Of late years we have not only been annoyed, but greatly embarrassed in this matter, by the abolitionists. We have been compelled to curtail some privileges; we have been debarred from granting new ones. In the face of discussions which aim at loosening all ties between master and slave, we have in some measure to abandon our efforts to attach them to us, and control them through their affections and pride. We have to rely more and more on the power of fear. We must, in all our intercourse with them, assert and maintain strict mastery, and impress it on them that they are slaves. This is painful to us, and certainly no present advantage to them. But it is the direct consequence of the abolition agitation. We are determined to continue masters, and to do so we have to draw the rein tighter and tighter day by day to be assured that we hold them in complete check. How far this process will go on, depends wholly and solely on the abolitionists. When they desist, we can relax. We may not before. I do not mean by all this to say that we are in a state of actual alarm and fear of our slaves; but under existing circumstances we should be ineffably stupid not to increase our vigilance and strengthen our hands. You see some of the fruits of your labors. I speak freely and candidly—not as a colonist, who, though a slaveholder, has a master; but as a free white man, holding, under God, and resolved to hold, my fate in my own hands; and I assure you that my sentiments, and feelings, and determinations, are those of every slaveholder in this country.

The research and ingenuity of the abolitionists, aided by the invention of run-away slaves—in which faculty, so far as improvizing falsehood goes, the African race is without a rival—have succeeded in shocking the world with a small number of pretended instances of our barbarity. The only wonder is, that considering the extent of our country, the variety of our population, its fluctuating character, and the publicity of all our transactions, the number of cases is so small. It speaks well for us. Yet of these, many are false, all highly colored, some occurring half a century, most of them many years ago; and no doubt a large proportion of them perpetrated by foreigners. With a few rare exceptions, the emigrant Scotch and English are the worst masters among us, and next to them our Northern fellow-citizens. Slaveholders born and bred here are always more humane to slaves, and those who have grown up to a large inheritance of them, the most so of any—showing clearly that the effect of the system is to foster kindly feelings. I do not mean so much to impute innate inhumanity to foreigners, as to show that they come here with false notions of the treatment usual and necessary for slaves, and that newly acquired power here, as everywhere else, is apt to be abused. I cannot enter into a detailed examination of the cases stated by the abolitionists. It would be disgusting, and of little avail. I know nothing of them. I have seen nothing like them, though born and bred here, and have rarely heard of any thing at all to be compared to them. Permit me to say that I think most of your facts must have been drawn from the West Indies, where undoubtedly slaves were treated much more harshly than with us. This was owing to a variety of causes, which might, if necessary, be stated. One was, that they had at first to deal more extensively with barbarians fresh from the wilds of Africa; another, and a leading one, the absenteeism of proprietors. Agents are always more unfeeling than owners, whether placed over West Indian or American slaves, or Irish tenantry. We feel this evil greatly even here. You describe the use of thumb screws, as one mode of punishment among us. I doubt if a thumb screw can be found in America. I never saw or heard of one in this country. Stocks are rarely used by private individuals, and confinement still more seldom, though both are common punishments for whites, all the world over. I think they should be more frequently resorted to with slaves, as substitutes for flogging, which I consider the most injurious and least efficacious mode of punishing them for serious offenses. It is not degrading, and unless excessive, occasions little pain. You may be a little astonished, after all the flourishes that have been made about "cart whips," etc., when I say flogging is not the most degrading punishment in the world. It may be so to a white man in most countries, but how is it to the white boy? That necessary coadjutor of the schoolmaster, the "birch," is never thought to have rendered infamous the unfortunate victim of pedagogue ire; nor did Solomon in his wisdom dream that he was counseling parents to debase their offspring, when he exhorted them not to spoil the child by sparing the rod. Pardon me for recurring to the now exploded ethics of the Bible. Custom, which, you will perhaps agree, makes most things in this world good or evil, has removed all infamy from the punishment of the lash to the slave. Your blood boils at the recital of stripes inflicted on a man; and you think you should be frenzied to see your own child flogged. Yet see how completely this is ideal, arising from the fashions of society. You doubtless submitted to the rod yourself, in other years, when the smart was perhaps as severe as it would be now; and you have never been guilty of the folly of revenging yourself on the Preceptor, who, in the plenitude of his "irresponsible power," thought proper to chastise your son. So it is with the negro, and the negro father.

As to chains and irons, they are rarely used; never, I believe, except in cases of running away. You will admit that if we pretend to own slaves, they must not be permitted to abscond whenever they see fit; and that if nothing else will prevent it, these means must be resorted to. See the inhumanity necessarily arising from slavery, you will exclaim. Are such restraints imposed on no other class of people, giving no more offense? Look to your army and navy. If your seamen, impressed from their peaceful occupations, and your soldiers, recruited at the gin-shops—both of them as much kidnapped as the most unsuspecting victim of the slave trade, and doomed to a far more wretched fate—if these men manifest a propensity to desert, the heaviest manacles are their mildest punishment. It is most commonly death, after summary trial. But armies and navies, you say, are indispensable, and must be kept up at every sacrifice. I answer, that they are no more indispensable than slavery is to us—and to you; for you have enough of it in your country, though the form and name differ from ours.

Depend upon it that many things, and in regard to our slaves, most things which appear revolting at a distance, and to slight reflection, would, on a nearer view and impartial comparison with the customs and conduct of the rest of mankind, strike you in a very different light. Remember that on our estates we dispense with the whole machinery of public police and public courts of justice. Thus we try, decide, and execute the sentences, in thousands of cases, which in other countries would go into the courts. Hence, most of the acts of our alleged cruelty, which have any foundation in truth. Whether our patriarchal mode of administering justice is less humane than the Assizes, can only be determined by careful inquiry and comparison. But this is never done by the abolitionists. All our punishments are the outrages of "irresponsible power." If a man steals a pig in England, he is transported—torn from wife, children, parents, and sent to the antipodes, infamous, and an outcast forever, though probably he took from the superabundance of his neighbor to save the lives of his famishing little ones. If one of our well fed negroes, merely for the sake of fresh meat, steals a pig, he gets perhaps forty stripes. If one of your cottagers breaks into another's house, he is hung for burglary. If a slave does the same here, a few lashes, or it may be, a few hours in the stocks, settles the matter. Are our courts or yours the most humane? If slavery were not in question, you would doubtless say ours is mistaken lenity. Perhaps it often is; and slaves too lightly dealt with sometimes grow daring. Occasionally, though rarely, and almost always in consequence of excessive indulgence, an individual rebels. This is the highest crime he can commit. It is treason. It strikes at the root of our whole system. His life is justly forfeited, though it is never intentionally taken, unless after trial in our public courts. Sometimes, however, in capturing, or in self-defense, he is unfortunately killed. A legal investigation always follows. But, terminate as it may, the abolitionists raise a hue and cry, and another "shocking case" is held up to the indignation of the world by tender-hearted male and female philanthropists, who would have thought all right had the master's throat been cut, and would have triumphed in it.

I cannot go into a detailed comparison between the penalties inflicted on a slave in our patriarchal courts, and those of the Courts of Sessions, to which freemen are sentenced in all civilized nations; but I know well that if there is any fault in our criminal code, it is that of excessive mildness.

Perhaps a few general facts will best illustrate the treatment this race receives at our hands. It is acknowledged that it increases at least as rapidly as the white. I believe it is an established law, that population thrives in proportion to its comforts. But when it is considered that these people are not recruited by immigration from abroad, as the whites are, and that they are usually settled on our richest and least healthy lands, the fact of their equal comparative increase and greater longevity, outweighs a thousand abolition falsehoods, in favor of the leniency and providence of our management of them. It is also admitted that there are incomparably fewer cases of insanity and suicide among them than among the whites. The fact is, that among the slaves of the African race these things are almost wholly unknown. However frequent suicide may have been among those brought from Africa, I can say that in my time I cannot remember to have known or heard of a single instance of deliberate self-destruction, and but of one of suicide at all. As to insanity, I have seen but one permanent case of it, and that twenty years ago. It cannot be doubted that among three millions of people there must be some insane and some suicides; but I will venture to say that more cases of both occur annually among every hundred thousand of the population of Great Britain, than among all our slaves. Can it be possible, then, that they exist in that state of abject misery, goaded by constant injuries, outraged in their affections, and worn down with hardships, which the abolitionists depict, and so many ignorant and thoughtless persons religiously believe?

With regard to the separation of husbands and wives, parents and children, nothing can be more untrue than the inferences drawn from what is so constantly harped on by abolitionists. Some painful instances perhaps may occur. Very few that can be prevented. It is, and it always has been, an object of prime consideration with our slaveholders, to keep families together. Negroes are themselves both perverse and comparatively indifferent about this matter. It is a singular trait, that they almost invariably prefer forming connections with slaves belonging to other masters, and at some distance. It is, therefore, impossible to prevent separations sometimes, by the removal of one owner, his death, or failure, and dispersion of his property. In all such cases, however, every reasonable effort is made to keep the parties together, if they desire it. And the negroes forming these connections, knowing the chances of their premature dissolution, rarely complain more than we all do of the inevitable strokes of fate. Sometimes it happens that a negro prefers to give up his family rather than separate from his master. I have known such instances. As to willfully selling off a husband, or wife, or child, I believe it is rarely, very rarely done, except when some offense has been committed demanding "transportation." At sales of estates, and even at sheriff's sales, they are always, if possible, sold in families. On the whole, notwithstanding the migratory character of our population, I believe there are more families among our slaves, who have lived and died together without losing a single member from their circle, except by the process of nature, and in the enjoyment of constant, uninterrupted communion, than have flourished in the same space of time, and among the same number of civilized people in modern times. And to sum up all, if pleasure is correctly defined to be the absence of pain—which, so far as the great body of mankind is concerned, is undoubtedly its true definition—I believe our slaves are the happiest three millions of human beings on whom the sun shines. Into their Eden is coming Satan in the guise of an abolitionist.

