direct their own conduct and that of their chil dren. Although they may work like our slaves, and fare worse than they do, still they are accustomed to superintend their families; to purchase and sell; to provide for themselves; and to cope with that hydra-headed monster called the world, without which experience a freeman is little else than a prey to roguery, in all its numberless forms and disguises. They have also, held many of them, if not all, at some time or other, property, real or personal, and accustomed themselves to its management. They are likewise supported by the habitual feeling, that notwithstanding the usurpations of aristocracy, they are and always have been equal as men, though their rights are unequal. On the contrary, the bondman is in a great measure destitute of this preparatory experience, as well as habitual feeling of equality. He cannot divest himself of the sense of inferiority, unless by an effort which makes him insolent and ungovernable. Hence, in the States of Pennsylvania and New-York, where thousands of negroes, either runaways or voluntarily emancipated, are admitted to all the privileges of freemen, a melancholy course of experience has shown that scarcely one in a hundred is capable of rationally using the blessing. They have abused, not enjoy

ed it. A large portion has died miserably; equal numbers have become the habitual inmates of bridewells, penitentiaries, hospitals, and state prisons; and of the remainder, few, very few, are either moral in their conduct, decent in their manners, or respectable in their situation. The great mass remain sad monuments of hopes which can never be realized; victims to the grand experiment of severing the relations between master and slave, without investigating the capacity of the latter to provide for himself and family, acting the part of a good neighbour and useful citizen, or sustaining any one single duty thus cast upon him by the misguided zeal of hot-brained fanaticism, or assumed by his own temerity. In short, to set the slaves of the South at once, or at any time, free, must inevitably produce similar consequences to those which would result from suddenly withdrawing children from under the wing of the parent, and setting them adrift on the ocean of the world, without experience and without protection.

We might enumerate various other important points of difference, which would go to overthrow the position that there is a violent and glaring inconsistency in boasting of the freedom of our institutions, while holding the Africans in bondage, and asserting equal rights in the face of such glaring

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inequalities. The apprehension of extending this inquiry to a tedious length, prevents our enlarging further on this head. It is believed enough has been said to satisfy all impartial inquirers, that the good people of the United States are not "blasphemers and hypocrites," "two-legged wolves," "ruthless tigers," "man-stealers and murderers," because one portion will not consent to a measure equally unpracticable and mischievous, as fatal to the existence of that union which is the main pillar of our prosperity, happiness, and glory; and the other voluntarily and at once not only relinquish a large portion of their property, but, at the same time, render the remainder, as well as their own lives and those of their families, the sport of millions of manumitted paupers, destitute of property, and as ignorant of their rights and their duties as they are incapable of maintaining an independent existence. Almost the only argument those who oppose the emancipation of the lower orders in Europe now venture to urge against such a measure, is, that they are utterly unfit for the enjoyment of liberty. How much more forcibly does this apply to the slaves of the United States, who, in their present state, are still more disqualified, and whom the enjoyment of freedom, as well as the opportunities of gaining knowledge, serve only thus far,

at least, to demonstrate their incapacity to make a proper use of the one, or to acquire the other.

That we are not speaking at random, or under the influence of prejudice, when we maintain the natural and incurable inferiority of the woollyheaded race, will appear from the following extract of a letter from one of the "visiters," whose duty it is to attend the examination of the common schools of this city, where the black children, though not actually amalgamated with the white, receive precisely the same instruction. Nay, they are even more particularly attended to, from being the subjects of a philanthropic experi

ment.

"In answer to your inquiry what my observations have been in relation to the comparative intellect of white and coloured children, I will remark, that I have visited the Public and African schools in this city, and frequently examined the scholars, of both sexes and of different ages, and I have uniformly found them inferior to the whites, possessing the same advantages of instruction, in every branch of education which required mental effort. In writing and painting, they bear a tolerable comparison; but in reading, grammar, geography, and, more particularly, arithmetic, re

quiring the greatest mental effort, they are vastly below the level of a comparison.

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My candid opinion is, that the coloured or African population cannot, by any code of laws, by any system of education, or by any habits, customs, or manners, be raised to an equality with the whites, either in general knowledge, or those particular branches which are essential to the ordinary pursuits of life, and the prosperity of individuals.”

Not even Sir Robert Filmer, who maintains that the desire of liberty caused the fall of Adam, has ventured to insinuate such an incurable incapacity in any order of white men. All history and experience would have contradicted him, by citing a thousand illustrious examples to prove, that nothing is required but equal opportunities to level all the distinctions of rank and birth. But history will be searched in vain for similar triumphs of the woollyheaded race. They seem equally wanting in the powers of the mind, and in the energy to exert them; and not all the discouragements under which they labour can account for this contrast, without the aid of a radical inferiority. It is therefore not without ample reason, that anatomists and physiologists have classed the negro as the lowest in the scale of rational beings.