We have been standing comparatively still for years, following in the footsteps of our friends, believing that what they promise us can be accomplished, just because they say so, although our own knowledge should long since, have satisfied us to the contrary.  Because even were it possible, with the present hate and jealousy that the whites have towards us in this country, for us to gain equality of rights with them; we never could have an equality of the exercise and enjoyment of those rights—­because, the great odds of numbers are against us.  We might indeed, as some at present, have the right of the elective franchise—­nay, it is not the elective franchise, because the elective franchise makes the enfranchised, eligible to any position attainable; but we may exercise the right of voting only, which to us, is but poor satisfaction; and we by no means care to cherish the privilege of voting somebody into office, to help to make laws to degrade us.

In religion—­because they are both translators and commentators, we must believe nothing, however absurd, but what our oppressors tell us.  In Politics, nothing but such as they promulge; in Anti-Slavery, nothing but what our white brethren and friends say we must; in the mode and manner of our elevation, we must do nothing, but that which may be laid down to be done by our white brethren from some quarter or other; and now, even on the subject of emigration, there are some colored people to be found, so lost to their own interest and self-respect, as to be gulled by slave owners and colonizationists, who are led to believe there is no other place in which they can become elevated, but Liberia, a government of American slave-holders, as we have shown—­simply, because white men have told them so.

Upon the possibility, means, mode and manner, of our Elevation in the United States—­Our Original Rights and Claims as Citizens—­Our Determination not to be Driven from our Native Country—­the Difficulties in the Way of our Elevation—­Our Position in Relation to our Anti-Slavery Brethren—­the Wicked Design and Injurious Tendency of the American Colonization Society—­Objections to Liberia—­Objections to Canada—­Preferences to South America, &c., &c., all of which we have treated without reserve; expressing our mind freely, and with candor, as we are determined that as far as we can at present do so, the minds of our readers shall be enlightened.  The custom of concealing information upon vital and important subjects, in which the interest of the people is involved, we do not agree with, nor favor in the least; we have therefore, laid this cursory treatise before our readers, with the hope that it may prove instrumental in directing the attention of our people in the right way, that leads to their Elevation.  Go or stay—­of course each is free to do as he pleases—­one thing is certain; our Elevation is the work of our own hands.  And Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and South America, all present now, opportunities for the individual enterprise of our young men, who prefer to remain in the United States, in preference to going where they can enjoy real freedom, and equality of rights.  Freedom of Religion, as well as of politics, being tolerated in all of these places.