We quote from the same paper of the 21st August: "The third week of freedom will close with this day, and again we are bound to express our gratitude and praise to the Divine goodness, for the perfect peace and tranquillity, which the island enjoys. Not the least symptom of insubordination has manifested itself any where; and the daily accounts from all quarters testify to the excellent disposition and conduct of the new freemen.

In a letter from Antigua, dated 30th August, and published in a Norfolk paper, we find the following:

"The operations of commerce have experienced no inter ruption; public confidence remains unshaken. Two sugar plantations have recently leased for as much as they were worth with the negroes included, prior to emancipation."

While the Jamaica papers are filled with complaints of the conduct of the apprentices, and predictions of the ruin of the island, one of them (10th September) says: "In Antigua, all appears to be peaceable and quiet. Its rulers evinced more wisdom, and proved themselves to be better tacticians, than those of any other colonies, Bermuda excepted. In getting rid of the apprenticeship they got rid of the source, and only source of heart-burning between them and their laborers; and we maintain, as a free colony, will soon experience advantages not to be enjoyed by others, so long at least as the humbug continues."

About eight months have now elapsed since the thirty thousand slaves of Antigua were suddenly "let loose," and, as yet, we have not heard of a single outrage committed by them. It had been customary in this island, as an additional security against insurrection, to proclaim martial law at the Christmas holy-days, during which times the slaves had peculiar opportunities for forming conspiracies. The great act of justice accomplished on the first of August, relieved the planters of all apprehension of insurrection; and not only was the usual proclamation withheld at the last Christmas, but the militia was exempted from duty. In a late speech, by the Speaker of the Antigua House of Assembly, he adverted to the "universal tranquillity" that prevailed, and to the "respectful demeanor of the lower classes" and declared, that "the agricultural and commercial prosperity of the colony was absolutely on the ADVANCE."

CHAPTER X.

GRADUAL AND IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION.

If we have been successful in our endeavors to prove, that the removal of slavery by colonization is both morally and physically impossible, then it necessarily follows, that the slaves must be emancipated here, or that slavery must be indefinitely

continued.

Should the former alternative be adopted, the important question occurs: ought the emancipation to be gradual or immediate?

If,

If this question is to be determined with reference to moral obligation, it is certainly difficult for those who regard slavery as sinful to justify its continuance even for a limited time. however, the question is to be decided on the ground of mere political expediency, there are many and powerful objections to gradual emancipation; and what may at first view appear paradoxical, the strength of these objections is proportioned to the number of slaves to be emancipated.

In New-York, slavery was for the most part gradually abolished; that is, the children, born after a certain day, became free, as they respectively reached the age of twenty-eight years; and when the whole number of slaves were reduced to ten thousand, they were liberated in a single day. In NewYork, the white population so greatly exceeded the black, that no jealousy was entertained of the free negroes, and no inconvenience experienced in uniting free and slave labor. But in those States, in which nearly all the laborers are slaves, where every free black is regarded as a nuisance and an incendiary and where the planter would, on no consideration, permit him to labor in company with his slaves, much difficulty would necessarily attend a gradual relinquishment of slave labor.

Suppose, in South Carolina for instance, ten thousand slaves should be annually manumitted by law. This would certainly be gradual emancipation, as it would require about forty years to free the whole number. Now, what would become of these ten thousand yearly discharged from the plantations? Would their late masters be willing to hire them, and turn them back into their cotton fields? The supposition is extravagant.

The planter would dread their influence on his remaining slaves, and these would certainly, and with great reason, be dissatisfied at seeing their late companions working for wages, while they themselves were denied any compensation for their toil. But if the ten thousand liberated slaves were not employed, how could they obtain a livelihood, and how could the planters supply their place on the plantations? The idea, that by gradual emancipation, the slaves will become fit for freedom, is visionary in the extreme. How is it possible that the liberation of a portion of the slaves, can qualify those who remain in chains, to become useful citizens? The house of bondage is not the school in which men are to be trained for liberty.

As then gradual emancipation, however desirable, if no other can be obtained, is so full of difficulty, and, in the opinion of slave holders, so dangerous that they have almost universally passed laws to prevent it, the only alternative is immediate emancipation or continued slavery.

