The Seventh Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States

hopes of success. Having expended near $20,000 of their own funds, in purchasing lands, and planting a colony of free blacks in Africa; having demonstrated the practicability of giving to the Virginia resolution complete effect, they have now arrived at a stage of their la bours, where their Auxiliary Societies in the several States may, they trust, confidently appeal to their respective Legislatures for aid in an enterprise, which in some States before, and in others since its commencement, has received the sanction of their approbation.

The annual reports of the parent Society, herewith presented, will demonstrate to what extent that approbation has been expressed by the people, as well as by their representatives, of Maryland, Tennessee, and Georgia, where a direct intercourse was established between the State Governments and the Society at Washington.

Your memorialists will not presume to point out any particular mode in which Legislative aid should be afforded; but they confidently trust, that having obviously taken the lead in this noble enterprise, Virginia will not be the first to abandon her own policy, by denying it the cooperation of her own power and resources. Any aid the Legislature may please to grant, in any mode its wisdom may prescribe, will be gratefully received and faithfully applied; but your memorialists respectfully suggest, that to furnish the emigrants with a few articles of coarse cloathing, with farming utensils, and with such other articles manufactured in the State Penitentiary, as may be adapted to an infant colony, will be of great and immediate utility to the colonists, without imposing a burthen on the treasury. And as in duty bound, your memorialists will ever pray, &c.

[In consequence of this memorial, we rejoice to say the Legislature, from various useful articles in the Penitentiary, appropriated the amount of $ 500.]