Calumny Refuted by Facts From Liberia

"To injured Afric, liberal reader, turn, There from her sable sons this maxim learn;-- To no complexion is the charm confined, In every climate grows the virtuous mind."

"Ab Æthiope virtutem disce, et ne crede colori." From the Æthiopian learn virtue, and trust not to colour.

LONDON: CHARLES GILPIN, 5, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT; G. W. TAYLOR, PHILADELPHIA; WILLIAM HARNED, ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE, NEW YORK. 1848.

LEEDS: PRINTED BY ANTHONY PICKARD.

NOTICE TO THE READER.

The Reader will please to observe, that the following pages are printed solely with a view of refuting the calumnious charge of incapability and inferiority made against the Negro race, and not for the purpose of vindicating the American Colonization Scheme, concerning which great diversity of opinion exists.

No one can object to the Colonization of Africa, so long as it is perfectly voluntary on the part of those who go out as Colonists; in which case, connected with legitimate commerce and plans of civil and Christian improvement, great benefit may accrue; and which, for the sake of Africa, is worthy of encouragement. But, to hold up such a scheme, merely as a mode of expatriating the whole of the African race from America, merits the strongest disapprobation.

If "the aristocracy of the skin" were laid aside, and the Coloured population of America were invested with the full rights of citizenship, and every civil prize, every useful employment, and every honourable station were thrown open to their exertions, there can be little doubt, as J. J. Gurney observes, in his Remarks on a Speech of Henry Clay's, "that the mixture of colours, in the same population, would soon be found perfectly harmless. Every man, white or black, would rest on his own responsibility; character, like other things, would find its natural level; light and truth would spread without obstruction; and the North American Union would afford, to an admiring world, a splendid and unsullied evidence of the truth of that mighty principle on which her constitution is founded; viz., that, 'All men are created EQUAL, and are endowed by the Creator with certain INALIENABLE rights,--LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.'"

W. A.

Leeds, 10th Mo., 1848.

CALUMNY REFUTED, ETC., ETC.

Amidst the numerous attempts to depreciate the character of the Negro, by exhibiting it as inferior and incapable of improvement, it is desirable to adduce evidence of an opposite nature, and to show that circumstances operate no less powerfully on the Sable inhabitants of a tropical climate, than on the natives of more northern latitudes, in which opportunities have been employed to remove the ignorance of uncivilised man, and to invest him with the glorious light of religion and science. How have they raised the brutal to the rational--the degraded to the noble--the idolatrous to the Christian character! What was once the condition of Druidical Britain, when, in the most barbarous manner, parents sacrificed their offspring to senseless deities? And to what can her present position amongst the nations be attributed, but to that expansion of knowledge, human and divine, with which she has been pre-eminently favoured?

The false philosophy which has imputed to the Negro a constitutional inferiority, is amply refuted by facts. There is not only abundant evidence, that the African is susceptible of all the finest feelings of our nature, but that his intellectual capacity, under circumstances more favourable than have generally fallen to his lot, will bear a comparison with that of any other portion of our species.