed by misunderstandings and
ruptures between rival nations--so liable is it to paralysing
shocks from intriguing cabinets and wily politicians, the
operations of one year scarcely afford any ground for conjecture in
regard to the operations of the next. Let us illustrate our
position by an humble supposition.

"Suppose the surrounding country should suddenly relent, throw wide
its doors, and shake its teeming wealth of gold and ivory and wood
and gums into our lap; and the native African, patient of labour
and of travel, should supply us at the most accommodating rates
with all the coarser food for our consumption;--suppose vessels
should flock (as, under such circumstances, vessels would most
assuredly flock) to our shores, offering us in exchange for the
produce thus liberally poured in upon us, the conveniences,
elegances, and luxuries of foreign countries. Suppose every man
desert his farm, and betake himself to trading as the more easy and
the more speedy road to wealth,--there would certainly be great
activity and great prosperity. But should we be independent? One
more supposition, and the important and interesting problem is
solved. Suppose the paths to the interior are suddenly blocked up
by feuds among the tribes; all ingress cut off and trade suspended.
Where, then, are our supplies? Should we be able to return to our
farms, and draw thence articles of exchange with foreign nations?
By no means. In the mania for trade our farms have been deserted,
and, like the land on which a curse rests, have long laid fallow.
Think you, fellow-citizens, that our trade once gone, we should
again behold the French, the Bremen, the American, and the English
flag floating to the breeze in our harbour. From that hour you
might bid a long adieu to every white face but that of a
missionary. Fellow-Citizens! our prosperity and independence are to
be drawn from the soil. That is the highway to honour, to wealth,
to private and national prosperity.

"Liberians! do not disdain the humble occupation! It commends
itself to our attention, ennobled and sanctified by the example of
our Creator. 'And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden;
and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground
made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight,
and good for food.... And the Lord God took the man, and put him
into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.'[3] Never,
never, until this degenerate age, has this simple, primitive,
patriarchal occupation been despised.

'In ancient times, the sacred plough employed
The kings and awful fathers of mankind:
And some, with whom compared your insect tribes
Are but the beings of a summer's day,
Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm
Of mighty war; then, with unwearied hand,
Disdaining little delicacies, seized
The plough, and greatly independent lived.'

"Thus sings the author of the Seasons, one of Britain's sweetest
bards.

"The last remark time will allow me to make under this head, is,
that 'Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any
people.'[4] All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay
the head-long propensity to vice--to abate the madness of ambition,
will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the
restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound
regard and deference for religion, a constant recognition of our
dependence upon God, and of our obligation and accountability to
Him; an ever-present, ever-pressing sense of His universal and
all-controlling providence, this, and only this, can give energy to
the arm of law, cool the raging fever of the passions, and abate
the lofty pretensions of mad ambition. In prosperity, let us bring
out our thank-offering, and present it with cheerful hearts in
orderly, virtuous, and religious conduct. In adversity, let us
consider, confess our sins, and abase ourselves before the throne
of God. In danger, let us go to Him, whose prerogative it is to
deliver; let us go to Him, with the humility and confidence which a
deep conviction that the battle is not to the strong nor the race
to the swift, is calculated to inspire.

"Fellow-Citizens! we stand now on ground never occupied by a people
before. However insignificant we may regard ourselves, the eyes of
Europe and America are upon us, as a germ, destined to burst from
its enclosure in the earth, unfold its petals to the genial air,
rise to the height and swell to the dimensions of the full-grown
tree, or (inglorious fate!) to shrivel, to die, and to be buried in
oblivion. Rise, fellow-citizens, rise to a clear and full
perception of your tremendous responsibilities!! Upon you, rely
upon it, depends in a measure you can hardly conceive, the future
destiny of your race. You, you are to give the answer, whether the
African race is doomed to interminable degradation,--a hideous blot
on the fair face of Creation, a libel upon the dignity of human
nature,--or whether they are incapable to take an honourable rank
amongst the great family of nations! The friends of the colony are
trembling; the enemies of the Coloured man are hoping. Say,
fellow-citizens, will you palsy the hands of your friends and
sicken their hearts, and gladden the souls of your enemies, by a
base refusal to enter upon the career of glory which is now opening
so propitiously before you? The genius of universal emancipation,
bending from her lofty seat, invites you to accept the wreath of
national independence. The voice of your friends, swelling upon the
breeze, cries to you from afar--Raise your standard! assert your
independence!! throw out your banners to the wind!! And will the
descendants of the mighty Pharaohs, that awed the world--will the
sons of him who drove back the serried legions of Rome and laid
siege to the 'eternal city'--will they, the achievements of whose
fathers are yet the wonder and admiration of the world--will they
refuse the proffered boon, and basely cling to the chains of
Slavery and dependence? Never! never!! never!!! Shades of the
mighty dead!--spirits of departed great ones! inspire us, animate
us to the task--nerve us for the battle! Pour into our bosom a
portion of that ardour and patriotism which bore you on to battle,
to victory, and to conquest.