As regards their religious condition, it is well known that a majority of the communicants of the Methodist and Baptist churches of the South are colored. Almost everywhere they have precisely the same opportunities of attending worship that the whites have, and, beside special occasions for themselves exclusively, which they prefer. In many places not so accessible to clergymen in ordinary, missionaries are sent, and mainly supported by their masters, for the particular benefit of the slaves. There are none I imagine who may not, if they like, hear the gospel preached at least once a month—most of them twice a month, and very many every week. In our thinly settled country the whites fare no better. But in addition to this, on plantations of any size, the slaves who have joined the church are formed into a class, at the head of which is placed one of their number, acting as deacon or leader, who is also sometimes a licensed preacher. This class assembles for religious exercises weekly, semi-weekly, or oftener, if the members choose. In some parts, also, Sunday schools for blacks are established, and Bible classes are orally instructed by discreet and pious persons. Now where will you find a laboring population possessed of greater religious advantages than these? Not in London, I am sure, where it is known that your churches, chapels, and religions meeting-houses, of all sorts, can not contain one-half of the inhabitants.

I have admitted, without hesitation, what it would be untrue and profitless to deny, that slaveholders are responsible to the world for the humane treatment of the fellow-beings whom God has placed in their hands. I think it would be only fair for you to admit, what is equally undeniable, that every man in independent circumstances, all the world over, and every government, is to the same extent responsible to the whole human family, for the condition of the poor and laboring classes in their own country, and around them, wherever they may be placed, to whom God has denied the advantages he has given themselves. If so, it would naturally seem the duty of true humanity and rational philanthropy to devote their time and labor, their thoughts, writings and charity, first to the objects placed as it were under their own immediate charge. And it must be regarded as a clear evasion and skillful neglect of this cardinal duty, to pass from those whose destitute situation they can plainly see, minutely examine, and efficiently relieve, to inquire after the condition of others in no way intrusted to their care, to exaggerate evils of which they can not be cognizant, to expend all their sympathies and exhaust all their energies on these remote objects of their unnatural, not to say dangerous, benevolence; and finally, to calumniate, denounce, and endeavor to excite the indignation of the world against their unoffending fellow-creatures for not hastening, under their dictation, to redress wrongs which are stoutly and truthfully denied, while they themselves go but little further in alleviating those chargeable on them than openly and unblushingly to acknowledge them. There may be indeed a sort of merit in doing so much as to make such an acknowledgment, but it must be very modest if it expects appreciation.

Now I affirm, that in Great Britain the poor and laboring classes of your own race and color, not only your fellow-beings, but your fellow-citizens, are more miserable and degraded, morally and physically, than our slaves; to be elevated to the actual condition of whom, would be to these, your fellow-citizens, a most glorious act of emancipation. And I also affirm, that the poor and laboring classes of our older free States would not be in a much more enviable condition, but for our slavery. One of their own Senators has declared in the United States Senate, "that the repeal of the Tariff would reduce New England to a howling wilderness." And the American Tariff is neither more or less than a system by which the slave States are plundered for the benefit of those States which do not tolerate slavery.

To prove what I say of Great Britain to be true, I make the following extracts from the Reports of Commissioners appointed by Parliament, and published by order of the House of Commons. I can make but few and short ones. But similar quotations might be made to any extent, and I defy you to deny that these specimens exhibit the real condition of your operatives in every branch of your industry. There is of course a variety in their sufferings. But the same incredible amount of toil, frightful destitution, and utter want of morals, characterize the lot of every class of them.

Collieries—"I wish to call the attention of the Board to the pits about Brampton. The seams are so thin that several of them have only two feet headway to all the working. They are worked altogether by boys from eight to twelve years of age, on all-fours, with a dog belt and chain. The passages being neither ironed nor wooded, and often an inch or two thick with mud. In Mr. Barnes' pit these poor boys have to drag the barrows with one hundred weight of coal or slack sixty times a day sixty yards, and the empty barrows back, without once straightening their backs, unless they chose to stand under the shaft, and run the risk of having their heads broken by a falling coal."—Report on Mines, 1842, p. 71. "In Shropshire the seams are no more than eighteen or twenty inches."—Ibid, p. 67. "At the Booth pit," says Mr. Scriven, "I walked, rode, and crept eighteen hundred yards to one of the nearest faces."—Ibid. "Chokedamp, firedamp, wild fire, sulphur and water, at all times menace instant death to the laborers in these mines." "Robert North, aged 16: Went into the pit at seven years of age, to fill up skips. I drew about twelve months. When I drew by the girdle and chain my skin was broken, and the blood ran down. I durst not say any thing. If we said any thing, the butty, and the reeve, who works under him, would take a stick and beat us."—Ibid. "The usual punishment for theft is to place the culprit's head between the legs of one of the biggest boys, and each boy in the pit—sometimes there are twenty—inflicts twelve lashes on the back and rump with a cat."—Ibid. "Instances occur in which children are taken into these mines to work as early as four years of age, sometimes at five, not unfrequently at six and seven, while from eight to nine is the ordinary age at which these employments commence."—Ibid. "The wages paid at these mines is from two dollar fifty cents to seven dollars fifty cents per month for laborers, according to age and ability, and out of this they must support themselves. They work twelve hours a day."—Ibid.

In Calico Printing.—"It is by no means uncommon in all the districts for children five or six years old to be kept at work fourteen to sixteen hours consecutively."—Report on Children, 1842, p. 59.

I could furnish extracts similar to these in regard to every branch of your manufactures, but I will not multiply them. Every body knows that your operatives habitually labor from twelve to sixteen hours, men, women, and children, and the men occasionally twenty hours per day. In lace-making, says the last quoted report, children sometimes commence work at two years of age.

Destitution.—It is stated by your Commissioners that forty thousand persons in Liverpool, and fifteen thousand in Manchester, live in cellars; while twenty-two thousand in England pass the night in barns, tents, or the open air. "There have been found such occurrences as seven, eight, and ten persons in one cottage, I cannot say for one day, but for whole days, without a morsel of food. They have remained on their beds of straw for two successive days, under the impression that in a recumbent posture the pangs of hunger were less felt."—Lord Brougham's Speech, 11th July, 1842. A volume of frightful scenes might be quoted to corroborate the inferences to be necessarily drawn from the facts here stated. I will not add more, but pass on to the important inquiry as to

Morals and Education.—"Elizabeth Barrett, aged 14: I always work without stockings, shoes, or trowsers. I wear nothing but a shift. I have to go up to the headings with the men. They are all naked there. I am got used to that."—Report on Mines. "As to illicit sexual intercourse it seems to prevail universally, and from an early period of life." "The evidence might have been doubled, which attest the early commencement of sexual and promiscuous intercourse among boys and girls." "A lower condition of morals, in the fullest sense of the term, could not, I think, be found. I do not mean by this that there are many more prominent vices among them, but that moral feelings and sentiments do not exist. They have no morals." "Their appearance, manners, and moral natures—so far as the word moral can be applied to them—are in accordance with their half-civilized condition."—Report on Children. "More than half a dozen instances occurred in Manchester, where a man, his wife, and his wife's grown-up-sister, habitually occupied the same bed."—Report on Sanitary Condition. "Robert Crucilow, aged 16: I don't know any thing of Moses—never heard of France. I don't know what America is. Never heard of Scotland or Ireland. Can't tell how many weeks there are in a year. There are twelve pence in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a pound. There are eight pints in a gallon of ale."—Report on Mines. "Ann Eggly, aged 18: I walk about and get fresh air on Sundays. I never go to church or chapel. I never heard of Christ at all."—Ibid. Others: "The Lord sent Adam and Eve on earth to save sinners." "I don't know who made the world; I never heard about God." "I don't know Jesus Christ—I never saw him—but I have seen Foster who prays about him." "Employer: You have expressed surprise at Thomas Mitchel's not hearing of God. I judge there are few colliers here about that have."—Ibid. I will quote no more. It is shocking beyond endurance to turn over your records, in which the condition of your laboring classes is but too faithfully depicted. Could our slaves but see it, they would join us in lynching the abolitionists, which, by the by, they would not now be loth to do. We never think of imposing on them such labor, either in amount or kind. We never put them to any work, under ten, more generally at twelve years of age, and then the very lightest. Destitution is absolutely unknown—never did a slave starve in America; while in moral sentiments and feelings, in religious information, and even in general intelligence, they are infinitely the superiors of your operatives. When you look around you, how dare you talk to us before the world of slavery? For the condition of your wretched laborers, you, and every Briton who is not one of them, are responsible before God and man. If you are really humane, philanthropic, and charitable, here are objects for you. Relieve them. Emancipate them. Raise them from the condition of brutes, to the level of human beings—of American slaves, at least. Do not for an instant suppose that the name of being freemen is the slightest comfort to them, situated as they are, or that the bombastic boast that "whoever touches British soil stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled," can meet with any thing but the ridicule and contempt of mankind, while that soil swarms, both on and under its surface, with the most abject and degraded wretches that ever bowed beneath the oppressor's yoke.

