I have had a good deal to say about Anti-Slavery societies. There was another society which was called into existence by the slavery situation. Whether it was pro-slavery or anti-slavery was a question that long puzzled a good many people. It was the Colonization Society. A good many Anti-Slavery people believed in it for a time and gave it their support. "I am opposed to slavery, but I am not an Abolitionist: I am a Colonizationist," was a declaration that, when I was a boy, I heard many and many times, and from the lips of well-intending people.

It did not take the sharp-sighted leaders of the Abolition movement very long to discover that one of the uses its managers expected to make of the Colonization Society was as a shield for slavery. It kept a number of excellent people from joining in an aggressive movement against it, took their money, and made them believe that they were at work for the freedom of the negro.

Strangely as it might appear, the negroes, who were assumed to be the beneficiaries of the colonization scheme, were opposed to it. Quicker than the white people generally did, they saw through its false pretense, and, besides, they could not understand why they should be taken from the land of their nativity, and sent to the country from which their progenitors had come, any more than the descendants of Scotch, English, and German immigrants should be deported to the lands of their ancestors.

Equally strange was it that the Colonization Society, if really friendly to the negro, should find its most zealous supporters among slaveholders. Its first president, who was a nephew of George Washington, upon learning that his slaves had got the idea that they were to be set at liberty, sent over fifty of them to be sold from the auction block at New Orleans. That was intended as a warning to the rest. One of its presidents was said to be the owner of a thousand slaves and had never manumitted one of them. The principal service that the colonization movement was expected to do for the slave-owners was to relieve them of the presence of free negroes. These were always regarded as a menace by slave-masters. They disseminated ideas of freedom and manhood among their unfortunate brethren. They were object-lessons to those in bondage. The slave-owners were only too glad to have them sent away. They looked to Liberia as a safety-valve. It did not take long for intelligent people who were really well-wishers of the black man to perceive these facts.

The severest blow that the Colonization Society received in America was from the pen of William Lloyd Garrison, who, under the title of Thoughts on African Colonisation, published a pamphlet that had wide distribution. It completely unmasked the pretended friendship of the Colonizationists for the negroes, free or slave. From that time they lost all support from real Anti-Slavery people. There was, however, to be a battle fought, in which the Colonization Society figured as a party, that furnished one of the most interesting episodes of the slavery conflict.

England, at the time of which we are speaking, was full of Anti-Slavery sentiment. Slavery, at the end of a long and bitter contest, had been abolished in all her colonies. Her philanthropists were rejoicing in their victory. The managers of the Colonization Society resolved, if possible, to capture that sentiment, and with it the pecuniary aid the British Abolitionists might render. It was always a tremendous beggar. They, accordingly, selected a fluent-tongued agent and sent him to England to advocate their cause. He did not hesitate to represent that the Colonization Society was the especial friend of the negro, working for his deliverance from bondage, and, in addition, that it had the support of "the wealth, the respectability, and the piety of the American people."

When these facts came to the knowledge of the members of the newly formed New England Anti-Slavery Society, they were naturally excited, and resolved to meet the enemy in this new field of operations. This they decided to do by sending a representative to England, who would be able to meet the colonization agent in discussion, and otherwise proclaim and champion their particular views. For this service the man selected was William Lloyd Garrison, who was then but twenty-eight years old.

Remarkable it was that one who was not only so young, but imperfectly educated, being a poor mechanic, daily toiling as a compositor at his printer's case, should be chosen to meet the most polished people in the British Empire, and hold himself ready to debate the most serious question of the time. That such a person should be willing to enter upon such an undertaking was almost as remarkable. But Garrison showed no hesitation in accepting the task for which he was selected.

On his arrival in England, Garrison sent a challenge to the colonization agent for a public debate. This the Colonizationist refused to receive. Two more challenges were sent and were treated in the same way. Then Garrison, at a cost of thirty dollars, which he could ill afford to pay, published the challenge in the London Times, with a statement of the manner in which it had been so far treated. Of course, public interest was aroused, and when Garrison appeared upon the public platform, as he at once proceeded to do, he was greeted with the attendance of multitudes of interested hearers. Exeter Hall in London was crowded. The most distinguished men in England sat upon the stage when he spoke, and applauded his addresses. Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish orator, paid them a most florid compliment. They were, unquestionably, most remarkable samples of effective eloquence—plain in statement, simple in style, but exceedingly logical and forcible. They were widely published throughout England at the time of their delivery.

One of the results was that the leading emancipationists of Great Britain signed and published a warning against the colonization scheme, denouncing it as having its roots in "a cruel prejudice," and declaring that it was calculated to "increase the spirit of caste so unhappily predominant," and that it "exposed the colored people to great practical persecution in order to force them to emigrate."

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