"Shall Liberia live? Yes; in the generous emotions now swelling in
your bosoms--in the high and noble purpose now fixing itself in
your mind, and ripening into the unyieldingness of indomitable
principle, we hear the inspiring response--Liberia shall live
before God, and before the nations of the Earth.

"The night is passing away--the dusky shades are fleeing, and even
now

'Second day stands tiptoe
On the misty mountain top.'"

With all their advantages of education and opulence, I challenge the abettors of Negro Slavery, who justify their oppressive conduct towards their fellow-creatures on the ground of their inferiority, to exhibit half the talent and ability evinced in the eloquent addresses of these Coloured legislators. Yet these are the men who are described as a deterioration of our species, who, through vulgar prejudice and popular insult, combined with political and legislative enactments, hove been degraded to a level with the brute.

As further evidence of their capabilities, I present the reader with a few extracts from a Discourse by Henry H. Garnett, (a fugitive Slave), On the Past and Present Condition, and Destiny of the Coloured Race.

"By an almost common consent, the modern world seems determined to
pilfer Africa of her glory. It is not enough that her children have
been scattered over the globe, clothed in the garments of shame,
humiliated and oppressed; but our enemies weary themselves in
plundering the tombs of our renowned sires, and in obliterating
their worthy deeds, which were inscribed by fame upon the pages of
ancient history.

"The three grand divisions of the earth that were known to the
ancients, were colonised by the three sons of Noah. Shem was the
father of the Asiatics--the Africans descended from Ham--and
Japheth was the progenitor of the Europeans. These men, being the
children of one common father, they were originally of the same
complexion--for we cannot, through the medium of any law of nature
or reason, come to the conclusion that one was black, another was
copper-coloured, and the other was white. Adam was a red man; and
by what law of nature his descendants became dissimilar to him, is
a problem which is yet to be clearly solved. The fact, that the
universal Father has varied the complexions of his children, does
not detract from his mercy, or give us reason to question his
wisdom.

"Moses is the patriarch of sacred history. The same eminent station
is occupied by Herodotus in profane history. To the chronicles of
these two great men we are indebted for all the information we have
in relation to the early condition of man. If they are incorrect,
to what higher authority shall we appeal; and if they are true,
then we acquaint ourselves with the history of our race from that
period

'When yonder spheres sublime
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of time.'

"Ham was the first African. Egypt was settled from an immediate
descendant of Ham,--who, in sacred history, is called Mizraim, and
in uninspired history he is known by the name of Menes. Yet, in the
face of this historical evidence, there are those who affirm, that
the ancient Egyptians were not of the pure African stock. The
gigantic statue of the Sphynx has the peculiar features of the
children of Ham; one of the most celebrated queens of Egypt was
Nitocris, an Ethiopian woman; yet these intellectual
resurrectionists dig through a mountain of such evidence, and
declare that these people were not Negroes.

"We learn from Herodotus, that the ancient Egyptians were black,
and had woolly hair. These people astonished the world with their
arts and sciences, in which they revelled with unbounded
prodigality. They became the masters of the East, and the lords of
the Hebrews. No arm less powerful than Jehovah's, could pluck the
children of Abraham from their hands. The plagues were marshalled
against them, and the pillars of cloud and of fire, and at last the
resistless sea. 'Then the horse and his rider sank like lead in the
mighty waters.'[5] But the kingdom of the Pharaohs was still great.
The most exalted mortal eulogium that could be spoken of Moses,
was, 'that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.'[6]
It was from them that he gathered the materials with which he
reared that grand superstructure, partaking of law, poetry, and
history, which has filled the world with wonder and praise.
Mournful reverses of fortune have passed over that illustrious
people. The star that rose in such matchless splendour above the
eastern horizon has had its setting. But Egypt, Africa's
dark-browed queen, still lives. Her pyramid tombs--her sculptured
columns, dug from the sands to adorn modern architecture--the
remnants of her once impregnable walls--the remains of her
hundred-gated city, rising over the wide-spread ruins, as if to
guard the fame of the race that gave them existence,--all proclaim
what she once was.