I have said that slavery is an established and inevitable condition to human society. I do not speak of the name, but the fact. The Marquis of Normanby has lately declared your operatives to be "in effect slaves." Can it be denied? Probably, for such philanthropists as your abolitionists care nothing for facts. They deal in terms and fictions. It is the word "slavery" which shocks their tender sensibilities; and their imaginations associate it with "hydras and chimeras dire." The thing itself, in its most hideous reality, passes daily under their view unheeded—a familiar face, touching no chord of shame, sympathy or indignation. Yet so brutalizing is your iron bondage that the English operative is a by-word through the world. When favoring fortune enables him to escape his prison-house, both in Europe and America he is shunned. "With all the skill which fourteen hours of daily labor from the tenderest age has ground into him, his discontent, which habit has made second nature, and his depraved propensities, running riot when freed from his wonted fetters, prevent his employment whenever it is not a matter of necessity. If we derived no other benefit from African slavery in the Southern States than that it deterred your freedmen from coming hither, I should regard it an inestimable blessing.

And how unaccountable is that philanthropy, which closes its eyes upon such a state of things as you have at home, and turns its blurred vision to our affairs beyond the Atlantic, meddling with matters which no way concern them—presiding, as you have lately done, at meetings to denounce the "iniquity of our laws" and "the atrocity of our practices," and to sympathize with infamous wretches imprisoned here for violating decrees promulgated both by God and man? Is this doing the work of "your Father which is in heaven," or is it seeking only "that you may have glory of man?" Do you remember the denunciation of our Saviour, "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees; hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess."

But after all, supposing that every thing you say of slavery be true, and its abolition a matter of the last necessity, how do you expect to effect emancipation, and what do you calculate will be the result of its accomplishment? As to the means to be used, the abolitionists, I believe, affect to differ, a large proportion of them pretending that their sole purpose is to apply "moral suasion" to the slaveholders themselves. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what their idea of this "moral suasion" is. Their discourses—yours is no exception—are all tirades, the exordium, argument and peroration, turning on the epithets "tyrants," "thieves," "murderers," addressed to us. They revile us as "atrocious monsters," "violators of the laws of nature, God and man," our homes the abode of every iniquity, our land a "brothel." We retort, that they are "incendiaries" and "assassins." Delightful argument! Sweet, potent "moral suasion!" What slave has it freed—what proselyte can it ever make? But if your course was wholly different—if you distilled nectar from your lips, and discoursed sweetest music, could you reasonably indulge the hope of accomplishing your object by such means? Nay, supposing that we were all convinced, and thought of slavery precisely as you do, at what era of "moral suasion" do you imagine you could prevail on us to give up a thousand millions of dollars in the value of our slaves, and a thousand millions of dollars more in the depreciation of our lands, in consequence of the want of laborers to cultivate them? Consider: were ever any people, civilized or savage, persuaded by any argument, human or divine, to surrender voluntarily two thousand millions of dollars? Would you think of asking five millions of Englishmen to contribute, either at once or gradually, four hundred and fifty millions of pounds sterling to the cause of philanthropy, even if the purpose to be accomplished was not of doubtful goodness? If you are prepared to undertake such a scheme, try it at home. Collect your fund—return us the money for our slaves, and do with them as you like. Be all the glory yours, fairly and honestly won. But you see the absurdity of such an idea. Away, then, with your pretended "moral suasion." You know it is mere nonsense. The abolitionists have no faith in it themselves. Those who expect to accomplish any thing count on means altogether different. They aim, first, to alarm us: that failing, to compel us by force to emancipate our slaves, at our own risk and cost. To these purposes they obviously direct all their energies. Our Northern liberty-men endeavored to disseminate their destructive doctrine among our slaves, and excite them to insurrection. But we have put an end to that, and stricken terror into them. They dare not show their faces here. Then they declared they would dissolve the Union. Let them do it. The North would repent it far more than the South. We are not alarmed at the idea. We are well content to give up the Union sooner than sacrifice two thousand millions of dollars, and with them all the rights we prize. You may take it for granted that it is impossible to persuade or alarm us into emancipation, or to making the first step toward it. Nothing, then, is left to try, but sheer force. If the abolitionists are prepared to expend their own treasure and shed their own blood as freely as they ask us to do ours, let them come. We do not court the conflict; but we will not and we cannot shrink from it. If they are not ready to go so far; if, as I expect, their philanthropy recoils from it; if they are looking only for cheap glory, let them turn their thoughts elsewhere, and leave us in peace. Be the sin, the danger and the evils of slavery all our own. We compel, we ask none to share them with us.

I am well aware that a notable scheme has been set on foot to achieve abolition by making what is by courtesy called "free" labor so much cheaper than slave labor as to force the abandonment of the latter. Though we are beginning to manufacture with slaves, I do not think you will attempt to pinch your operatives closer in Great Britain. You cannot curtail the rags with which they vainly attempt to cover their nakedness, nor reduce the porridge which barely, and not always, keeps those who have employment from perishing of famine. When you can do this, we will consider whether our slaves may not dispense with a pound or two of bacon per week, or a few garments annually. Your aim, however, is to cheapen labor in the tropics. The idea of doing this by exporting your "bold yeomanry" is, I presume, given up. Cromwell tried it when he sold the captured followers of Charles into West Indian slavery, where they speedily found graves. Nor have your recent experiments on British and even Dutch constitutions succeeded better. Have you still faith in carrying thither your coolies from Hindostan? Doubtless that once wild robber race, whose highest eulogium was that they did not murder merely for the love of blood, have been tamed down, and are perhaps "keen for immigration," for since your civilization has reached it, plunder has grown scarce in Guzerat. But what is the result of the experiment thus far? Have the coolies, ceasing to handle arms, learned to handle spades, and proved hardy and profitable laborers? On the contrary, broken in spirit and stricken with disease at home, the wretched victims whom you have hitherto kidnapped for a bounty, confined in depots, put under hatches and carried across the ocean—forced into "voluntary immigration," have done little but lie down and die on the pseudo soil of freedom. At the end of five years two-thirds, in some colonies a larger proportion, are no more! Humane and pious contrivance! To alleviate the fancied sufferings of the accursed posterity of Ham, you sacrifice by a cruel death two-thirds of the children of the blessed Shem—and demand the applause of Christians—the blessing of heaven! If this "experiment" is to go on, in God's name try your hand upon the Thugs. That other species of "immigration" to which you are resorting I will consider presently.

But what do you calculate will be the result of emancipation, by whatever means accomplished? You will probably point me, by way of answer, to the West Indies—doubtless to Antigua, the great boast of abolition. Admitting that it has succeeded there—which I will do for the sake of the argument—do you know the reason of it? The true and only causes of whatever success has attended it in Antigua are, that the population was before crowded, and all or nearly all the arable land in cultivation. The emancipated negroes could not, many of them, get away if they desired; and knew not where to go, in case they did. They had, practically, no alternative but to remain on the spot; and remaining, they must work on the terms of the proprietors, or perish—the strong arm of the mother country forbidding all hope of seizing the land for themselves. The proprietors, well knowing that they could thus command labor for the merest necessities of life, which was much cheaper than maintaining the non-effective as well as effective slaves in a style which decency and interest, if not humanity, required, willingly accepted half their value, and at once realized far more than the interest on the other half in the diminution of their expenses, and the reduced comforts of the freemen. One of your most illustrious judges, who was also a profound and philosophical historian, has said "that villeinage was not abolished, but went into decay in England." This was the process. This has been the process wherever (the name of) villeinage or slavery has been successfully abandoned. Slavery, in fact, "went into decay" in Antigua. I have admitted that, under similar circumstances, it might profitably cease here—that is, profitably to the individual proprietors. Give me half the value of my slaves, and compel them to remain and labor on my plantation, at ten to eleven cents a day, as they do in Antigua, supporting themselves and families, and you shall have them to-morrow, and if you like dub them "free." Not to stickle, I would surrender them without price. No—I recall my words: My humanity revolts at the idea. I am attached to my slaves, and would not have act or part in reducing them to such a condition. I deny, however, that Antigua, as a community, is, or ever will be, as prosperous under present circumstances, as she was before abolition, though fully ripe for it. The fact is well known. The reason is that the African, if not a distinct, is an inferior race, and never will effect, as it never has effected, as much in any other condition as in that of slavery.

I know of no slaveholder who has visited the West Indies since slavery was abolished, and published his views of it. All our facts and opinions come through the friends of the experiment, or at least those not opposed to it. Taking these, even without allowance, to be true as stated, I do not see where the abolitionists find cause for exultation. The tables of exports, which are the best evidences of the condition of a people, exhibit a woful falling off—excused, it is true, by unprecedented droughts and hurricanes, to which their free labor seems unaccountably more subject than slave labor used to be. I will not go into detail. It is well known that a large proportion of British legislation and expenditure, and that proportion still constantly increasing, is most anxiously devoted to repairing the monstrous error of emancipation. You are actually galvanizing your expiring colonies. The truth, deduced from all the facts, was thus pithily stated by the London Quarterly Review, as long ago as 1840: "None of the benefits anticipated by mistaken good intentions have been realized, while every evil wished for by knaves and foreesen by the wise has been painfully verified. The wild rashness of fanaticism has made the emancipation of the slaves equivalent to the loss of one-half of the West Indies, and yet put back the chance of negro civilization."—Art. Ld. Dudley's Letters. Such are the real fruits of your never-to-be-too-much-glorified abolition, and the valuable dividend of your twenty millions of pounds sterling invested therein.

