class of free people of color.  He found that these people were not at all well affected to the society; that they had no appreciation of its benevolent intentions in respect to themselves.  He found, on the contrary, that they were positively embittered toward it and toward its designs for their removal from the country as toward their worst enemy.  This circumstance was undoubtedly a poser to their young friend.  How could he reconcile this deep-seated and widespread disbelief in the purity of the motives of the Colonization Society, with the simple integrity and humanity of the enterprise itself?  Later, his acquaintance with such representatives of the free people of color in Philadelphia as James Forten and his son-in-law, Robert Purvis, served but to confirm those first impressions which he received in Baltimore from the Watkinses and the Greeners.  It was the same experience in New York and New Haven, in Boston and Providence.  He learned that from the very beginning, in the year 1817, that the free people of color in Richmond and Philadelphia had, by an instinctive knowledge of threatened wrong and danger, met and resolved against the society and its sinister designs upon themselves.  These people did not wish to leave the country; they did not wish to be sent to Liberia; but the society, bent on doing them good against their will, did want them to leave the country, did want to send them to Liberia.

And why did the society desire to remove the free people of color out of the country?  Was it from motives of real philanthropy?  The colored people were the first to detect its spurious humanity, the first to see through the artful disguises employed to impose upon the conscience of the republic.  Their removal, they intuitively divined, was proposed not to do their race a benefit, but rather to do a service to the owners of slaves.  These objects of the society’s pseudo-philanthropy had the sagacity to perceive that, practically, their expatriation tended to strengthen the chains of their brethren then in slavery; for if the South could get rid of its free colored population, its slave property would thereby acquire additional security, and, of consequence, increased market value.  Like cause, like effect.  If the operation of the colonization scheme was decidedly in the interest of the masters, it was the part of wisdom to conclude as the free colored people did actually conclude that the underlying motive, the hidden purpose of the society was also in the interest of the masters.

Garrison did not reach his conclusions as to the pro-slavery character and tendency of the society abruptly.  The scales fell away gradually from his eyes.  He was not completely undeceived until he had examined the reports of the society and found in them the most redundant evidence of its insincerity and guilt.  It was out of its own mouth that he condemned it.  When he saw the society in its true character, he saw what he must do.  It was a wolf in sheep’s