It seems scarcely possible, that any conscientious man, after considering the results of immediate emancipation in St. Domingo, and Guadaloupe, in New-York, in Mexico, in South America, and in the West Indies, should join in the popular clamor against it, as necessarily leading to massacre and rapine. No reason can be assigned, why the whites would not possess the same physical power to prevent or suppress outrage after, as before emancipation; but abundant reason may be given, why the blacks, when restored to their rights, and enjoying the protection and privileges of civil society, should be less disposed to destroy their benefactors and deliverers, than they are when smarting under cruelty and injustice, to destroy those whom they regard as their tyrants and oppressors.

Who, with the knowledge, that no white man has ever been murdered in consequence of immediate emancipation, dares to declare in the presence of his Maker, that self-preservation forbids the abolition of slavery?

But we are met with the inquiry, how are the owners to be compensated for the loss of their property? This same objection was inade to the suppression of the African slave trade. British merchants had invested large capitals in the traffic, and it was contended, that to prohibit the trade, was to violate the rights of property. All governments possess the right

suppress practices injurious to Society, and to abate nuisan

ces.

If a particular manufactory is found to be deleterious to the health of a city, it is not only the right, but the duty of the civil authority, to suppress it. If the national interests require an embargo, the measure is adopted, although it virtually wrests from the merchant his property, by depriving him of the use of his own ships.

The State of New-York abolished slavery, without compensating the slave holders. The same has been done in Mexico, and in various instances in South America, and the compensation given by Parliament to the West India proprietors, probably arose from the consideration, that the legislators who enacted the Abolition law, were not themselves personally affected by it; and in order, therefore, to avoid the reproach of indulging their benevolence at the expense of others, granted a pecuniary compensation to the owners of the emancipated slaves.

To contend that the slaves in the Southern States, ought not to be emancipated by law, except on the payment to their masters, of their market value, is to contend that slavery ought to be perpetual. Such a payment is MORALLY IMPOSSIBLE. By whom can it be made? The Federal Government have neither the will nor the constitutional power to make it. But admitting it possessed both, the appropriation of the national funds to this purpose, would not be such a payment, because a very large proportion of those funds would be drawn from the slave holders themselves; and it would be an insulting mockery, to offer to pay them with their own money. To suppose that the free States, would be willing from motives of disinterested benevolence, to make a present to their neighbors of a THOUSAND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS† is obviously absurd: nor is it less absurd to insist that this sum ought to be paid to the masters, by the Legislatures of the slave states;`since the pockets of the masters, are the only sources whence those Legislatures could obtain the money.

"How little to be respected," exclaimed Lord Mulgrave, late governor of Jamaica, "is that rigid regard for the rights of property, which says a man shall do what he likes with his own, when his own is his fellow

man.'

+ Estimating the slaves at an average value of $400, the amount would now nearly equal this sum, and in a few years, far exceed it.

So far as the whole amount of wealth in the community is concerned, it would be enhanced, not diminished by emancipation. This may seem a strange assertion to follow the estimate we have just made of the market value of the slave population. But what is the price paid for a slave? Nothing more than the amount of his wages for life, paid in advance, paid it is true to another, but still paid as an equivalent for la bor to be performed, and to be refunded with interest out of tha labor. Now it is obvious that it is the product of this labor, which can alone add any thing to the aggregate wealth; and that no diminution of that wealth can be caused, by paying for the labor as it is performed, monthly, or yearly, instead of paying for the whole of it in advance.

This argument, it may be said, applies only to the purchase and sale of slaves; but that where a planter is already in possession of them, he would certainly lose a part of his profits, by being compelled to pay him wages, and this loss would be so much deducted by emancipation from the general stock. The fallacy of this opinion may be perceived by recollecting that it can in no degree affect the national wealth, whether the horse with which a farmer tills his corn-field, was reared by himself, or purchased from his neighbor. It is the corn produced, and not the money paid for the animal by one man and received by another, that augments the riches of the country.

If the slaves are worth a thousand millions of dollars, it is evidence that their labor must be worth much more; because, to their price is to be added the cost of their maintenance, and the whole is to be reimbursed with profit out of their labor. Now Colonization, would utterly annihilate all this labor; it calls upon the South to surrender a commodity worth more than a thousand millions; and upon this surrender, which would convert the whole slave region into a wilderness, it rests all its hopes of the ultimate abolition of slavery!!

Emancipation on the contrary, instead of removing millions of laborers, would stimulate their industry, improve their morals, quicken their intelligence, and convert a dangerous, idle, and vicious population into wholesome citizens. Were all the slaves in South Carolina emancipated to-morrow, every branch of industry would derive new energy, and every species of property, an increased value from the additional security