358 COLONISATION SOCIETY A FAILURE. 



The persuasion of the members of this Society if it is 

 to be inferred from the speeches made at its last annual 

 meeting, is, &quot; that the black man the free black man 

 can never mingle socially and politically with the white 

 man as his equal in the same land,&quot; and that it is desir 

 able, therefore, to send him to another region. Their 

 efforts, however, are confined to &quot; the colonisation of free 

 people of colour, with their own consent&quot; 



This scheme has never found much favour either in the 

 north or in the south, and in revenge the speakers of the 

 Society inveigh against both parties of their opponents 

 as fanatics. The income of the Society has, for some 

 years past, amounted to about 50,000 dollars, but during 

 the thirty-three years it has been in existence, it has 

 shipped for the coast of Africa only about 7000 coloured 

 people. Even of these a great many have not been free 

 people of colour, but slaves liberated on condition of their 

 going to Liberia.* 



The Society, therefore, has been a failure as regards 

 its professed object of separating the white and free 

 coloured races, by sending the latter to another country. 

 The free coloured people increase at present in the States 

 at the rate of 11,000 a-year, while the Society in thirty- 

 three years has transported only 7000 in all, many of them 

 slaves manumitted for the purpose. It is obvious, there 

 fore, that the scheme is frowned upon by the people of 

 colour themselves, that it finds no general favour even 

 among the money-giving white people of the States, and 

 that, in fact, it never can produce any sensible effect 

 upon the relative numbers of the white and coloured 

 population, or in any way diminish the natural increase 

 of the latter. In the face of this plain result of experi- 



* The report for 1850 gives 6653 as the total number transported up 

 to the date of the report. The number sent off in 1850 was 422, and 

 in 1849 it was 443, of whom &quot; three hundred and twenty-four were liber 

 ated for the purpose of going to Liberia.&quot; 