"Whatever may be the extent of prejudice against colour, as it is
falsely called and is so generally practised in this country,
Solomon, the most renowned of kings, possessed none of it. Among
the seven hundred wives and the three hundred concubines who filled
his houses, the most favoured queen was the beautiful Sable
daughter of one of the Pharaohs of Egypt.... When he had secured
her, he bowed his great intellect before her, that he might do her
that homage which he paid to no other woman. Solomon was a poet,
and pure love awakened the sweetest melody in his soul. To her
honour and praise he composed that beautiful poem called the
CANTICLES, or SOLOMON'S SONG. For her he wove that gorgeous wreath
which is unsurpassed in its kind, and with his own royal hand
placed it upon her dark brow.

"The interior of Ethiopia has not been explored by modern
adventurers. The antiquarian has made his way into almost every
dominion where relics of former greatness have promised to reward
him for his toil. But this country, as though she had concealed
some precious treasure, meets the traveller on the outskirts of her
dominions, with pestilence and death. Yet, in the Highlands that
have been traversed, many unequivocal traces of former civilization
have been discovered. Very lately, British enterprise has made some
important researches in that region of country, all of which go to
prove, that Homer did not misplace his regard for them, when he
associated them with the gods.

"Numerous other instances might be mentioned that would indicate
the ancient fame of our ancestors:--a fame, which arose from every
virtue and talent that render mortals pre-eminently great,--from
the conquests of love and beauty, from the prowess of their arms,
and their architecture, poetry, mathematics, generosity, and piety.
I will barely allude to the beautiful Cleopatra, who swayed and
captivated the heart of Antony;--to Hannibal, the sworn enemy and
scourge of Rome--the mighty General who crossed the Alps to meet
his foes--the Alps which had never before been crossed by an army,
nor ever since, if we except Napoleon, the ambitious Corsican;--to
Terence, Euclid, Cyprian, Origen, and Augustine.

"In 1620, the very same year in which the Pilgrims landed on the
cold and rocky shores of New England, a Dutch ship, freighted with
souls, touched the banks of James river, where the wretched people
were employed as Slaves in the cultivation of that hateful weed,
tobacco. Wonderful coincidence! The angel of liberty hovered over
New England, and the demon of Slavery unfurled his black flag over
the fields of the 'sunny south.'

"But, latterly, the Slave-trade has been pronounced to be piracy by
almost all of the civilised world. Great Britain has discarded the
chattel principle throughout her dominions. In 1824, Mexico
proclaimed freedom to her Slaves. The Pope of Rome, and the
sovereigns of Turkey and Denmark, and other nations, bow at the
shrine of liberty. But France has laid the richest offering upon
the altar of freedom, that has been presented to God in these
latter days. In achieving her almost bloodless revolution, she
maintained an admirable degree of consistency. The same blast of
the trumpet of Liberty that rang through the halls of the
Tuilleries, and shattered the throne of the Bourbons, also reached
the shores of her remotest colonies, and proclaimed the redemption
of every Slave that moved on French soil. Thus does France remember
the paternal advice of La Fayette, and atone for the murder of
Toussaint. Thanks be to God, the lily is cleansed of the blood that
stained it. The nations of the earth will gaze with delight upon
its democratic purity, wherever it shall be seen, whether in the
grape-grown valleys where it first bloomed, or in the Isles of
Bourbon, Guadaloupe, Martinique, or in Guiana.[7] The Coloured
people of St. Bartholomew's, who were emancipated by a decree of
the king of Sweden last year, have lately sent an address to their
liberator. Hayti, by the heroism of her Age, Toussaint L'Ouverture,
Dessalines, Christophe, and Petion, has driven the demon of Slavery
from that island, and has buried his carcase in the sea.

