We all know that the wife and children of the free negro are not ordinarily sold in the market—­that he himself does not toil under the lash, and that in certain parts of our country he is permitted to acquire some intelligence, and to enjoy some comforts, utterly and universally denied to the slave.  Still it is most unquestionable, that these people grievously suffer from a cruel and wicked prejudice—­cruel in its consequences; wicked in its voluntary adoption, and its malignant character.

Colonizationists have taken great pains to inculcate the opinion that prejudice against color is implanted in our nature by the Author of our being; and whence they infer the futility of every effort to elevate the colored man in this country, and consequently the duty and benevolence of sending him to Africa, beyond the reach of our cruelty.[99] The theory is as false in fact as it is derogatory to the character of that God whom we are told is LOVE.  With what astonishment and disgust should we behold an earthly parent exciting feuds and animosities among his own children; yet we are assured, and that too by professing Christians, that our heavenly Father has implanted a principle of hatred, repulsion and alienation between certain portions of his family on earth, and then commanded them, as if in mockery, to “love one another.”

[Footnote 99:  “Prejudices, which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, NOR RELIGION ITSELF can subdue, mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable.”—­Address of the Connecticut Col.  Society.  “The managers consider it clear that causes exist, and are now operating, to prevent their improvement and elevation to any considerable extent as a class in this country, which are fixed, not only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, but of any human power:  CHRISTIANITY cannot do for them here, what it will do for them in Africa.  This is not the fault of the colored man, nor of the white man, but an ORDINATION OF PROVIDENCE, and no more to be changed than the laws of nature.”—­15 Rep.  Am.  Col.  Soc. p. 47.

“The people of color must, in this country, remain for ages, probably for ever, a separate and distinct caste, weighed down by causes powerful, universal, invincible, which neither legislation nor CHRISTIANITY can remove.”—­African Repository Vol.  VIII. p. 196.

“Do they (the abolitionists) not perceive that in thus confounding all the distinctions which GOD himself has made, they arraign the wisdom and goodness of Providence itself?  It has been His divine pleasure, to make the black man black, and the white man white, and to distinguish them by other repulsive constitutional differences.”—­Speech in Senate of the United States, February 7, 1839, by HENRY CLAY, PRESIDENT OF THE AM.  COL.  SOC.]