They dare not lead to the onset against the forces of tyranny; and if they shrink from the conflict, how shall the victory be won?
I do not mean to aver that in their sermons, or addresses, or private conversations, they never allude to the subject of slavery; for they do so frequently, or at least every Fourth of July.
But my complaint is that they content themselves with representing slavery as an evil--a misfortune--a calamity which has been entailed upon us by former generations,--_and not as an individual_ CRIME, embracing in its folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy.

_They do not identify the criminal_; they make no direct, pungent, earnest appeal to the consciences of men-stealers." This was a damning bill, but it was true in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison adduced to establish his charges was overwhelming and irrefragable.
Nearly fifty years afterward, Elizur Wright described the baleful influence of the society upon the humanity and philanthropy of the nation.

"The humanity and philanthropy," he said, "which could not otherwise be disposed of, was ingeniously seduced into an African Colonization Society, whereby all slaves who had grown seditious and troublesome to their masters could be transplanted on the pestiferous African coast.

That this wretched and seemingly transparent humbug could have deluded anybody, must now seem past belief; but I must with shame confess the fact that I for one was deluded by it.

And that fact would put me in doubt of my own sanity at the time if I did not know that high statesmen, presidents of colleges, able editors, and that most undoubted of firm philanthropists, Gerritt Smith, shared the same delusion.