American Republican and Baltimore daily clipper. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1844-1846, 1846-02-26

| that all children born during the temporary
slavery of their Mothers will be sIayeS for life.
1t is not necessary for your memoralists to
attempt to describe the suffering, oppression
and injustice which would inevitably result
from such law, to be SO administered. There
can be no doubt that its certain consequence
would be to exasperate, and at the same time
would tend TO Cypress and degrade the colored
population, to corrupt the magistrates and con-
stables of the State, who are most important
agents in the general administration of the
laws, and at first to shock the moral sense, and
finally to lower the moral character Of the
whole community.
They also demonstrate against the passage of
Mr. Reeder's bill for the removal of free ne
groes and mulattees from Charles county, az
still more Objectionable. They say
1t is in effect decree of Punishment against
the whole free colored population of Charles
county, with the exception only of such as are
married to slaves, and such as are unable to
gain livelihood. The whole business of ar
resting and removing them is to be entrusted
to the tax commissioners and the sheriff, They
are TO be arrested and imprisoned until such
time as they can be handed over to the Colo
nization Society, but the bill does not provide
for raising the means to be furnished to the So
ciety for their support and removal, nor does
it provide for the contingency, which will GER
tainly happen, that the society will neither be
able nor willing to receive this crowd of desti-
tute individuals, thus thrust upon it.
The bill does provide, however, that the free
colored person who shall prefer slavery to ban
lshment, may select master, go before JUS
tice of the peace of the county, and there en-
ter into written agreement by which he shall
become a Stare for life. Such is the commen-
tary which the bill furnishes on itself! 1t an
ticipates and provides for the contingency, that
free men and free women will choose slavery
for life, rather than submit to the Punishment
which it denounces against them!
Your memoralists are, and have ever been,
friends of the Colonization Society, and as
such, they deprecate the proposed measures,
in the full conviction that the attempted union
of Colonization with any such schemes will
necessarily be destructive to the former.
Your memorialists beg leave to say, that al
though they do not believe that the proposed
measures can receive the sanction of your
Honorable Bodies, and become laws of the
State, yet they feel it to be their duty, to exert
such influence as they may possess, to oppose
at the commencement, every movement similar
to those in question.
Your memorialists believe that the free CO.
lored people of the State, are IN many respects
useful and valuable class, that they are impro-
wing in character and condition, and are emf
nently an improbable people, that if they were
suddenly removed, their places could not be
well nor easily supplied, and that it is the true
policy of the State, the dictate alike of justice
and expediency, to offer to them every reason
able inducement and facility to become more
respectable, industrious and intelligent.
The memorial concludes with remonstrance
against the act which forbids, in future, any
emancipated slave to remain IN certain coun-
ties, and prohibiting his settling in any other
county of the State