In the seventh Annual Report it is said, "An effort for the benefit of the blacks, in which all parts of the country can unite, of course must not have the abolition of slavery for its immediate object; _nor may it aim directly at the instruction of the blacks_."
Mr. Archer, of Virginia, fifteenth Annual Report, says: "The object of the Society, if I understand it aright, involves no intrusion on property, _nor even upon prejudice_."
In the speech of James S. Green, Esq. he says: "This Society have ever disavowed, and they do yet disavow that their object is the emancipation of slaves. They have no _wish_ if they _could_ to interfere in the smallest degree with what they deem the most interesting and fearful subject which can be pressed upon the American public. There is no people that treat their slaves with so much kindness and so little cruelty."
In almost every address delivered before the Society, similar expressions occur. On the propriety of discussing the evils of slavery, without bitterness and without fear, good men may differ in opinion; though I think the time is fast coming, when they will all agree. But by assuming the ground implied in the above remarks, the Colonization Society have fallen into the habit of glossing over the enormities of the slave system; at least, it so appears to me. In their constitution they have pledged themselves not to speak, write, or do anything to offend the Southerners; and as there is no possible way of making the truth pleasant to those who do not love it, the Society must perforce keep the truth out of sight. In many of their publications, I have thought I discovered a lurking tendency to palliate slavery; or, at least to make the best of it. They often bring to my mind the words of Hamlet:
"Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times, Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg; Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good."
Thus in an Address delivered March, 1833, we are told, "It ought never to be forgotten that the slave-trade between Africa and America, had its origin in a compassionate endeavor to relieve, by the substitution of negro labor, the toils endured by native Indians. It was the _simulated form of mercy_ that piloted the first slave-ship across the Atlantic."