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men in bondage." The expressions of Governor Randolph were, that he hoped no man would object to their discharge of their own duty, because there was some prospect "that those unfortunate men now held in bondage, might, by the operation of the General Government, be made free." Judge Tucker wrote, in 1798, that the introduction of slavery into this country was at that day "considered among its greatest misfortunes." The venerable Judge Washington many years since observed, that if the Colonization Society should lead to the slow but gradual abolition of slavery, "it will wipe from our political institutions the only blot which stains them." The declarations of many other of our illustrious fellow-citizens at the South and West, to the same effect, may be seen in the Society's official publication for January 1829.'

All this is very well, so far as it goes. But the following facts are still more satisfactory. Of the twenty-four States of the American Union, nine are free from the curse of slavery. In the six New England States and in that of New York, slaves were never very numerous; in Ohio, they were never introduced; but in Pennsylvania, the abolition of slavery has been comparatively recent. So far back, however, as 1698, the Assembly of Pennsylvania, to put an end to the introduction of slaves, laid a duty of £10 per head upon their importation; but this bene'volent law, together with about fifty of similar tenor, which were passed by the neighbouring colonies up to the period of their Revolution, were all refused the sanction of the mother country. Shortly after the separation, the subject of slavecolonization was taken up by the Virginia Legislature, but without any important result.

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In 1796, the plan was again revived in a series of luminous Essays by Gerard T. Hopkins, a distinguished friend in Baltimore; and shortly afterwards, the Legislature of Virginia, a State containing nearly one third of the black population of the Union, pledged its faith to give up all their slaves, provided the United States could obtain a proper asylum for them. President Jefferson negotiated in vain for a territory either in Africa or Brazil; but that great State again renewed its pledge in 1816, by a vote of 190 to 9, (most of the members being slave-holders,) upon which Gen. C. F. Mercer, the Wilberforce of the American Congress, opened a correspondence with the philanthropists of the different States, which led to the formation of the American Colonization Society, on the 1st of January, 1817. The great objects of that Society were, the final and entire abolition of slavery, providing for the best interests of the blacks, by establishing them in independence upon the coast of Africa. The disposition of Virginia has been already shewn. Delaware and Kentucky have also proved their anxiety to concur in so noble a cause; and Dr. Ayres, the earliest Governor of Liberia, now a resident of Maryland, asserts, that," owing to the plans and principles of colonization being better understood, in less than 20 years, there will be no more slaves born in that state." A party in South Carolina is now

almost the only opponent that the Society has at home; and, as if to afford the most incontestable evidence that its plan will destroy the institution of slavery in the United States, they ground their opposition upon the inevitable tendency of colonization to eradicate slaveholding, and thereby deprive them of their property.'—Reports of the Pennsylvania Col. Soc. pp. iii, iv.

There are some parties who view the proceedings of the Colonization Society with jealousy, because they imagine that the plan must have an opposite tendency;-that of perpetuating slavery in the American States. We incline to give the South Carolinians credit for seeing furthest on this point. Any plan which tends to encourage and facilitate manumission, must have a tendency to eradicate slavery. And let slavery be exterminated in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, in which States it has ceased to be profitable, the non-slave-holding States will then be fourteen out of twenty-four; and as Indiana and Illinois have but few slaves, eight only would be left to contend for the constitutional and legitimate system'. Now, in America, majorities are every thing.

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But what hope is there, it may be asked, that slavery will by such means be exterminated even in Virginia and the Middle States; that American slave-holders will be induced to give up their slaves gratuitously, on the sole condition of their removal to Africa? The answer given us is, that sugar, rice, and cotton are almost the only articles of profitable slave labour. Hence it has become the dearest species where they cannot be pro'duced. This conviction will induce many whose benevolence revolts at the idea of selling, to manumit gratuitously.'*

