If political action against slavery has been thus disastrously unfortunate, how is it with anti-slavery action, at large, as to its efficiency at this moment? On this point, hear the testimony of a correspondent of Frederick Douglass' Paper, January 26, 1855:
"How gloriously did the anti-slavery cause arise . . . . . . in 1833-4! And now what is it, in our agency! . . . . . . What is it, through the errors or crimes of its advocates variously--probably quite as much as through the brazen, gross, and licentious wickedness of its enemies. Alas! what is it but a mutilated, feeble, discordant, and half-expiring instrument, at which Satan and his children, legally and illegally, scoff! Of it I despair."
Such are the crowning results of both political and anti-slavery action, for the overthrow of slavery! Such are the demonstrations of their utter impotency as a means of relief to the bond and free of the colored people!
Surely, then, if the negro is capable of elevation, it is time that some other measures should be devised, than those hitherto adopted, for the melioration of the African race! Surely, too, it is time for the American people to rebuke that class of politicians, North and South, whose only capital consists in keeping up a fruitless warfare upon the subject of slavery--nay! abundant in fruits to the poor colored man; but to him, "their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter; their vine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps."[13]
The application of this language, to the case under consideration, will be fully justified when the facts, in the remaining pages of this work, are carefully studied.
[8] The sentiment of the Colonization Society, was expressed in the following resolution, embraced in its annual report of 1826:
"_Resolved_,--That the society disclaims, in the most unqualified terms, the design attributed to it, of interfering, on the one hand, with the legal rights and obligations of slavery; and, on the other, of perpetuating its existence within the limits of the country."
On another occasion Mr. Clay, on behalf of the society, defined its position thus:
"It protested, from the commencement, and throughout all its progress, and it now protests, that it entertains no purpose, on its own authority, or by its own means, to attempt emancipation, partial or general; that it knows the General Government has no constitutional power to achieve such an object; that it believes that the States, and the States only, which tolerate slavery, can accomplish the work of emancipation; and that it ought to be left to them exclusively, absolutely, and voluntarily, to decide the question."--_Tenth Annual Report, p. 14, 1828._