If any further proof was wanted of the utter and well-known, though not yet openly avowed, failure of West Indian emancipation, it would be furnished by the startling fact, that THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE HAS BEEN ACTUALLY REVIVED UNDER THE AUSPICES AND PROTECTION OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. Under the specious guise of "immigration," they are replenishing those Islands with slaves from the coast of Africa. Your colony of Sierra Leone, founded on that coast to prevent the slave trade, and peopled, by the bye, in the first instance, by negroes stolen from these States during the Revolutionary War, is the depot to which captives taken from slavers by your armed vessels are transported. I might say returned, since nearly half the Africans carried across the Atlantic are understood to be embarked in this vicinity. The wretched survivors, who are there set at liberty, are immediately seduced to "immigrate" to the West Indies. The business is systematically carried on by black "delegates," sent expressly from the West Indies, where, on arrival, the "immigrants" are sold into slavery for twenty-one years, under conditions ridiculously trivial and wickedly void, since few or none will ever be able to derive any advantage from them. The whole prime of life thus passed in bondage, it is contemplated, and doubtless it will be carried into effect, to turn them out in their old age to shift for themselves, and to supply their places with fresh and vigorous "immigrants." Was ever a system of slavery so barbarous devised before? Can you think of comparing it with ours? Even your own religious missionaries at Sierra Leone denounce it "as worse than the slave state in Africa." And your black delegates, fearful of the influence of these missionaries, as well as on account of the inadequate supply of captives, are now preparing to procure the able-bodied and comparatively industrious Kroomen of the interior, by purchasing from their headmen the privilege of inveigling them to the West India market! So ends the magnificent farce—perhaps I should say tragedy, of West India abolition! I will not harrow your feelings by asking you to review the labors of your life and tell me what you and your brother enthusiasts have accomplished for "injured Africa," but while agreeing with Lord Stowell, that "villeinage decayed," and admitting that slavery might do so also, I think I am fully justified by passed and passing events in saying, as Mr. Grosvenor said of the slave trade, that its abolition is "impossible."

Yon are greatly mistaken, however, if you think that the consequences of emancipation here would be similar and no more injurious than those which followed from it in your little sea-girt West India Islands, where nearly all were blacks. The system of slavery is not in "decay" with us. It flourishes in full and growing vigor. Our country is boundless in extent. Dotted here and there with villages and fields, it is, for the most part, covered with immense forests and swamps of almost unknown size. In such a country, with a people so restless as ours, communicating of course some of that spirit to their domestics, can you conceive that any thing short of the power of the master over the slave, could confine the African race, notoriously idle and improvident, to labor on our plantations? Break this bond, but for a day, and these plantations will be solitudes. The negro loves change, novelty, and sensual excitements of all kinds, when awake. "Reason and order," of which Mr. Wilberforce said "liberty was the child," do not characterize him. Released from his present obligations, his first impulse would be to go somewhere. And here no natural boundaries would restrain him. At first they would all seek the towns, and rapidly accumulate in squalid groups upon their outskirts. Driven thence by the "armed police," which would immediately spring into existence, they would scatter in all directions. Some bodies of them might wander toward the "free" States, or to the Western wilderness, marking their tracks by their depredations and their corpses. Many would roam wild in our "big woods." Many more would seek the recesses of our swamps for secure covert. Few, very few of them, could be prevailed on to do a stroke of work, none to labor continuously, while a head of cattle, sheep or swine could be found in our ranges, or an ear of corn nodded in our abandoned fields. These exhausted, our folds and poultry yards, barns and store-houses, would become their prey. Finally, our scattered dwellings would be plundered, perhaps fired, and the inmates murdered. How long do you suppose that we could bear these things? How long would it be before we should sleep with rifles at our bedsides, and never move without one in our hands? This work once begun, let the story of our British ancestors and the aborigines of this country tell the sequel. Far more rapid, however, would be the catastrophe. "Ere many moons went by," the African race would be exterminated, or reduced again to slavery, their ranks recruited, after your example, by fresh "emigrants" from their fatherland.

Is timely preparation and gradual emancipation suggested to avert these horrible consequences? I thought your experience in the West Indies had, at least, done so much as to explode that idea. If it failed there, much more would it fail here, where the two races, approximating to equality in numbers, are daily and hourly in the closest contact. Give room for but a single spark of real jealousy to be kindled between them, and the explosion would be instantaneous and universal. It is the most fatal of all fallacies, to suppose that these two races can exist together, after any length of time, or any process of preparation, on terms at all approaching to equality. Of this, both of them are finally and fixedly convinced. They differ essentially, in all the leading traits which characterize the varieties of the human species, and color draws an indelible and insuperable line of separation between them. Every scheme founded upon the idea that they can remain together on the same soil, beyond the briefest period, in any other relation than precisely that which now subsists between them, is not only preposterous, but fraught with deepest danger. If there was no alternative but to try the "experiment" here, reason and humility dictate that the sufferings of "gradualism" should be saved, and the catastrophe of "immediate abolition" enacted as rapidly as possible. Are you impatient for the performance to commence? Do you long to gloat over the scenes I have suggested, but could not hold the pen to portray? In your long life many such have passed under your review. You know that they are not "impossible." Can they be to your taste? Do you believe that in laboring to bring them about, the abolitionists are doing the will of God? No! God is not there. It is the work of Satan. The arch-fiend, under specious guises, has found his way into their souls, and with false appeals to philanthropy, and foul insinuations to ambition, instigates them to rush headlong to the accomplishment of his diabolical designs.

We live in a wonderful age. The events of the last three quarters of a century appear to have revolutionized the human mind. Enterprise and ambition are only limited in their purposes by the horizon of the imagination. It is the transcendental era. In philosophy, religion, government, science, arts, commerce, nothing that has been is to be allowed to be. Conservatism, in any form, is scoffed at. The slightest taint of it is fatal. Where will all this end? If you can tolerate one ancient maxim, let it be that the best criterion of the future is the past. That, if any thing, will give a clue. And, looking back only through your time, what was the earliest feat of this same transcendentalism? The rays of the new moral Drummond Light were first concentrated to a focus at Paris, to illuminate the universe. In a twinkling it consumed the political, religious and social systems of France. It could not be extinguished there until literally drowned in blood. And then, from its ashes arose that supernatural man, who, for twenty years, kept affrighted Europe in convulsions. Since that time, its scattered beams, refracted by broader surfaces, have, nevertheless, continued to scathe wherever they have fallen. What political structure, what religious creed, but has felt the galvanic shock, and even now trembles to its foundations? Mankind, still horror-stricken by the catastrophe of France, have shrunk from rash experiments upon social systems. But they have been practicing in the East, around the Mediterranean, and through the West India Islands. And growing confident, a portion of them seem desperately bent on kindling the all-devouring flame in the bosom of our land. Let it once again blaze up to heaven, and another cycle of blood and devastation will dawn upon the world. For our own sake, and for the sake of those infatuated men who are madly driving on the conflagration; for the sake of human nature, we are called on to strain every nerve to arrest it. And be assured our efforts will be bounded only with our being. Nor do I doubt that five millions of people, brave, intelligent, united, and prepared to hazard every thing, will, in such a cause, with the blessing of God, sustain themselves. At all events, come what may, it is ours to meet it.

We are well aware of the light estimation in which the abolitionists, and those who are taught by them, profess to hold us. We have seen the attempt of a portion of the Free Church of Scotland to reject our alms on the ground that we are "slave-drivers," after sending missionaries to solicit them. And we have seen Mr. O'Connell, the "irresponsible master" of millions of ragged serfs, from whom, poverty stricken as they are, he contrives to wring a splendid privy purse, throw back with contumely, the "tribute" of his own countrymen from this land of "miscreants." These people may exhaust their slang, and make blackguards of themselves, but they cannot defile us. And as for the suggestion to exclude slaveholders from your London clubs, we scout it. Many of us, indeed, do go to London, and we have seen your breed of gawky lords, both there and here, but it never entered into our conceptions to look on them as better than ourselves. The American slaveholders, collectively or individually, ask no favors of any man or race who tread the earth. In none of the attributes of men, mental or physical, do they acknowledge or fear superiority elsewhere. They stand in the broadest light of the knowledge, civilization and improvement of the age, as much favored of heaven as any of the sons of Adam. Exacting nothing undue, they yield nothing but justice and courtesy, even to royal blood. They cannot be flattered, duped, nor bullied out of their rights or their propriety. They smile with contempt at scurrility and vaporing beyond the seas, and they turn their backs upon it where it is "irresponsible;" but insolence that ventures to look them in the face, will never fail to be chastised.

I think I may trust you will not regard this letter as intrusive. I should never have entertained an idea of writing it, had you not opened the correspondence. If you think any thing in it harsh, review your own—which I regret that I lost soon after it was received—and you will probably find that you have taken your revenge beforehand. If you have not, transfer an equitable share of what you deem severe, to the account of the abolitionists at large. They have accumulated against the slaveholders a balance of invective, which, with all our efforts, we shall not be able to liquidate much short of the era in which your national debt will be paid. At all events, I have no desire to offend you personally, and, with the best wishes for your continued health, I have the honor to be,

Your obedient servant, J. H. HAMMOND.

THOS. CLARKSON, Esq.

FOOTNOTE:

[255] On this subject, J. Q. Adams, in his letter to the citizens of Bangor, Maine, July 4th, 1843, said: "It is only as immortal beings that all mankind can in any sense be said to be born equal; and when the Declaration of Independence affirms as a self-evident truth that all men are born equal, it is precisely the same as if the affirmation had been that all men are born with immortal souls."—Life of J. Q. Adams, page 395.—Editor.



LETTER II.