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* In 1826, Mr. Minge, of Charles County, Virginia, not only emancipated eighty slaves, for the purpose of sending them to Hayti, but chartered a brig for their transportation, furnished them with supplies, and distributed a peck of dollars among them as a farewell present. Mr. Henshaw, near Richmond, liberated sixty, to be sent to Liberia. A year or two subsequently, a gentleman in Kentucky writes to the Society, that he will give up twelve or fifteen of his coloured people now, and so on gradually, till the whole (sixty) are given up, if means for their passage to Liberia can be provided. In January 1829, offers were pending to the Society of more than two hundred slaves, ready to be manumitted on the same conditions. At that time, 30 had just been sent out from Maryland, and 25 from South Carolina. In 1830, the Society of Friends belonging to North Carolina, had enabled 652 coloured persons under their care to emigrate, with an unknown number of children, husbands, and wives connected with them by consanguinity. Many of them are understood to have been slaves. Their generous benefactors had then expended nearly 13,000 dollars; and 402 persons remained, who were also to be removed.... Hundreds are ready to be manumitted in all the Western States, whenever the means of sending them off shall be matured.' N. Amer. Rev. lxxvi. p. 148.

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D. Murray, Esq. of Maryland, who sent thirty slaves to Liberia, thus writes: I have never regretted parting with them, and would not have them back again on any consideration. Three white men now do the work of the thirty; and maintaining the women and children cost quite as much as the labour of the white men. Farming has now become a delightful employment; formerly it was a perfect drudgery; and my slaves would as willingly return from independence to slavery, as I would accept the ungrateful task of again becoming an overseer. Reports, &c. p. ix.

In an Address delivered to the Kentucky Colonization Society by the Hon. Henry Clay, printed in the Appendix to the Pennsylvania Society's Report, it is stated, that the competition between free and slave labour, and the preference for white labour, are already discernible in parts of Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky; as was probably the case in Pennsylvania and other States north of Maryland, prior to the disappearance of slaves among them. And it is anticipated, that the march of the ascendancy of free ' labour over slave, will proceed from the North to the South, ' gradually entering first the States nearest to the free region. Its progress would be more rapid, if it were not impeded by the 'check resulting from the repugnance of the white man to work among slaves, or where slavery is tolerated."

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It is a little remarkable, however, that the possibility of substituting free black labour for slave-labour, does not appear to have occurred to the American statesman; but 'free labour' and 'white labour' seem to be used as convertible terms. This has an ugly look. The substitution of white labour for slave labour in the sugar and cotton plantations of the Southern States, can scarcely be dreamed of: it would only occasion a lamentable waste of human life. Now so long as slavery exists, we can easily believe that great, if not insuperable difficulties would attend the introduction of free black labour; difficulties created by slavery itself. The mixture of the two systems would be next to impracticable. The black freeman would as naturally resent working among slaves, as the white man; and would, perhaps, feel a still greater repugnance to that species of labour which has become identified with slavery. It is said, that no Spaniard will use a wheelbarrow, because it is fit only for beasts to draw a carriage; while the Portuguese has an equal aversion to carrying a burthen, because beasts only are fit to carry a load. No English labourer likes to carry the hod. Similar prejudices will naturally render the coloured free man averse to negro work, so long as a degraded slave-caste exists. But nothing can be more unfair or delusive than to infer from the inefficiency of free black labour in countries where slavery is tolerated, or from the degraded condition of the free blacks under such circumstances, that the free black

labourer would not become more profitable than the slave, were the emancipation general.

We receive with considerable suspicion the accounts of slaveholders respecting the indolence, profligacy, and utter worthlessness of free blacks. But, supposing such statements not to be overcharged, it must be recollected, that their intermediate condition between their brethren in bondage and the privileged whiteskin caste, is in the highest degree unfavourable to their moral improvement; nor is it surprising that they should too often be found mimicking the vices of the white, while sharing in the degradation of the enslaved race. Mr. Clay, while representing the free people of colour as the most corrupt and depraved class in the American community, admits that this is chiefly owing to their unfortunate predicament.

