Is not the necessity of an “under ground railroad,” a disgrace to the laws of any country?  Certainly it is; yet I thank God, that it does afford a means of escape to many, and I pray that the blessings of Heaven may ever rest upon those who willingly superintend its interests.  Oh, my country!  When will thy laws, just and equal, supersede this humiliating necessity!

Is my reader about to throw the blame of our nation’s wrong on England, and accuse her of first tolerating Slavery?  We admit it; but did she not repent of the evil she had done, and speedily break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free?  Certainly; no slave now breathes in England’s atmosphere.  But, say you, her white poor are slaves to the aristocracy, from which sentiment I beg leave to differ.  Oppressed they may be, and doubtless are, as the poor are apt to be in any and every country; but they are not sold in the market, to the highest bidder, like beasts of burden, as are the American slaves.  No Englishman, however poor, destitute, or degraded he may be, but owns himself, his wife and children; nor does he fear that they be sold and torn from his embrace, while he is laboring for their support.  Poverty, my friend, does not comprise the bitterness of Slavery, no more than “one swallow makes a summer,”—­nor does it consist solely in ignorance and degradation.  Its bitterness arises from a consciousness of wrong; a sense of the violation of every right God has given to man, and the uncertainty of his future, over which he has no control.

If the American people flatter themselves with the idea of getting rid of the hated negro race, by colonizing them on the sickly soil of Liberia, or any other country, they will surely find themselves mistaken.  They are Americans; allied to this country by birth and by misfortune; and here will they remain,—­not always as now, oppressed and degraded,—­for all who have any interest in the matter, well know that the free colored people, are rapidly advancing in intelligence, and improving their condition in every respect.  Men of learning and genius, are now found among those with fleecy locks, and good mechanics with dusky complexion.

This marked improvement in the condition and rapid advancement in intelligence among our people, seems to have alarmed the colonizationists, and made them fearful that those very down-trodden slaves, who have for years labored for nought; whose blood and tears have fertilized the Southern soil, may, perchance, become their equals in intelligence, and take vengeance on their oppressors for the wrongs done them; and lest they should do so, they would gladly remove them to some far-off country.

Yet here, in North America, will the colored race remain, and ere long in my opinion, become a great people, equal with the proud Anglo-Saxon in all things.  The African has once been a powerful nation, before Christian Englishmen invaded her coasts with rum, and incited her chiefs to war, by purchasing with gaudy, but worthless trinkets, her conquered captives; and we have every reason to believe, that though her glory as a nation has departed, that her sons will yet be acknowledged free men by the white population of this country.