Ignorance of Abolitionists—Arguments of Abolitionists refuted—Abolitionism leads to Infidelity—Law of Force a law of Love—Wages of Slaves and of hired labor—Results of emancipation to the world—Falsehoods of Abolitionists—English estimate of our Northern citizens—British interference in the politics of our country—Sensitiveness of the Southern People—Rise and progress of Fanaticism.

SILVER BLUFF, S. C., March 24, 1845.

SIR—In my letter to you of the 28th January—which I trust you have received ere this—I mentioned that I had lost your circular letter soon after it had come to hand. It was, I am glad to say, only mislaid, and has within a few days been recovered. A second perusal of it induces me to resume my pen. Unwilling to trust my recollections from a single reading, I did not, in my last communication, attempt to follow the course of your argument, and meet directly the points made and the terms used. I thought it better to take a general view of the subject, which could not fail to traverse your most material charges. I am well aware, however, that for fear of being tedious, I omitted many interesting topics altogether, and abstained from a complete discussion of some of those introduced. I do not propose now to exhaust the subject; which it would require volumes to do; but without waiting to learn—which I may never do—your opinion of what I have already said, I sit down to supply some of the deficiencies of my letter of January, and, with your circular before me, to reply to such parts of it as have not been fully answered.

It is, I perceive, addressed, among others, to "such as have never visited the Southern States" of this confederacy, and professes to enlighten their ignorance of the actual "condition of the poor slave in their own country." I can not help thinking you would have displayed prudence in confining the circulation of your letter altogether to such persons. You might then have indulged with impunity in giving, as you have done, a picture of slavery, drawn from your own excited imagination, or from those impure fountains, the Martineaus, Marryatts, Trollopes, and Dickenses, who have profited by catering, at our expense, to the jealous sensibilities and debauched tastes of your countrymen. Admitting that you are familiar with the history of slavery, and the past discussions of it, as I did, I now think rather broadly, in my former letter, what can you know of the true condition of the "poor slave" here? I am not aware that you have ever visited this country, or even the West Indies. Can you suppose, that because you have devoted your life to the investigation of the subject—commencing it under the influence of an enthusiasm, so melancholy at first, and so volcanic afterwards, as to be nothing short of hallucination—pursuing it as men of one idea do every thing, with the single purpose of establishing your own view of it—gathering your information from discharged seamen, disappointed speculators, factious politicians, visionary reformers and scurrilous tourists—opening your ears to every species of complaint, exaggeration and falsehood, that interested ingenuity could invent, and never for a moment questioning the truth of any thing that could make for your cause—can you suppose that all this has qualified you, living the while in England, to form or approximate toward the formation of a correct opinion of the condition of slaves among us? I know the power of self-delusion. I have not the least doubt, that you think yourself the very best informed man alive on this subject, and that many think so likewise. So far as facts go, even after deducting from your list a great deal that is not fact, I will not deny that, probably, your collection is the most extensive in existence. But as to the truth in regard to slavery, there is not an adult in this region but knows more of it than you do. Truth and fact are, you are aware, by no means synonymous terms. Ninety-nine facts may constitute a falsehood: the hundredth, added or alone, gives the truth. With all your knowledge of facts, I undertake to say that you are entirely and grossly ignorant of the real condition of our slaves. And from all that I can see, you are equally ignorant of the essential principles of human association revealed in history, both sacred and profane, on which slavery rests, and which will perpetuate it forever in some form or other. However you may declaim against it; however powerfully you may array atrocious incidents; whatever appeals you may make to the heated imaginations and tender sensibilities of mankind, believe me, your total blindness to the whole truth, which alone constitutes the truth, incapacitates you from ever making an impression on the sober reason and sound common sense of the world. You may seduce thousands—you can convince no one. Whenever and wherever you or the advocates of your cause can arouse the passions of the weak-minded and the ignorant, and bringing to bear with them the interests of the vicious and unprincipled, overwhelm common sense and reason—as God sometimes permits to be done—you may triumph. Such a triumph we have witnessed in Great Britain. But I trust it is far distant here; nor can it, from its nature, be extensive or enduring. Other classes of reformers, animated by the same spirit as the abolitionists, attack the institution of marriage, and even the established relations of parent and child. And they collect instances of barbarous cruelty and shocking degradation, which rival, if they do not throw into the shade, your slavery statistics. But the rights of marriage and parental authority rests upon truths as obvious as they are unchangeable—coming home to every human being,—self-impressed forever on the individual mind, and can not be shaken until the whole man is corrupted, nor subverted until civilized society becomes a putrid mass. Domestic slavery is not so universally understood, nor can it make such a direct appeal to individuals or society beyond its pale. Here, prejudice and passion have room to sport at the expense of others. They may be excited and urged to dangerous action, remote from the victims they mark out. They may, as they have done, effect great mischief, but they can not be made to maintain, in the long run, dominion over reason and common sense, nor ultimately put down what God has ordained.

You deny, however, that slavery is sanctioned by God, and your chief argument is, that when he gave to Adam dominion over the fruits of the earth and the animal creation, he stopped there. "He never gave him any further right over his fellow-men." You restrict the descendants of Adam to a very short list of rights and powers, duties and responsibities, if you limit them solely to those conferred and enjoined in the first chapter of Genesis. It is very obvious that in this narrative of the Creation, Moses did not have it in view to record any part of the law intended for the government of man in his social or political state. Eve was not yet created; the expulsion had not yet taken place; Cain was unborn; and no allusion whatever is made to the manifold decrees of God to which these events gave rise. The only serious answer this argument deserves, is to say, what is so manifestly true, that God's not expressly giving to Adam "any right over his fellow-men" by no means excluded him from conferring that right on his descendants; which he in fact did. We know that Abraham, the chosen one of God, exercised it and held property in his fellow-man, even anterior to the period when property in land was acknowledged. We might infer that God had authorized it. But we are not reduced to inference or conjecture. At the hazard of fatiguing you by repetition, I will again refer you to the ordinances of the Scriptures. Innumerable instances might be quoted where God has given and commanded men to assume dominion over their fellow-men. But one will suffice. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, you will find domestic slavery—precisely such as is maintained at this day in these States—ordained and established by God, in language which I defy you to pervert so as to leave a doubt on any honest mind that this institution was founded by him, and decreed to be perpetual. I quote the words:

Leviticus xxv. 44-46: "Both thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen [Africans] that are round about you: of them ye shall buy bond-men and bond-maids.

"Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you which they begat in your land [descendants of Africans?] and they shall be your possession.

"And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession. THEY SHALL BE YOUR BOND-MEN FOREVER."

What human legislature could make a decree more full and explicit than this? What court of law or chancery could defeat a title to a slave couched in terms so clear and complete as these? And this is the law of God, whom you pretend to worship, while you denounce and traduce us for respecting it.

It seems scarcely credible, but the fact is so, that you deny this law so plainly written, and in the face of it have the hardihood to declare that "though slavery is not specifically, yet it is virtually, forbidden in the Scriptures, because all the crimes which necessarily arises out of slavery, and which can arise from no other source, are reprobated there and threatened with divine vengeance." Such an unworthy subterfuge is scarcely entitled to consideration. But its gross absurdity may be exposed in few words. I do not know what crimes you particularly allude to as arising from slavery. But you will perhaps admit—not because they are denounced in the decalogue, which the abolitionists respect only so far as they choose, but because it is the immediate interest of most men to admit—that disobedience to parents, adultery, and stealing, are crimes. Yet these crimes "necessarily arise from" the relations of parent and child, marriage, and the possession of private property; at least they "can arise from no other sources." Then, according to your argument, it is "virtually forbidden" to marry, to beget children, and to hold private property! Nay, it is forbidden to live, since murder can only be perpetrated on living subjects. You add that "in the same way the gladiatorial shows of old, and other barbarous customs, were not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, and yet Christianity was the sole means of their suppression." This is very true. But these shows and barbarous customs thus suppressed were not authorised by God. They were not ordained and commanded by God for the benefit of his chosen people and mankind, as the purchase and holding of bond-men and bond-maids were. Had they been they would never have been "suppressed by Christianity" any more than slavery can be by your party. Although Christ came "not to destroy but fulfill the law," he nevertheless did formally abrogate some of the ordinances promulgated by Moses, and all such as were at war with his mission of "peace and good-will on earth." He "specifically" annuls, for instance, one "barbarous custom" sanctioned by those ordinances, where he says, "ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." Now, in the time of Christ, it was usual for masters to put their slaves to death on the slightest provocation. They even killed and cut them up to feed their fishes. He was undoubtedly aware of these things, as well as of the law and commandment I have quoted. He could only have been restrained from denouncing them, as he did the "lex talionis," because he knew that in despite of these barbarities the institution of slavery was at the bottom a sound and wholesome, as well as lawful one. Certain it is, that in his wisdom and purity he did not see proper to interfere with it. In your wisdom, however, you make the sacrilegious attempt to overthrow it.

You quote the denunciation of Tyre and Sidon, and say that "the chief reason given by the prophet Joel for their destruction, was, that they were notorious beyond all others for carrying on the slave trade." I am afraid you think we have no Bibles in the slave States, or that we are unable to read them. I can not otherwise account for your making this reference, unless indeed your own reading is confined to an expurgated edition, prepared for the use of abolitionists, in which every thing relating to slavery that militates against their view of it is left out. The prophet Joel denounces the Tyrians and Sidonians, because "the children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians." And what is the divine vengeance for this "notorious slave trading?" Hear it. "And I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it." Do you call this a condemnation of slave trading? The prophet makes God himself a participator in the crime, if that be one. "The Lord hath spoken it," he says, that the Tyrians and Sidonians shall be sold into slavery to strangers. Their real offense was, in enslaving the chosen people; and their sentence was a repetition of the old command, to make slaves of the heathen round about.

