a and the establishment and maintenance of the Colony at Liberia will have an immense influence in hastening its extinction. The operations of your Society, I think, will have a great influence in а. diminishing the evils of slavery in our own country. I hope that they may be instrumental in due time of blotting that stigma from our national character. Entertaining these views respecting the operations of the A. C. S. I am a devoted friend to it, and you may calculate on all the assistance which it is in my power to render. I have called on my congregation for a collection in aid of your funds annually for several years past, the avails of which your Treasurer, I conclude, has received. As there will be no meeting on the Fourth of July of my congregation, which will make a collection practicable, I have taken one on the last Sabbath, the amount of which, being $11, I now transmit to you. You may calculate on an annual collection from my congregation. As they are called upon frequently for collections for various other objects of religious charity, and moreover are in moderate circumstances, perhaps you cannot expect from them more than about the amount of the present collection. I have not the least doubt that your funds will be much increased by sending the Repository gratis to every Clergyman who will take up a collection in his congregation in aid of your funds. There is a great lack of information respecting the existence, objects, and prospects of your Society. If clergymen have information, their people will to a considerable degree have information. Clergymen generally are in embarrassed circumstances, and unable to take all the Periodicals they would wish to read. I think you have therefore adopted a wise plan to disseminate information and increase your funds. You may consider me as an agent to obtain subscribers for the Journal, receive pay, &c. I do not know whether I shall be able to procure any subscribers, I will do what I can. cure any, you shall have the whole avails. My time is devoted to the Lord:—that I can give to the cause;—money I have not. Command me in any thing in which I may be of service to the Society. If I pro From a Clergyman in New Jersey. Your proposal to take up collections (as stated in the Circular accompanying the Repository) meets our cordial approbation; it indeed proposes what we have been doing for several years past. Our general practice has been, to take up a collection at the celebration on the Fourth of July, and also in the Church on the following Sabbath. Your offer to send the Repository seems too good for us, as we deserve no reward for doing our duty. The accounts in the Repository are interesting and encouraging. I wish all our people had the information it contains. I will give them the outlines of the benevolent and prosperous operations of the Society, and also circulate as widely as I can, your valuable , Repository; and also use my best endeavours to increase the contributions. Praying for the blessing of God on your benevolent operations, I remain your sincere friend. From a Gentleman in New York City. The scheme of your Society is daily gaining friends here. It begins to be the subject of much more conversation than formerly. Nearly all those powerful engines the papers, are our friends. I coincide with you in opinion, as to merchants, could they be aroused to the subject, presenting a ship to the Society. From a Clergyman in New Hampshire. The present is the third year in which I have presented the claims of your Society to my congregation. In the success of your Institution I rejoice. Its prosperity, though attended with the loss of several valuable lives, I conceive to be unexampled. Through the door which is opened by this colony, the Saviour will, we may hope, enter into Africa, and his gospel be conveyed to its most unexplored recesses. Then shall the manacles fall from the limbs, and the darkness be dispelled from the minds of her sons—then shall a voice be heard through all her coasts, ascending her mountain tops, and filling her wide spread plains, Africa is free. From a Clergyman in Massachusetts. The amount of our collection is about sixteen dollars. The assembly was however smaller than usual; besides, information in regard to the object, proceedings, importance, and success of your Society, is not so generally diffused among the people, as we hope it will be hereafter. Many who have not yet assisted, will contribute to the Society as soon as they shall better understand its design and operations. It is our intention in future, religiously to celebrate the 4th of July, and take up annually a collection for the Society. I do feel that Christians should look upon your enterprise with deeper interest than they seem yet to do. There are some things in it which raise it in grandeur, and invest it with blessings for men, above other benevolent institutions of the day. You not only wish to relieve our own country from an evil which threatens to destroy our peace and prosperity, but you are taking the readiest and most effectual way to accomplish the glorious objects of Bible and Missionary Societies, so far as it relates to the whole continent of Africa. To establish a Christian colony in that barbarous land, is striking deep the roots of the tree of life in its soil, and providing for its growth and increase, until its leaves shall heal the nations, and diffuse the blessings of civilization and christianity over those vast regions of moral desolation. I do think, that aiding your Society, is doing good to our own country, and aiding the missionary