The object in view of the legislature, as disclosed by the preamble, is to prevent injurious consequences resulting from the increase of the colored population, by means of literary institutions, attempted to be established for the instruction of that class of inhabitants of other States. Such institutions and instructors teaching such schools are prohibited, unless licensed, as are also persons from harboring or boarding scholars of that description, without license.
From the first reading of the Act, it might seem as if licenses must be obtained by each of these classes; by those who set up the school, those who instruct it and those who board the pupils; but, it is believed, this cannot have been intended. The object professedly aimed at is, to prevent the increase of this population, which, it is supposed, will take place by allowing them free education, and instruction; to prevent which it provides, 1st, That no person shall set up or establish any school for that purpose, without license: 2d, That no one shall instruct in any school, etc. without license: and 3rd, That no one shall board or harbor such persons, so to be instructed in any such school etc. without license. The object, evidently is to regulate the schools, not the boarding houses; the latter only is auxiliary to the former.
This information charges, that this school was set up in Canterbury, for the purpose of educating these persons of color, not inhabitants of this State, that they might be instructed and educated; but omits to state that it was not licensed. This omission is a fatal defect; as in an information on a penal statute, the prosecutor must set forth every fact that is necessary to bring the case within the statute; and every exception within the enacting clause of the act, descriptive of the offence, must be negated. See Smith v. Mouse, 6 Green 1, p. 274; and Judson's Remarks to the Jury, Superior Court, October Term, 1833.
DOCUMENTS
EXTRACTS FROM NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES
Magazines and newspapers sometimes unconsciously give valuable facts not only as to sentiment but as to the actual achievements of persons and agencies through which they have worked. This is true of the extracts given below.
Endeavoring to set forth the part which Philadelphia played in African Colonization before the Civil War, The Evening Bulletin of that city carried the following, May 9, 1921:
THE LIBERIAN REPUBLIC
Philadelphia's Part in Founding the Negro Commonwealth
The visit to Philadelphia of the negro President of the Liberian Republic, recalls the important part which a small group of local philanthropists played a century ago in promoting the foundation of the only free country in Africa under republican rule. The Liberian enterprise owed its origin, not solely to pity for the condition of the enslaved blacks of the South but also to the desire of many northern friends of the negroes to ameliorate the hardships of the freed blacks of the north. Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in common with several other northern States, witnessed at close range the evils of slavery. During the Revolutionary War steps had been taken to liberate the blacks in Pennsylvania and the famous Act of March 1st, 1780, decreed the abolition of slavery throughout the colony. In this, as in other and later efforts to liberate the negroes the Philadelphia Quakers had an important part and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded under the presidency of Benjamin Franklin, antedated the Revolutionary War by two years.
The plan for establishing an African Negro Republic, populated by emigrants from the United States, is credited to Dr. Robert Finley, one of the trustees of Princeton, who was well acquainted with the extent of slavery in New Jersey, where the census of 1810 revealed the presence of more than ten thousand slaves, and who also had knowledge of the miserable condition of the freed negroes in Pennsylvania. Late in 1816 he went to Washington, where his brother-in-law, Elias Boudinot Caldwell was a member of Congress, and endeavored to obtain national support for his project. A sympathetic response was not wanting, although Congress was not yet prepared for immediate action. Accordingly, Finley turned in another direction, secured the backing of Justice Bushrod Washington of the Supreme Court, aroused the interest of Henry Clay and other notables and, toward the end of 1816, succeeded in forming, at a public meeting in Washington presided over by Henry Clay, the American Colonization Society which immediately selected Justice Washington as its president.
As yet Dr. Finley had not hit upon any definite location for the proposed colony, although years before he began his efforts in behalf of the negroes. Thomas Jefferson had suggested that Virginia and other American Commonwealths might profitably imitate the example set in England by the Sierra Leone Company in populating that district of Africa. But the English plan of transporting the indigent negroes from London, started toward the close of the eighteenth century, was on an altogether different basis. Blacks and whites were mixed in the English colony, the emigrants were made up mainly of the idle and the dissolute, and the humanitarian motive, so strongly marked in the work of the American Colonization Society, was missing almost entirely.
