world--pointing the way to their rights, their liberties, and their
happiness. And when they have achieved all those purposes their work will
be yet incomplete. They must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the
light of reason and the love of liberty. Then, and not till then, when
universal darkness and despair prevail, can you perpetuate slavery and
repress all sympathy and all humane and benevolent efforts among free men
in behalf of the unhappy portion of our race doomed to bondage."

The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816. Mr. Clay, though
not its projector, was one of its earliest members; and he died, as for
many preceding years he had been, its president. It was one of the most
cherished objects of his direct care and consideration, and the
association of his name with it has probably been its very greatest
collateral support. He considered it no demerit in the society that it
tended to relieve the slave-holders from the troublesome presence of the
free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his
estimation. In the same speech from which we have quoted he says:

" There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her
children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of
fraud and violence. Transplanted in a foreign land, they will carry back
to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law, and
liberty. May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the
universe, whose ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals, thus
to transform an original crime into a signal blessing to that most
unfortunate portion of the globe?"

This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race
and African continent was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding
year has added strength to the hope of its realization. May it indeed be