"Briefly and imperfectly have I noticed the former condition of the
Coloured race. Let us turn for a moment to survey our present
state. The woeful volume of our history, as it now lies open to the
world, is written with tears and bound with blood. As I trace it,
my eyes ache and my heart is filled with grief. No other people
have suffered so much, and none have been more innocent. If I
might apostrophise that bleeding country, I would say, O Africa,
thou hast bled, freely bled, at every pore! Thy sorrow has been
mocked, and thy grief has not been heeded. Thy children are
scattered over the whole earth, and the great nations have been
enriched by them. The wild beasts of thy forests are treated with
more mercy than they. The Libyan lion and the fierce tiger are
caged to gratify the curiosity of men, and the keeper's hands are
not laid heavily upon them. But thy children are tortured, taunted,
and hurried out of life by unprecedented cruelty. Brave men, formed
in the divinest mould, are bartered, sold, and mortgaged. Stripped
of every sacred right, they are scourged if they affirm that they
belong to God. Women, sustaining the dear relation of mothers, are
yoked with the horned cattle, to till the soil, and their
heart-strings are torn to pieces by cruel separations from their
children. Our sisters, ever manifesting the purest kindness,
whether in the wilderness of their father-land, or amid the sorrows
of the middle passage, or in crowded cities, are unprotected from
the lust of tyrants. They have a regard for virtue, and they
possess a sense of honour, but there is no respect paid to these
jewels of noble character. Driven into unwilling concubinage, their
offspring are sold by their Anglo-Saxon fathers. To them, the
marriage institution is but a name, for their despoilers break down
the hymenial altar and scatter its sacred ashes on the winds.

"Our young men are brutalised in intellect, and their manly
energies are chilled by the frosts of Slavery. Sometimes they are
called to witness the agonies of the mothers who bore them,
writhing under the lash, and as if to fill to overflowing the
already full cup of demonism, they are sometimes compelled to apply
the lash with their own hands. Hell itself cannot overmatch a deed
like this--and dark damnation shudders as it sinks into its bosom
and seeks to hide itself from the indignant eye of God."

The writer of the foregoing Discourse was formerly a Slave; his forefathers, stolen from Africa, lived and died in Slavery; he himself was born a Slave, and would have remained in that condition until the present time, had he not been so fortunate as to escape from the galling yoke of fetters and chains. Such an example of elevated humanity as he affords, compels the conviction, that out of the countless millions now doomed to perpetual bondage, many of them, though forcibly degraded to a level with the brute, are qualified to become ornaments, not only to their race but to humanity.

The contents of these pages demonstrate the Negro race to be possessed of intelligent and reflecting minds, capable of occupying a very different station in life to that which has been generally assigned to them, and which they now mostly occupy. Although their sufferings in Slavery have long excited the interest and sympathy of the benevolent, little has been done to advance their position in society. Almost insurmountable obstacles exist, tending to counteract that improvement and elevation of character, to which, under more favourable circumstances, they are capable of attaining.

It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other people could have endured the privations or the sufferings to which they have been subjected, without becoming still _more_ degraded in the scale of humanity. Nothing has been left undone, to cripple their intellects, to darken their minds, to debase their moral nature, and to obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; yet, how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of oppression, under which they have been groaning for centuries!

The supporters and advocates of Slavery, in order to justify their oppressive conduct, allege, either in ignorance or from an affected philosophy, an inherent defect in the mental constitution of the Negro race, sufficient to exclude them from the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, or the exercise of those rights which are equally bestowed by a beneficent Creator upon all his rational creatures.

Prejudice and misinformation have, for a long series of years, been fostered with unremitting assiduity by those interested in upholding the Slave system, and their corrupt influence has enabled them to gain possession of the public ear, and to abuse public credulity to an extent not generally appreciated. They strenuously maintain that the Negro is only fitted and designed for a servile condition. The contents of these pages prove to the contrary, and will surely stop the mouths of those who, from ignorance or something worse, affirm an absolute difference in specific character between the two races, and hence, justify the consignment of the Black to a fate which only proves the fingering barbarism of the White.