I have dwelt upon your scriptural argument, because you profess to believe the Bible; because a large proportion of the abolitionists profess to do the same, and to act under its sanction; because your circular is addressed in part to "professing Christians;" and because it is from that class mainly that you expect to seduce converts to your anti-christian, I may say, infidel doctrines. It would be wholly unnecessary to answer you, to any one who reads the Scriptures for himself, and construes them according to any other formula than that which the abolitionists are wickedly endeavoring to impose upon the world. The scriptural sanction of slavery is in fact so palpable, and so strong, that both wings of your party are beginning to acknowledge it. The more sensible and moderate admit, as the organ of the Free Church of Scotland, the North British Review, has lately done, that they "are precluded by the statements and conduct of the Apostles from regarding mere slaveholding as essentially sinful," while the desperate and reckless, who are bent on keeping up the agitation at every hazard, declare, as has been done in the Anti-Slavery Record, "If our inquiry turns out in favor of slavery, IT IS THE BIBLE THAT MUST FALL, AND NOT THE RIGHTS OF HUMAN NATURE." You can not, I am satisfied, much longer maintain before the world the Christian platform from which to wage war upon our institutions. Driven from it, you must abandon the contest, or, repudiating REVELATION, rush into the horrors of NATURAL RELIGION.

You next complain that our slaves are kept in bondage by the "law of force." In what country or condition of mankind do you see human affairs regulated merely by the law of love? Unless I am greatly mistaken, you will, if you look over the world, find nearly all certain and permanent rights, civil, social, and I may even add religious, resting on and ultimately secured by the "law of force." The power of majorities—of aristocracies—of kings—nay of priests, for the most part, and of property, resolves itself at last into "force," and could not otherwise be long maintained. Thus, in every turn of your argument against our system of slavery, you advance, whether conscious of it or not, radical and revolutionary doctrines calculated to change the whole face of the world, to overthrow all government, disorganize society, and reduce man to a state of nature—red with blood, and shrouded once more in barbaric ignorance. But you greatly err, if you suppose, because we rely on force in the last resort to maintain our supremacy over our slaves, that ours is a stern and unfeeling domination, at all to be compared in hard-hearted severity to that exercised, not over the mere laborer only, but by the higher over each lower order, wherever the British sway is acknowledged. You say, that if those you address were "to spend one day in the South, they would return home with impressions against slavery never to be erased." But the fact is universally the reverse. I have known numerous instances, and I never knew a single one, where there was no other cause of offense, and no object to promote by falsehood, that individuals from the non-slaveholding States did not, after residing among us long enough to understand the subject, "return home" to defend our slavery. It is matter of regret that you have never tried the experiment yourself. I do not doubt you would have been converted, for I give you credit for an honest though perverted mind. You would have seen how weak and futile is all abstract reasoning about this matter, and that, as a building may not be less elegant in its proportions, or tasteful in its ornaments, or virtuous in its uses, for being based upon granite, so a system of human government, though founded on force, may develope and cultivate the tenderest and purest sentiments of the human heart. And our patriarchal scheme of domestic servitude is indeed well calculated to awaken the higher and finer feelings of our nature. It is not wanting in its enthusiasm and its poetry. The relations of the most beloved and honored chief, and the most faithful and admiring subjects, which, from the time of Homer, have been the theme of song, are frigid and unfelt compared with those existing between the master and his slaves—who served his father, and rocked his cradle, or have been born in his household, and look forward to serve his children—who have been through life the props of his fortune, and the objects of his care—who have partaken of his griefs, and looked to him for comfort in their own—whose sickness he has so frequently watched over and relieved—whose holidays he has so often made joyous by his bounties and his presence; for whose welfare, when absent, his anxious solicitude never ceases, and whose hearty and affectionate greetings never fail to welcome him home. In this cold, calculating, ambitious world of ours, there are few ties more heartfelt, or of more benignant influence, than those which mutually bind the master and the slave, under our ancient system, handed down from the father of Israel. The unholy purpose of the abolitionists is, to destroy by defiling it; to infuse into it the gall and bitterness which rankle in their own envenomed bosoms; to poison the minds of the master and the servant; turn love to hatred, array "force" against force, and hurl all

"With hideous rain and combustion, down To bottomless perdition."

You think it a great "crime" that we do not pay our slaves "wages," and on this account pronounce us "robbers." In my former letter, I showed that the labor of our slaves was not without great cost to us, and that in fact they themselves receive more in return for it than your hirelings do for theirs. For what purpose do men labor, but to support themselves and their families in what comfort they are able? The efforts of mere physical labor seldom suffice to provide more than a livelihood. And it is a well known and shocking fact, that while few operatives in Great Britain succeed in securing a comfortable living, the greater part drag out a miserable existence, and sink at last under absolute want. Of what avail is it that you go through the form of paying them a pittance of what you call "wages," when you do not, in return for their services, allow them what alone they ask—and have a just right to demand—enough to feed, clothe and lodge them, in health and sickness, with reasonable comfort. Though we do not give "wages" in money, we do this for our slaves, and they are therefore better rewarded than yours. It is the prevailing vice and error of the age, and one from which the abolitionists, with all their saintly pretensions, are far from being free, to bring every thing to the standard of money. You make gold and silver the great test of happiness. The American slave must be wretched indeed, because he is not compensated for his services in cash. It is altogether praiseworthy to pay the laborer a shilling a day, and let him starve on it. To supply all his wants abundantly, and at all times, yet withhold from him money, is among "the most reprobated crimes." The fact can not be denied, that the mere laborer is now, and always has been, everywhere that barbarism has ceased, enslaved. Among the innovations of modern times, following "the decay of villeinage," has been the creation of a new system of slavery. The primitive and patriarchal, which may also be called the sacred and natural system, in which the laborer is under the personal control of a fellow-being endowed with the sentiments and sympathies of humanity, exists among us. It has been almost everywhere else superseded by the modern artificial money power system, in which man—his thews and sinews, his hopes and affections, his very being, are all subjected to the dominion of capital—a monster without a heart—cold, stern, arithmetical—sticking to the bond—taking ever "the pound of flesh"—working up human life with engines, and retailing it out by weight and measure. His name of old was "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell from heaven." And it is to extend his empire that you and your deluded coadjutors dedicate your lives. You are stirring up mankind to overthrow our heaven-ordained system of servitude, surrounded by innumerable checks, designed and planted deep in the human heart by God and nature, to substitute the absolute rule of this "spirit reprobate," whose proper place was hell.

You charge us with looking on our slaves "as chattels or brutes," and enter into a somewhat elaborate argument to prove that they have "human forms," "talk," and even "think." Now the fact is, that however you may indulge in this strain for effect, it is the abolitionists, and not the slaveholders, who, practically, and in the most important point of view, regard our slaves as "chattels or brutes." In your calculations of the consequences of emancipation, you pass over entirely those which must prove most serious, and which arise from the fact of their being persons.

You appear to think that we might abstain from the use of them as readily as if they were machines to be laid aside, or cattle that might be turned out to find pasturage for themselves. I have heretofore glanced at some of the results that would follow from breaking the bonds of so many human beings, now peacefully and happily linked into our social system. The tragic horrors, the decay and ruin that would for years, perhaps for ages, brood over our land, if it could be accomplished, I will not attempt to portray. But do you fancy the blight would, in such an event, come to us alone? The diminution of the sugar crop of the West Indies affected Great Britain only, and there chiefly the poor. It was a matter of no moment to capital, that labor should have one comfort less. Yet it has forced a reduction of the British duty on sugar. Who can estimate the consequences that must follow the annihilation of the cotton crop of the slaveholding States? I do not undervalue the importance of other articles of commerce, but no calamity could befall the world at all comparable to the sudden loss of two millions of bales of cotton annually. From the deserts of Africa to the Siberian wilds—from Greenland to the Chinese wall,—there is not a spot of earth but would feel the sensation. The factories of Europe would fall with a concussion that would shake down castles, palaces, and even thrones; while the "purse-proud, elbowing insolence" of our Northern monopolist would soon disappear forever under the smooth speech of the pedlar, scourging our frontiers for a livelihood, or the bluff vulgarity of the South Sea whaler, following the harpoon amid storms and shoals. Doubtless the abolitionists think we could grow cotton without slaves, or that at worst the reduction of the crop would be moderate and temporary. Such gross delusions show how profoundly ignorant they are of our condition here.

You declare that "the character of the people of the South has long been that of hardened infidels, who fear not God, and have no regard for religion." I will not repeat what I said in my former letter on this point. I only notice it to ask you how you could possibly reconcile it to your profession of a Christian spirit, to make such a malicious charge—to defile your soul with such a calumny against an unoffending people?

"You are old; Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine. You should be ruled and led By some discretion."

May God forgive you.

Akin to this, is the wanton and furious assault made on us by Mr. Macaulay, in his late speech on the sugar duties, in the House of Commons, which has just reached me. His denunciations are wholly without measure, and, among other things, he asserts "that slavery in the United States wears its worst form; that, boasting of our civilization and freedom, and frequenting Christian churches, we breed up slaves, nay, beget children for slaves, and sell them at so much a-head." Mr. Macaulay is a reviewer, and he knows that he is "nothing if not critical." The practice of his trade has given him the command of all the slashing and vituperative phrases of our language, and the turn of his mind leads him to the habitual use of them. He is an author, and as no copy-right law secures for him from this country a consideration for his writings, he is not only independent of us, but naturally hates every thing American. He is the representative of Edinburgh; it is his cue to decry our slavery, and in doing so he may safely indulge the malignity of his temper, his indignation against us, and his capacity for railing. He has suffered once, for being in advance of his time in favor of abolition, and he does not intend that it shall be forgotten, or his claim passed over, to any crumb which may now be thrown to the vociferators in the cause. If he does not know that the statements he has made respecting the slaveholders of this country are vile and atrocious falsehoods, it is because he does not think it worth his while to be sure he speaks the truth, so that he speaks to his own purpose.

"Hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane caveto."

Such exhibitions as he has made, may draw the applause of a British House of Commons, but among the sound and high-minded thinkers of the world they can only excite contempt and disgust.

But you are not content with depriving us of all religious feelings. You assert that our slavery has also "demoralized the Northern States," and charge upon it not only every common violation of good order there, but the "Mormon murders," the "Philadelphia riots," and all "the exterminating wars against the Indians." I wonder that you did not increase the list by adding that it had caused the recent inundation of the Mississippi, and the hurricane in the West Indies—perhaps the insurrection of Rebecca, and the war in Scinde. You refer to the law prohibiting the transmission of abolition publications through the mail, as proof of general corruption! You could not do so, however, without noticing the late detected espionage over the British post office by a minister of state. It is true, as you say, it "occasioned a general outburst of national feeling"—from the opposition; and a "Parliamentary inquiry was instituted"—that is, moved, but treated quite cavalierly. At all events, though the fact was admitted, Sir James Graham yet retains the Home Department. For one, I do not undertake to condemn him. Such things are not against the laws and usages of your country. I do not know fully what reasons of state may have influenced him and justified his conduct. But I do know that there is a vast difference in point of "national morality" between the discretionary power residing in your government to open any letter in the public post office, and a well-defined and limited law to prevent the circulation of certain specified incendiary writings by means of the United States mail.

Having now referred to every thing like argument on the subject of slavery, that is worthy of notice in your letter, permit me to remark on its tone and style, and very extraordinary bearing upon other institutions of this country. You commence by addressing certain classes of our people, as belonging to "a nation whose character is now so low in the estimation of the civilized world;" and throughout you maintain this tone. Did the Americans who were "under your roof last summer" inform you that such language would be gratifying to their fellow-citizens "having no practical concern with slaveholding?" Or do the infamous libels on America, which you read in our abolition papers, induce you to believe that all that class of people are, like the abolitionists themselves, totally destitute of patriotism or pride of country? Let me tell you that you are grossly deceived. And although your stock-brokers and other speculators, who have been bitten in American ventures, may have raised a stunning "cry" against us in England, there is a vast body of people here besides slaveholders, who justly

"Deem their own land of every land the pride, Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside,"

and who know that at this moment we rank among the first powers of the world—a position which we not only claim, but are always ready and able to maintain.

The style you assume in addressing your Northern friends, is in perfect keeping with your apparent estimation of them. Though I should be the last, perhaps, to criticise mere style, I could not but be struck with the extremely simple manner of your letter. You seem to have thought you were writing a tract for benighted heathen, and telling wonders never before suggested to their imagination, and so far above their untutored comprehension as to require to be related in the primitive language of "the child's own book." This is sufficiently amusing; and would be more so, but for the coarse and bitter epithets you continually apply to the poor slaveholders—epithets which appear to be stereotyped for the use of abolitionists, and which form a large and material part of all their arguments.

But, perhaps, the most extraordinary part of your letter is your bold denunciation of "the shameful compromises" of our Constitution, and your earnest recommendation to those you address to overthrow or revolutionize it. In so many words you say to them, "you must either separate yourselves from all political connection with the South, and make your own laws; or if you do not choose such a separation, you must break up the political ascendency which the Southern have had for so long a time over the Northern States. The italics in this, as in all other quotations, are your own. It is well for those who circulate your letter here, that the Constitution you denounce requires an overt act to constitute treason. It may be tolerated for an American by birth, to use on his own soil the freedom of speaking and writing which is guaranteed him, and abuse our Constitution, our Union, and our people. But that a foreigner should use such seditious language, in a circular letter addressed to a portion of the American people, is a presumption well calculated to excite the indignation of all. The party known in this country as the abolition party has long since avowed the sentiments you express, and adopted the policy you enjoin. At the recent presidential election, they gave over 62,000 votes for their own candidate, and held the balance of power in two of the largest States—wanting but little of doing it in several others. In the last four years their vote has quadrupled. Should the infatuation continue, and their vote increase in the same ratio for the next four years, it will be as large as the vote of the actual slaveholders of the Union. Such a prospect is, doubtless, extremely gratifying to you. It gives hope of a contest on such terms as may insure the downfall of slavery or our Constitution. The South venerates the Constitution, and is prepared to stand by it forever, such as it came from the hands of our fathers; to risk every thing to defend and maintain it in its integrity. But the South is under no such delusion as to believe that it derives any peculiar protection from the Union. On the contrary, it is well known we incur peculiar danger, and that we bear far more than our porportion of the burdens. The apprehension is also fast fading away that any of the dreadful consequences commonly predicted will necessarily result from a separation of the States. And come what may, we are firmly resolved that OUR SYSTEM OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY SHALL STAND. The fate of the Union, then—but, thank God, not of republican government—rests mainly in the hands of the people to whom your letter is addressed—the "professing Christians of the Northern States having no concern with slaveholding," and whom with incendiary zeal you are endeavoring to stir up to strife—without which fanaticism can neither live, move, nor have any being.

We have often been taunted for our sensitiveness in regard to the discussion of slavery. Do not suppose it is because we have any doubts of our rights, or scruples about asserting them. There was a time when such doubts and scruples were entertained. Our ancestors opposed the introduction of slaves into this country, and a feeling adverse to it was handed down from them. The enthusiastic love of liberty fostered by our Revolution strengthened this feeling. And before the commencement of the abolition agitation here, it was the common sentiment that it was desirable to get rid of slavery. Many thought it our duty to do so. When that agitation arose, we were driven to a close examination of the subject in all its bearings, and the result has been an universal conviction that in holding slaves we violate no law of God,—inflict no injustice on any of his creatures—while the terrible consequences of emancipation to all parties and the world at large, clearly revealed to us, make us shudder at the bare thought of it. The slaveholders are, therefore, indebted to the abolitionists for perfect ease of conscience, and the satisfaction of a settled and unanimous determination in reference to this matter. And could their agitation cease now, I believe, after all, the good would preponderate over the evil of it in this country. On the contrary, however, it is urged on with frantic violence, and the abolitionists, reasoning in the abstract, as if it were a mere moral or metaphysical speculation, or a minor question in politics, profess to be surprised at our exasperation. In their ignorance and recklessness, they seem to be unable to comprehend our feelings or position. The subversion of our rights, the destruction of our property, the disturbance of our peace and the peace of the world, are matters which do not appear to arrest their consideration. When revolutionary France proclaimed "hatred to kings and unity to the republic," and inscribed on her banners "France risen against tyrants," she professed to be only worshiping "abstract rights." And if there can be such things, perhaps she was. Yet all Europe rose to put her sublime theories down. They declared her an enemy to the common peace; that her doctrines alone violated the "law of neighborhood," and, as Mr. Burke said, justly entitled them to anticipate the "damnum nondum factum" of the civil law. Danton, Barrere, and the rest were apparently astonished that umbrage should be taken. The parallel between them and the abolitionists holds good in all respects.

