all

ages and countries, a slave-is the natural consequence of the inferiority of his character.*

*The following extract is from the Courier and Enquirer, of New York. The view here taken of the subject is equally forcible and correct.

"We will suppose, what is scarcely possible, that the blacks should finally succeed, and become masters where before they were slaves. We would ask does there now exist, or did there ever exist an independent community of blacks in any age or clime, that affords one single ennobling reflection to the friends of the human race? Are they not in St. Domingo, and every where else, where they exist in a state of freedom, without morals, without industry, and divested of every characteristic of civilized nations? They have no ideas of freedom except exemption from labour, and their conception of political rights is limited to abject despotism on the one hand, unrestrained licentiousness on the other. In their native land they are the slaves of their kings, who exercise over them unlimited discretion, and in St. Domingo, where their minds, and their habits were in some degree modified by an association with the whites, the only use they have made of their freedom is to indulge in a latitude of idleness and debauchery which has entailed upon them a system of coercion and punishment from their rulers, far more severe than they ever suffered from their old masters.

"To the task of self government they have been found totally inadequate, at all times, and every where. As independent communities they are political bondmen; as free individuals, they nine times in ten, become either a burthen or a pest to society. The cities of New York and Philadelphia, the great refuges of the free coloured population, afford such melancholy examples of the truth of this latter assertion, that we shall not waste words to establish its correctness. No one can walk the streets by day, and more especially by night, without having his feelings outraged by continued examples of such disgusting obscenity, such filthy, nauseating, beastly corruption, as it is reserved to the free negroes alone to exhibit among us. They pay no more respect to the laws of the land, than to the decencies of society. A white man. offending against the laws, can be arrested and made answer able for his crime, without raising a mob to effect his liberation and arrest the course of justice. But let a Southern planter attempt to reclaim his runaway slave, and the whole

Mr. Walsh says, in his Appeal: "I know of but one mode of correcting these feelings, and preventing altercation, hostility, and civil war; of making the experiment of general instruction and emancipation, with any degree of safety. We must assure the blacks of a perfect equality in all points with ourselves; we must labour to incorporate them with us, so that we shall become of one flesh and blood, and of one political family ""-Mr. Walsh is right; and events which have transpired since the publication of his work, prove that this "amalgamation," is recognized as the only means of attaining complete social equality, and is therefore regarded, by the abolitionists, with favour. Their feelings and views, on this point, were originally expressed with more frankness; but the indignation with which the plan was received by the people, has induced them to defer its public avowal and advocacy. It must, however, be admitted by every reasoning man that sexual amalgamation is the only means, under heaven, by which the races can be 66 mingled, like kindred drops, in one." This is the only plan by which the vagaries of the abolitionists can, by the most remote possibility, be realized. It is the sole recourse, in case of emancipation, by which the colliding races can be harmonized, their prejudices removed, and the divided and conflicting population welded into one mass.

But is such an amalgamation possible? The fana

mass of black population is in arms to oppose him. He does it at the risk of his life, and his appeal to the laws of his country to recover his property, endangers his very existence. Even if he should escape this danger, he incurs the scoffs and opprobium of the offscourings of society, and too often must submit his claim to the decision of a magistrate whose conscience will not permit him to enforce the laws of his country.

tics, who pause not at the prospect of insurrection and slaughter, may, perhaps, regard without nausea, this process of harmonization. They may have sufficiently schooled and perverted their natural feelings, to endure a prospect at which ordinary human nature sickens. But can they, with all their abstractions, persuade the people of this country that white is black? Can they induce them to believe that Cupid is a young negro; or to regard, without a revolt of their feelings, the combination of charms which grace the sooty and fragrant favourites of the fanatics? But this subject can scarce be even referred to, without a breach of propriety, without feelings of nauseated disgust and excited indignation. The man who can insult the fair and accomplished ladies of this country, by conceiving, much less avowing, a belief of the possibility of such deep, unnatural and damning degradation-deserves the most emphatic expression of the abhorrence of society. Yet strange to say, the North docs contain men, who openly vindicate the revolting and guilty suggestion-and who yet walk our streets"untarred and unfeathered."

Can these philanthropists blind themselves to the real character of such schemes? Can they not see beneath the mask of benevolence, the hot and hideous features of a monstrous and unnatural lust? Can they not foresee, in the results of the unholy union, the utter annihilation of all sense of virtue? Are they not aware that it would plunge the race into a pit of fathomless and irretrievable degradation and perdition? They are not, they cannot be ignorant, that such guilt would bring down upon us the curse of God and man; that we would be regarded, with loathing and contempt, by all created beings; and sink into a depth of crime and infamy, of feebleness and horror, for which fancy has no picture

and history no parallel. Commerce would fly our guilty shores; crime would stalk through our streets at mid-day; genius and virtue, and peace would be unknown among us; and we would become, to ourselves, a mass of rottenness and wretchednessto the world, a hissing and a reproach.

Mr. Walsh, referring to this subject, in the work already quoted, says: "there must remain, in any case, a broad line of demarcation, not viewed as an inconvenience by them, but indispensable for our feelings and interests. Nature and accident combine to make it impossible; their colour is a perpetual memento of their servile origin, and a double disgust is thus created. We will not, must not, expose ourselves to lose our identity as it were; to be stained in our blood, and disparaged, in our relation of being, towards the stock of our forefathers in Europe. This may be called prejudice; but it is one which no reasoning can overcome, and which we cannot wish to see extinguished. We are sure that it would exist in an equal degree with any nation of Europe, who might be circumstanced like ourselves; we do not find it so gross in itself, or so hurtful and unjust in its operation, as those of an analogous cast which prevail in England. Men of true speculation,' says Mr. Burke, exploring general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which inheres in them. If they find what they seek, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and leave nothing but the naked reason,

6

CHAPTER XX.

Consequences of Abolition, if effected with the assent of the Slave-holder.

It will be said by the Southern reader, that it is unnecessary and idle to inquire into the consequences of an event which is impossible. We admit that it is utterly impossible that the citizens of the South can ever consent to stake their lives upon the perilous and absurd scheme of the abolitionists: but it may be well, by a brief and cursory view of the results which would inevitably flow from such a measure, to open the eyes of honest abolitionists, if such there be, to the real character of the designs which they have been induced to sustain.

The consequences of abolition would be widesweeping and general; they would be felt and deplored by the North as well as the South-by the negro as well as the white man.

To the North its influence would be truly disastrous. The instant the act of emancipation went into effect, a torrent of black emigration would set from the South to the North. The blow given to the South, and the convulsion which would pervade its whole extent, would derange all the pursuits of industry, and drive the negroes to the North for subsistence. They would seek the free States also as the land of promise, and the North would soon be blackened by the ingress of Southern slaves. One of the first results of this emigration would be a