Were there no other evidences of the kindness with which the Southern slaves are treated, and the comfort in which they live, it would be sufficient to direct the attention of the reader to the rapidity of their increase. This, at least, is a proof of the prosperous state of the negro, which will not be contested. In the British West Indies, the slave population has required, it is said, renewal every fifteen years: in this country, the natural increase is nearly equal to that of the whites. In England and Wales, the population has nearly doubled in the last hundred years; one fourth of that time is sufficient for the duplication of our Southern negroes. These facts will not be denied, and cannot be explained away. They demonstrate that the condition of the American negro is, at least, not one of physical suffering.

In conclusion, we may remark, that there is reason to doubt whether any country comprises a labouring people better clothed, fed and treated than the slave population of the South-a population with less discontent and fewer causes calculated to excite it. Their intellectual inferiority, the absence of ambition in their character, their improvidence and want of a master to direct and sustain them, and the peculiar adaptation of their physical constitution to labour in a Southern climate, all combine to render their present the best possible condition in which they can be placed; while the kindness and attention of their masters make that condition still more comfortable and happy. It is an error to suppose that the blacks do not regard the kindness of their masters with gratitude and affection. They look up to their liberal and generous masters, and their amiable mistresses, with a feeling absolutely fond and filial. They take pleasure in repaying their care with every service in their power; and, instead of desiring an opportunity to dissolve the

connexion between them, would, in many cases, be found ready to die in defence of the families in which they are so kindly protected and cherished. With these views of the Southern population, how sinister and fiendlike appears that intermeddling spirit which seeks to render the poor slave discontented to transform his nature into that of a revengeful and sanguinary demon, thirsting for the blood of his protectors, anxious to redden the skies of his clime with the glare of conflagration, and dye the soil he has so long and peacefully tilled with the hue of murder. Is it strange that the proceedings of such men are regarded, by every reflecting and benevolent mind, with horror?*

*"In this country it has been argued," said the Rev. Mr. Tracy, in a sermon before the Vermont Colonization Society, “that the world belongs to all men equally, and labour belongs to those who perform it, are conclusions as inevitable, as that a man's right hand is his own." And on these grounds, a convention was proposed and publicly urged in the state of New York, in the year 1830, which should order,

An immediate abolition of all debts;

An inventory of all real and personal property within the state;

A census of all the inhabitants, white or black;

An equal division of all the property, real and personal, among such citizens indiscriminately, as have arrived at the age of eighteen, without regard to colour;

An apportionment of a full share to every citizen, as he shall hereafter arrive at the age of eighteen;

The abolition of all interest on money, and the right of making wills.

Do you say, there is no danger that men will reason thus? I answer, men have thus reasoned, and been confident in their reasonings. They have published them, with the intention of inducing nations to adopt them. The party, from one of whose organs the last extract was taken, proposed to have 20,000 followers in the city of New York alone, and nominated its candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

CHAPTER VIII.

Slavery considered.—The right of man to hold his fellow-man in bondage.

WITH all the clamour made by the abolitionists, in relation to "free discussion," there is nothing which they so studiously avoid. They seldom, if ever, resort to candid or manly argument. They appeal to settled prejudices; and, by applying abstract but cherished axioms, without reference to consequences, they urge a course which could never bear the test of cool and practical examination. It is the misfortune of our country that we reason from abstractions. We establish the principle that all men are created free and equal; and following it out, without regard to consequences, often infer that a community of goods is required by a rigid respect for the rights of man. It was this delusion, this proneness to rush recklessly on in the course marked out by some dreamy abstraction, which plunged revolutionary France into the reign of terror. Her principles were generally sound; but pushed to extremes, and followed without regard to practical results, they led to consequences at which the world even now turns pale. It was the prevalence of the spirit alluded to, which induced the French policy towards St. Domingo; and not only lost that colony to France and to the world, but rendered it a Phlegethon, in which evil spirits held, for years, their carnival of blood. Let our people profit by their

experience. Let them rely rather on common sense, practically applied, than on the misty abstractions of fanatical enthusiasts.

It should be distinctly understood, that while the South acknowledges no accountability to any power under heaven for her course or sentiments on the subject of slavery, she freely avows her conviction of her right to hold the negroes in bondage, and her persuasion that the domestic slavery of that section of our country, is not a moral or political evil. These sentiments are the result of a full and general investigation of the subject: and were the people of the North equally well acquainted with it, they would probably subscribe to the opinions of the South. The original importation of the African is regarded by us as a moral wrong, because associated with acts of violence and cruelty, which nothing can justify. But of the justice, necessity, and advantages of the institution, as now entailed upon the South, we cannot, after an examination of the subject, feel a doubt. To the negro himself, we consider it no calamity. He is happier here than on the shores of his own degraded, savage, and most unhappy country-or rather the country of his fathers. He is happier, also, as a slave, than he could be as a freeman. This is the result of the peculiarities of his character; and will, we trust, be demonstrated in the course of this work to the satisfaction of the reader. It may be said that the slave-holders have no right to constitute themselves the tribunal for the decision of this question. If we do not judge for ourselves, of the propriety of our own conduct, who shall judge for us? But were we, or rather the people of the South, not immediately interested in the determination of the question, the ignorance, childlike simplicity and acknowledged incapacity of the blacks, would justify their masters in deciding

on the course which their welfare, as well as that of the whites, rendered necessary.

The abolitionists deny the right of the people of the South, under any circumstances, to hold their fellow men in bondage. Upon what grounds is this position assumed? If the master is guilty of a wrong, it becomes his accusers to give some evidence of his crime. It is their duty to prove that an institution, which has existed almost from the creation of the world to the present time, which has been encouraged by the best men of the most enlightened ages, and which has met the sanction of the Highest

has become, since these moral luminaries arose upon the world, guilty and calamitous. It will be found difficult to obtain a direct and rational answer to so plain a demand. They deal wholly in rhetorical flourishes; and if they reply at all, will tell us that the negro slave should not be a slave, because "he was created free." The fact is exactly the reverse. He comes into the world a slave. Nay, we might go further, and assert that nature, in her earliest developments, exhibits the necessity of reciprocal command and protection. We are all, in early life, slaves; the laws of necessity and nature, as well as those of the land, constitute us bond, and we remain so until we have passed through nearly onethird of our earthly pilgrimage. Who, then, will pretend to assert that the negro should not be a slave because he is born free? But they tell us"it is the will of God that he should be free." It is somewhat strange, that the will of God, in this point, has never been expressed until it came from the oracular mouths of the abolitionists. Such manifestations of the divine will never took place among the Jews, where slavery was universal, nor among the nations to which the disciples of our Saviour preached―nations which were overrun with slaves.