cause in a manner as direct and effectual, if not more so, than any other. And I cannot regard your Society, and look forward to what seems to me will be the results, by the blessing of God, without rendering praise to Him who will give the heathen to his Son for an inheritance, that he put it into your hearts to enter upon this work, and has so wonderfully prospered your beginning. By the instrumentality of your Institution, he will open a way for his grace into the heart of Africa, and pour water upon the thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground, and converts to Christ shall spring up as among the From a Clergyman in Virginia. I believe I informed you last fall, that my feelings were enlisted in the cause of the American Colonization Society. Having formerly set free a number of coloured people who are now vagabonds; I have done them no benefit, but injured society.For this there is no remedy, as I have no control over them.Those still in my possession, I cannot conscientiously emancipate, unless they shall be removed by the Society to Liberia. a A list of six, which I wish transferred to the Colony, was last fall furnished to the Society, and entered upon its books. I wish them to be called for, as I am old, and desire the business may be completed before I quit my earthly station. We have formed an Auxiliary Society in this county, which is to hold intercourse with the Parent Society, as more convenient than that located at Richmond. I intend taking up annual collections in my congregations for the Society. From a Gentleman in Virginia. Since the personal interview which I had with you in May last, in regard to the transportation to Liberia, of the slaves belonging to the estate of my deceased father, Robert Bladen, I have made every exertion in my power to prevail on them to accept of the only terms on which they could enjoy their freedom. The unfounded prejudices which many of them entertain against Africa; the dangers of the seas, which their ignorance has magnified; and their natural attachment to the place of their nativity, have presented obstacles which I have found extremely difficult to remove. They now profess a willingness to be removed to Africa, if the means of conveyance can be obtained. In addition to these slaves, there are several other coloured persons, some slaves and some free, (all of the same family,). who wish to accompany them. The masters of these slaves are willing to emancipate them for that purpose. A list of the whole, (26) with their ages and the names of their masters, is subjoined Several of the slaves belonging to the estate of my father, have received some education-all of them are honest and industrious, and have been treated with a degree of humani and indulgence which will capacitate them for the enjoyment of freedom without licentiousness. From a Clergyman in Maine. I have received the March No. of the African Repository, and have concluded to lay the subject before my people, and request a collection about the 4th of July. When your Society was first formed, I viewed it with a high degree of pleasure, from the expectation that it was designed to exert a direct influence upon slavery. But when I learned that it was patronized by slave-holders themselves, who did not manumit their slaves, but still retained them in bondage, I confess I was jealous of their motives, and apprehended they merely wished to rid their part of the country of free blacks, that they might retain their slaves with greater safety, and render their labour more valuable. Such an opinion was somewhat prevalent at the North, and for this reason I could not afford your Society any aid. I cherished, however, a disposition to examine the subject, and kept my mind open to conviction. The result is, that whatever the motives of the founders of this Institution might be, I am fully convinced that every Christian, every Philanthropist, every lover of his country ought to give your Society a proper proportion of their benevolent patronage. My conviction is founded principally upon these facts. The coloured population of this country can never rise to respectability and happiness here; in their native soil they can. A colony in Africa opens the most effectual door for the introduction of civilization and all the inestimable blessings of Christianity to its long-benighted tribes. It will exert a powerful influence towards the suppression of the slave-trade. And your Society opens a way for the benevolent slave-holder to free his slaves and place them where they can obtain a livelihood by their own industry. Upon this latter subject, I confess, that with many others of the Northern people, I have long entertained erroneous views. I have supposed that slavery was an evil, confined merely to the slave-holder himself; and that he might and ought immediately to manumit his slaves. But I am convinced that slavery is a National sin! that we, who are so far removed from the scene of its abominations, partake of its guilt! that it is an evil which is entailed upon the present generation of slave-holders, while they must suffer, whether they will or not; and therefore the North should aid the South, in the expense of emancipating and transporting their slaves back to the land of their fathers. There are but few subjects on which I have felt more, than the existence of slavery! If my views were erroneous, I hope they are now more enlightened; and I feel willing to lend what little influence I possess, towards the removal of this evil from our otherwise free and happy country. Hoping and praying that а |