There are,' he says, ' many honourable exceptions among them; and I take pleasure in bearing testimony to some I know. It is not so much their fault, as the consequence of their anomalous condition. Place ourselves, place any man in the like predicament, and similar effects would follow. They are not slaves, and yet, they are not free. The laws, it is true, proclaim them free; but prejudices more powerful than any laws, deny them the privileges of freemen. They occupy a middle station between the free white population and the slaves of the United States; and the tendency of their habits is to corrupt both. They crowd our large cities, where those who will work can best procure suitable employment, and where those who addict themselves to vice can best practise and conceal their crimes.... The vices of the free blacks do not spring from any inherent depravity in their natural constitution, but from their unfortunate situation. Social intercourse is a want which we are prompted to gratify by all the properties of our nature. And as they cannot obtain it in the better circles of society, nor always among themselves, they resort to slaves, and to the most debased and worthless of the whites. Corruption and all the train of petty offences are the consequences. Proprietors of slaves, in whose neighbourhood any free coloured family is situated, know how infectious and pernicious this intercourse is.'

No doubt they do, and how much the danger of slavery is increased by the presence of a free coloured community. More is here meant, than meets the ear; but, in a preceding paragraph, Mr. Clay is more explicit.

• When we consider the cruelty of the origin of negro slavery, its nature, the character of the free institutions of the whites, and the ir

* In 1820, of 10,729 free coloured persons in Philadelphia, there were living in the families of white persons as servants, 3110; (viz. 1028 male and 2082 female;) those who kept house, or lived in families of their own colour, were 7619, of whom 1970 were returned as taxable, and 229 owned real estate. Ten places of worship were occupied exclusively by persons of colour.

resistible progress of public opinion, throughout America as well as in Europe, it is impossible not to anticipate frequent insurrections among the blacks in the United States. They are rational beings like ourselves, capable of feeling, of reflection, and of judging of what naturally belongs to them as a portion of the human race. By the very condition of the relation which subsists between us, we are enemies of each other. They know well the wrongs which their ancestors suffered at the hands of our ancestors, and the wrongs which they believe they continue to endure, although they may be unable to avenge them. They are kept in subjection only by the superior intelligence and superior power of the predominant race. Their brethren have been liberated in every part of the continent of America, except in the United States and the Brazils. By an Act of the President of the Republic of the United Mexican States, (dated, Sept. 15, 1829,) the whole of them in that Republic have been emancipated. A great effort is now making in Great Britain, which tends to the same ultimate effect, in regard to the negro slaves in the British West Indies. Happily for us, no such insurrection can ever be attended with permanent success, as long as our Union endures. It would be speedily suppressed by the all-powerful means of the United States; and it would be the madness of despair in the blacks, that should attempt it. But, if attempted in some parts of the United States, what shocking scenes of carnage, rapine, and lawless violence might not be perpetrated, before the arrival at the theatre of action of a competent force to quell it! after it was put down, what other scenes of military rigour and bloody executions would not be indispensably necessary to punish the insurgents, and impress their whole race with the influence of a terrible example!'

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This forcible representation is not urged as an argument for emancipation, but simply for reducing, by colonization, the numbers of the black population. It is obvious, however, that it supplies reasons equally strong for the more effectual measure. domestic danger may be lessened by drafting off the black population, but it cannot be wholly removed. So long as slavery remains, an element of combustion exists in the heart of the State, which, in a season of civil commotion or foreign danger, a spark might ignite. It has, indeed, been adduced as an objection to the plans of the Colonization Society by some zealous abolitionists on this side of the Atlantic, that, by diminishing the numbers of the bond and free coloured population, the motives of policy will be weakened, which would otherwise lead to the abolition of slavery. It is said, that the slave-owners are induced by their fears to concur in the scheme of the Society, only that the remaining sons of bondage may be held the more securely, and their chains and fetters be riveted the more firmly. By the removal of the free blacks, it is urged, their brethren in bondage will be cut off from their sympathies, and from the influence which, as freemen, they now exert on behalf of the more degraded slave.

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