But, should the cases here recorded be considered of too isolated a nature to elucidate a theory of general equality of races, it may be observed, that they are only a very fractional part of what might have been adduced. A mass of facts is still in reserve, teeming with unequivocal evidence, that the Almighty has not left the Negro destitute or deficient of those talents and capabilities which he has bestowed upon all his rational creatures, and which, however modified by circumstances in various cases, leave no section of the human family a right to boast that it inherits by birth a superiority, which might not, in the course of events, be manifested and claimed, with equal justice, by those whom they most despise.

In order more fully to demonstrate the capabilities of the Black races of Africa, the writer has selected a mass of facts illustrative of the subject, which he has recently published, entitled "A TRIBUTE FOR THE NEGRO," in which their moral, intellectual, and religious capabilities are fully established. This Volume, including many engravings and portraits of eminent Negroes, embraces upwards of one hundred biographical sketches and anecdotes of this calumniated race, many of them not before published, which afford striking evidence that inferior abilities are not the necessary accompaniment of a Coloured skin, but demonstrating, on the contrary, that the Negro race are endowed with every characteristic constituting an identity with the great family of man, and consequently entitled to those inalienable rights which have been denied them, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," any infringement on which is a daring usurpation of the prerogative of the Most High!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] America.

[2] "Truth is powerful, and will ultimately prevail."

[3] Gen. ii. 8, 9, 15.

[4] Prov. xiv. 34.

[5] Exod. xv. 1, 10.

[6] Acts vii. 22.

[7] The number of Slaves in the French colonies was almost 300,000.

ANTHONY PICKARD, PRINTER, TOP OF BRIGGATE, LEEDS.

JUST PUBLISHED,

A TRIBUTE FOR THE NEGRO,

BEING

A VINDICATION

OF THE

MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND RELIGIOUS CAPABILITIES

OF THE

COLOURED PORTION OF MANKIND,

WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE AFRICAN RACE

BY

WILSON ARMISTEAD, LEEDS.

LONDON: CHARLES GILPIN, 5, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT; AND WILLIAM IRWIN, 39, OLDHAM-STREET, MANCHESTER; G. W. TAYLOR, PHILADELPHIA; WILLIAM HARNED, ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE, NEW YORK.

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REMARKS OF THE PRESS,

RESPECTING "A TRIBUTE FOR THE NEGRO."

"We are gratified to announce the publication of a Volume under this designation; and, especially, that it will emanate from the pen--we may add, also, from the heart--of a gentleman whose feelings and sympathies, no less than mental powers, so well fit him for the task of preparing it. It will be embellished with ten engravings, enriched by an Introductory Poem by Mr. Bernard Barton, and the profits devoted to the Anti-Slavery cause."--_The Universe._

"It is scarcely needful to do more than read the Prospectus, to be convinced that the Volume is likely to be one of no common interest, both to the Christian and to the Philanthropist. Indeed, it seems to promise a high treat to the Anti-Slavery public in particular; and, from the great labour and cost the author has bestowed on it, we trust an extensive sale awaits it."--_British Friend._

"From our acquaintance with the author of the '_Tribute for the Negro_,' we feel no hesitation in saying that it will be one of deep research, as well as of intense interest, being on a subject most intimately connected with the happiness or misery of a large portion of the human family."--_The Citizen._

"It is with sincere pleasure we announce the appearance of this interesting publication. It includes upwards of one hundred biographical sketches of Africans, or their descendants, besides facts and anecdotes, testimonies of travellers, missionaries, &c., exhibiting an undoubted refutation of the unfounded calumnies which have been heaped on the unfortunate race of Africa. In addition to illustrative engravings, it will contain the portraits of several distinguished men of Colour. From the character of the gentleman who has undertaken the pleasing, though arduous, task, and who contemplates no other reward but that of service to the deeply-oppressed race of Africa, we may with confidence recommend his production to the early and earnest attention of our readers, feeling assured that they will be both cheered and profited by its perusal. We are glad to perceive that, in addition to the names of many friends of the Negro, the subscription list is headed by the Queen."--_Anti-Slavery Reporter._

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The Volume contains upwards of 550 Pages, Demy 8vo., and Ten superior Portraits and Engravings, Price 16s.

May also be had in Morocco, gilt edges, and Proof Plates, at 25s.; the Morocco Copies include Two additional Engravings.

N.B.--All profits arising from the Sale of "A Tribute for the Negro" will be devoted on behalf of the oppressed.