Oddly enough, the free negroes of the North protested against the plans of the Colonization Society. In Philadelphia a number of negroes, meeting in the Bethel Church, adopted an indignant resolution of protest which Congressman Joseph Hopkinson presented in the House. But these incidents served also to arouse greater interest in the society's plan and led to the formation of several local auxiliaries, one of which was established promptly in Philadelphia, where the Friends and the Abolitionists were ready to give active support to any plan for the betterment of the negroes. Philadelphia money, representing the contributions of many local philanthropists, aided largely in strengthening the treasury of the national society, and, as an opportunity was afforded for the purchase of a number of smuggled slaves, put on sale by the State of Georgia, in 1817, and George Washington Parke Custis offered part of his lands for a refuge for the Colonization Society's purchases, an active effort was made again to arouse Congressional support, resulting this time in the founding of the African Republic by the Government of the United States.
While the Society was in the initial stages of development, two missionary agents, Samuel J. Mills and Ebenezer Burgess, had visited England and, after receiving a rebuff from Bathurst, the Secretary of State for the English Colonies, had gone down the African coast as far as Sherbro Island and selected a site for the American colony. Interest was aroused to such extent that Congress assented to the proposal for purchasing the Georgia blacks and shipping them to Africa and an appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars was granted for the purpose. A brig was chartered by the government to carry away the negroes, furnished by the Colonization Society, and the United States ship Cyane ordered to accompany the expedition as an armed guard. The vessels departed from New York in February, 1820, and after a five weeks voyage landed eighty-six men, women and children on Sherbro Island. The inclemency of the climate, however, proved disastrous to the little group, and, after a number had succumbed to malarial fever, the remainder fled to Sierra Leone. But the Society and its local auxiliaries kept at work and the next year sent out another party of negroes from Norfolk, this time seeking Cape Montserado as a place of settlement.
Success now attended the enterprise. Lieutenant Richard F. Stockton of the Navy arrived at Montserado in the autumn of 1821 and, in company with Dr. Ayres, the agent of the Colonization Society, succeeded in purchasing, for a few hundred dollars' worth of trinkets, the land on which Liberia was founded. Although the promoters had negotiated a favorable treaty with the natives the early settlers were attacked by hostile tribes and more than once they were on the point of abandoning the little town of Monrovia that had been named in honor of the American President and which is now the capital of the African Republic and a place of about six thousand inhabitants. A few years after this Philadelphia took up the work of colonization on a larger scale. At a meeting, held in the Franklin Institute in 1829, the Pennsylvania Colonization Society was formed, with Dr. Thomas C. James as its president and numbering among its founders many prominent citizens, including William White, Roberts Vaux, B. W. Richards, J. K. Mitchell, George W. Blight, James Bayard and Elliott Cresson, the latter becoming one of the most active assistants of the enterprise, in which he was joined by Mathew C. Carey, Solomon Allen and Robert Ralston, the last four contributing liberally to the colonization cause. For a time, too, a fortnightly journal, known as the Colonization Herald, was published in this city and local interest was aroused by reports of the parades of the State Fencibles, the Liberian imitation of Philadelphia's military organization, which assembled on fete days on Broad Street, the principal thoroughfare of Monrovia.
County and local societies to aid the project were formed throughout Pennsylvania. Philadelphia had a Young Men's Society fostered by the Methodists, the local Presbyterians endorsed the enterprise, the Bible societies backed it and the Quakers lent their friendly support. Ships were chartered and slaves transported at local expense and under Philadelphia direction a boat named the "Liberia" was built on the Delaware and employed in the work, while the manumission of slaves was freely encouraged. A colony on the St. John's River was assigned particularly to the care of the Pennsylvanians and African place names, such as Careysburg and Philadelphia, still commemorate the interest of Philadelphians. At first the government of Liberia was purely proprietary under the direction of the society's agents, the blacks being allowed to select only minor officials and it was not until 1847, when the colonization movement was losing ground before the growth of the abolition sentiment in this country, that the Free and Independent Republic of Liberia came into existence, after drafting a declaration of independence and adopting a constitutional form of government. But the dream of repatriating the negro had failed and now Liberia, extended in area by Anglo-Liberian and Franco-Liberian agreements of recent years until it is almost as large as Pennsylvania, numbers less than fifty thousand of the transplanted stock among a population of a million and a half.