The rise and progress of this fanaticism is one of the phenomena of the age in which we live. I do not intend to repeat what I have already said, or to trace its career more minutely at present. But the legislation of Great Britain will make it historical, and doubtless you must feel some curiosity to know how it will figure on the page of the annalist. I think I can tell you. Though I have accorded and do accord to you and your party, great influence in bringing about the parliamentary action of your country, you must not expect to go down to posterity as the only cause of it. Though you trace the progenitors of abolition from 1516, through a long stream with divers branches, down to the period of its triumph in your country, it has not escaped contemporaries, and will not escape posterity, that England, without much effort, sustained the storm of its scoffs and threats, until the moment arrived when she thought her colonies fully supplied with Africans; and declared against the slave trade, only when she deemed it unnecessary to her, and when her colonies, full of slaves, would have great advantages over others not so well provided. Nor did she agree to West India emancipation, until, discovering the error of her previous calculation, it became an object to have slaves free throughout the Western world, and, on the ruins of the sugar and cotton-growers of America and the Islands, to build up her great slave empire in the East; while her indefatigable exertions, still continued, to engraft the right of search upon the law of nations, on the plea of putting an end to the forever increasing slave trade, are well understood to have chiefly in view the complete establishment of her supremacy at sea.[256] Nor must you flatter yourself that your party will derive historic dignity from the names of the illustrious British statesmen who have acted with it. Their country's ends were theirs. They have stooped to use you, as the most illustrious men will sometimes use the vilest instruments, to accomplish their own purposes. A few philanthropic common places and rhetorical flourishes, "in the abstract," have secured them your "sweet voices," and your influence over the tribe of mawkish sentimentalists. Wilberforce may have been yours, but what was he besides, but a wealthy county member? You must, therefore, expect to stand on your own merits alone before posterity, or rather that portion of it that may be curious to trace the history of the delusions which, from time to time, pass over the surface of human affairs, and who may trouble themselves to look through the ramifications of transcendentalism, in this era of extravagances. And how do you expect to appear in their eyes? As Christians, piously endeavoring to enforce the will of God, and carry out the principles of Christianity? Certainly not, since you deny or pervert the Scriptures in the doctrines you advance; and in your conduct, furnish a glaring contrast to the examples of Christ and the apostles. As philanthropists, devoting yourselves to the cause of humanity, relieving the needy, comforting the afflicted, creating peace and gladness and plenty round about you? Certainly not, since you turn from the needy, the afflicted; from strife, sorrow and starvation which surround you; close your eyes and hands upon them; shut out from your thoughts and feelings the human misery which is real, tangible, and within your reach, to indulge your morbid imagination in conjuring up woes and wants among a strange people in distant lands, and offering them succor in the shape of costless denunciations of their best friends, or by scattering among them "firebrands, arrows and death." Such folly and madness, such wild mockery and base imposture, can never win for you, in the sober judgment of future times, the name of philanthropists. Will you even be regarded as worthy citizens? Scarcely, when the purposes you have in view, can only be achieved by revolutionizing governments and overturning social systems, and when you do not hesitate, zealously and earnestly, to recommend such measures. Be assured, then, that posterity will not regard the abolitionists as Christians, philanthropists, or virtuous citizens. It will, I have no doubt, look upon the mass of the party as silly enthusiasts, led away by designing characters, as is the case with all parties that break from the great, acknowledged ties which bind civilized man in fellowship. The leaders themselves will be regarded as mere ambitious men; not taking rank with those whose ambition is "eagle-winged and sky-aspiring," but belonging to that mean and selfish class, who are instigated by "rival-hating envy," and whose base thirst is for notoriety; who cloak their designs under vile and impious hypocrisies, and, unable to shine in higher spheres, devote themselves to fanaticism, as a trade. And it will be perceived that, even in that, they shunned the highest walk. Religious fanaticism was an old established vocation, in which something brilliant was required to attract attention. They could not be George Foxes, nor Joanna Southcotes, nor even Joe Smiths. But the dullest pretender could discourse a jumble of pious bigotry, natural rights, and driveling philanthropy. And, addressing himself to aged folly and youthful vanity, to ancient women, to ill-gotten wealth, to the reckless of all classes, who love excitement and change, offer each the cheapest and the safest glory in the market. Hence, their numbers; and, from number and clamor, what impression they have made on the world.

Such, I am persuaded, is the light in which the abolitionists will be viewed by the posterity their history may reach. Unless, indeed—which God forbid—circumstances should so favor as to enable them to produce a convulsion which may elevate them higher on the "bad eminence" where they have placed themselves.

I have the honor to be Your obedient servant, J. H. HAMMOND.

THOMAS CLARKSON, Esq.

NOTE.—The foregoing Letters were not originally intended for publication. In preparing them for the press, they have been revised. The alterations and corrections made, however, have been mostly verbal. Had the writer felt at liberty to condense the two letters into one, and bring up the history of abolition to the period of publication, he might have presented a more concise and perfect argument, and illustrated his views more forcibly, by reference to facts recently developed. For example, since writing the first, the letter of Mr. Clarkson, as President of the British Anti-Slavery Society, to Sir Robert Peel, denouncing the whole scheme of "Immigration," has reached him; and after he had forwarded the last, he saw it stated, that Mr. Clarkson had, as late as the first part of April, addressed the Earl of Aberdeen, and declared, that all efforts to suppress the African slave trade had fully failed. It may be confidently expected, that it will be ere long announced from the same quarter, that the "experiment" of West India emancipation has also proved a complete abortion.

Should the terms which have been applied to the abolitionists appear to any as unduly severe, let it be remembered, that the direct aim of these people is to destroy us by the most shocking of all processes; and that, having a large portion of the civilized world for their audience, they daily and systematically heap upon us the vilest calumnies and most unmitigated abuse. Clergymen lay aside their Bibles, and females unsex themselves, to carry on this horrid warfare against slave holders.

FOOTNOTE:

[256] On these points, let me recommend you to consult a very able Essay on the Slave Trade and Right of Search, by M. Jollivet, recently published; and as you say, since writing your Circular Letter, that you "burn to try your hand on another little Essay, if a subject could be found," I propose to you to "try" to answer this question, put by M. Jollivet to England: "Pourquoi sa philanthropie n'a pas daigne, jusqu' a present, doubler le cap de Bonne-Esperance?"



SLAVERY

IN THE LIGHT OF ETHNOLOGY.

BY

S. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.

OF LOUISIANA.



SLAVERY

IN

THE LIGHT OF ETHNOLOGY.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEGRO CONSTITUTION, ELICITED BY QUESTIONS PROPOUNDED BY DR. C. R. HALL, OF TORQUAY, ENGLAND, THROUGH PROF. JACKSON, OF MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL COLLEGE, BOSTON, TO SAML. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D., NEW ORLEANS.

[Reprinted from the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal.]

To PROF. JACKSON, Boston:—

Dear Sir:—The paper of mine, alluded to by your London correspondent, Dr. Hall, which he saw in the medical work you mention, is not, as he supposes, "The Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race," the physicians of Louisiana, in convention assembled, appointed me to make; but only some additional observations intended for students and those persons whose want of knowledge of Comparative Anatomy prevented them from understanding the Report. The Appendix, intended for students, was published in the Charleston (South Carolina) Medical Journal, and also in the work you mention, under the caption of the original Report to the Medical Convention, and the Report itself was omitted by the editors of those works under the erroneous impression, that the Appendix for students contained the substance of that paper; whereas it does so only in the sense that the four first rules contain the substance of the arithmetic. No wonder your intelligent correspondent should not find, in the Appendix of the Report, the information he was seeking, and hence the questions he asks you to refer to me for solution. I herewith beg leave to send you a copy of the "Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race," which the Louisiana physicians appointed me to make to the State Medical Society. In that paper your correspondent will find most of the questions he asks already answered.

I thank you for the opportunity thus afforded me of supplying an omission in the Southern works above alluded to, of a paper, very imperfect and defective, it is true, yet embodying in a small space the results of the experience and observation of a Southern practitioner, extending through a period of active service of a third of a century's duration, and which had the honor to meet with the approbation of the physicians generally of the South. To the few questions not answered therein I propose to reply, and at the same time to extend my remarks on that branch of the subject more directly connected with the particular object of your correspondent's investigations.

To the question, "Is not Phthisis very common among the slaves of the slave States and unknown among the native Africans at home?" I reply in the negative, that Phthisis, so far from being common among the slaves of the slave States, is very seldom met with. As to the native Africans at home, little or nothing is known of their diseases. They have no science or literature among them, and never had. The word Consumption, is applied to two very different diseases among negroes. The Cachexia Africana, Dirt-eating of the English, and Mal d'Estomac of the French, commonly called Negro Consumption, is a very different malady from Phthisis Pulmonalis, properly so called. The Cachexia Africana, like other spanoemic states of the system, may run into Phthisis, or become complicated with it. Dr. Hall asks, in what does the peculiarity of Negro Consumption consist? It consists in being an anoematosis and not a tuberculosis. Not having seen my Report, he may have inferred that it was a tubercular disease—whereas it is an erythism of mind connected with spanoemia. Negroes, however, are sometimes, though rarely, afflicted with tubercula pulmonum, or Phthisis, properly so called, which has some peculiarities. With them it is more palpably a secondary disease than it appears to be among white people. European physicians are just beginning to see and acknowledge the truth taught by our Rush in the last century, that what is called Phthisis Pulmonalis is not a primary, but a secondary disease; the tubercles of the lungs not being a cause, but an effect of the primary or original vice of blood origin, or as he called it, general debility. For half a century the attention of the medical profession has been directed to the special and ultimate results of Phthisis, instead of the primary condition of the system causing the formation of tubercles. The new knowledge, derived from the stethoscope, by detecting those abnormal deposits of abortive nutrition, called tubercles, has been received for more than its worth, and has greatly served to keep up the delusion of treating effects instead of causes. The tubercular deposits, revealed by auscultation, are not only the effects of abortive nutrition, but the latter is itself the effect of some derangement in the digestive and respiratory functions, vitiating the nutritive fluids, and producing what Rush called general debility. The defect in the respiratory organs arises from the fact, long overlooked, that in a great many persons, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, the lungs are inadequate to the task of depurating the superabundant blood, which is thrown upon them at the age of maturity, unless aided by an occasional blood-letting, active and abundant exercise of the muscles in the open air, and a nutritious diet, as advised by the American Hippocrates, Benjamin Rush. White children sometimes have Phthisis, but here, as everywhere, it is a rare complaint before maturity (twenty-one in the male and eighteen in the female.) The lymphatic and nervous temperament predominating until then, secures them against this fell destroyer of the master race of men. Phthisis is, par excellence, a disease of the sanguineous temperament, fair complexion, red or flaxen hair, blue eyes, large blood vessels, and a bony encasement too small to admit the full and free expansion of the lungs, enlarged by the superabundant blood, which is determined to those organs during that first half-score of years immediately succeeding puberty. Well-formed chests offer no impediment to its inroads, if the volume of blood be out of proportion to the expansibility and capacity of the pulmonary organs. Hence it is most apt to occur precisely at, and immediately following, that period of life known as matureness, when the sanguineous system becomes fully developed and gains the mastery, so to speak, over the lymphatic and nervous systems. With negroes, the sanguineous never gains the mastery over the lymphatic and nervous systems. Their digestive powers, like children, are strong, and their secretions and excretions copious, excepting the urine, which is rather scant. At the age of maturity they do not become dyspeptic and feeble with softening and attenuation of the muscles, as among those white people suffering the ills of a defective system of physical education, and a want of a wholesome, nutritious diet.