All the process of agriculture is managed by system. Every thing goes strait forward. There is no pulling down to-day the scheme of yesterday, and the whole amount of force is directed, by the teaching of experience, to the best result."

It would be well for those who assert the superiority of free labour, to explain the causes of its want of success. If free labour be more profitable, why is it not introduced at the South? Of the millions who pour from the Atlantic board into the West, why are there none to try their system of labour in the slave states? And the southern planters themselves, why do they not seize this method of increasing their profits? With all the shrewdness and enterprise of the American character, how is it that this source of wealth has been undiscovered and undisturbed? It is a marvel which those who underrate slave labour cannot explain. The spirit of our country would long since have reformed such an evil had it been an evil-would long since have resorted to free labour, had free labour been able to compete with the labour of slaves. The conclusion is irresistible, that the present mode of cultivating the South is more profitable than any scheme which the northern abolitionists can devise, or such schemes would have been heretofore adopted; and that any change in the domestic institutions of the South would be disastrous to her and to the North.

It will be freely admitted, that in the North, among free and intelligent whites, free labour is infinitely more profitable than the labour of slaves could there be. Had it been otherwise, slavery would now be as prevalent there as at the South. But it is vain and idle to pretend, that in a hot and sultry climate, where every thing invites even the more diligent white to indolence, that the slothful negro would labour without compulsion. In no

southern country that we are acquainted with, is free labour found to be so profitable as that which is urged by coercion. The labour of Spain and Italy is decidedly inferior to that of our southern states. But if this be true of white labourers beneath a southern sun, it is peculiarly so of the blacks. We have no instance of profitable free labour among the free blacks. St. Domingo, once the greatest sugar growing island in the world, is now almost a wilderness. Mr. Franklin, in his "Present State of Hayti," gives the following account of the consequences of free labour in that island. "I cannot avoid repeating that Hayti must not be held up as an example of what can be accomplished by free labour; but that it ought rather to be the beacon to warn the government of England against an experiment which may prove absolutely fatal to her colonial system. If it be not wished that a fate similar to that which has befallen Hayti should overtake our colonies, that they should be rendered wholly unproductive to the revenue of the country, and that the property invested in them should be preserved from destruction, the advisers of the crown must pause before they listen to the ill-judged suggestions of enthusiasts; for they must banish from their minds the idea that the work of cultivation can be made productive by means of free labour. Such a thing appears to me impossible. The negro, constituted as he is, has such an aversion to labour, and so great a propensity for indulgence and vice, that no prospect of advantage can stimulate him; and as for emulation it has not the slightest influence over him. Without force he will sink into lethargy, and revert to his primitive savage character, and the only feasible and effectual plan to promote his civilization is to persist in those measures which compel him to labour, inculcate morality, and tend to

extirpate those vices which are inherent in the descendants of the African race. Of the success of the Haytien experiment it may become necessary to treat more fully hereafter. St. Domingo, however, is not the only example of the settled and invincible aversion of the negro in warm latitudes to labour. In the English West Indies the most rigid police system is, even in their present state of apprenticeship, insufficient to constrain them to the same amount of labour as formerly; and at our own colony of Liberia, the population of which has been selected with care, it has always been found impossible to induce the settlers to engage in agricultural, or any permanent and regular labour.

Of the general productiveness of slave-labour there are innumerable examples. The ancient nations of the East owed their unbounded wealth to slave-labour. Egypt, Greece, and Rome, all densely populated, boundless in affluence and power, were slaveholding nations, and owed their prosperity to slave labour. In our own times, the wealth of the West India colonies, of Brazil, of our own southern country, particularly the south-western states, illustrates the productiveness of slave-labour. It is true that a portion of the South has not advanced recently as rapidly as many sections of the North and West. On examination, however, it will be found that those states were, up to the period of the protective policy, more prosperous than their sisters; and though that policy, joined with southern extravagance, the amount of labour lost in the sickly season, the loss by emigration to the West, and the emoluments of her factor, the shrewder and more shifting North, has retarded her onward progress, we believe that the South is destined to rival, perhaps outstrip, her most fortunate sisters in wealth and prosperity. If the abolitionists do not dissolve the bonds of our union, the

North will continue to thrive on the fatness of the South; and all the members of our national family, not only united by the recollections of the past and the hopes of the future, by our common interest in the heritage of freedom and glory left by our ancestors, but knit together in an intercourse of mutual benefits-will advance hand in hand to affluence and power. Should, however, the blows which have already been given, and are daily redoubled, succeed in severing the links that bind us together, the evil will be upon the North. Those who are tugging at the pillars of the temple of Union will, Sampson-like, be buried in its ruins the South will remain unharmed. United and tranquil, with her slave-labour, and its golden produce the rich staples cotton, sugar, tobacco, rice, &c., with a commerce of her own untaxed and richly sustained by her immense exports, she would (were her sons true-and when have they proved recreant?) hold undisturbed her onward course to power and affluence. She may wax poor, but slavery will never impoverish her; her fertile valleys may be bathed in blood, but, unless northern philanthropy excites it, it will not be shed by the hands of her slaves; she may become shrunken in spirit and power, craven and degenerate, and fall from her present high estate, but the philosophic historian will never ascribe her downfall to the institution of slavery. Her institutions are such as have grown out of her wants, such as suit her situation; they have promoted her prosperity and will insure its continuance. If unmolested, she will remain tranquil, prosperous, and happy; if disturbed, she may lose her tranquillity, but is fully capable of maintaining her own safety, and promoting her own welfare. Her course is onward; and the raving of the fanatics will not check nor turn her aside.

CHAPTER XI.

Schemes for the removal of Slavery-Colonization and Abolition-History of Colonization -Statement of its friends, of its opponents, &c.

As the introduction of slavery into this country was originally opposed, its continuance has also been deplored, by many of our citizens. At the North, where there was no inducement to continue to hold their slaves in bondage, they were gradually emancipated. In the South, where the number of the slaves was so great as to render abolition impracticable, other schemes have been suggested. Many different plans have, at different times, been proposed; and those who, not having properly considered the subject, regard negro slavery as an evil, have encouraged and sustained them. Some have even urged the expediency of confining the slaves, and compelling them to labour, the sexes being separated, in Ergastula, until the race may thus be extinguished; others have recommended that they be conveyed to some distant point in our own territory, and established as a separate community. It would, however, be useless and tiresome to revive the bubbles that have been, at different times, raised to burst beneath the first touch of investigation. Of the countless plans suggested by the quacks who, having conjectured that slavery was an evil, have also conjectured, a cure, the only ones which have survived, are colonization on the western coast of Africa, and the