which such a measure would give to society. All dread of insurrection would vanish, and one half of the population, who are now regarded as implacable foes, would be converted into useful friends.

But it is objected, that the emancipated blacks will form a bad population. One would think, from this objection, that the slaves now form a good population, and that they are to be rendered ignorant and immoral by freedom. Unquestionably, the liberated slaves, like all other vicious and degraded people, will, while such, form a bad population; but if they are such while in bondage, and must ever remain such until liberated, then emancipation is the only process by which a bad, can be converted into a good population. As soon as they are free, they will be accessible to education and religious instruction, and all those various motives which operate as a wholesome restraint on the evil passions of our nature. It would be most unjust to estimate the future character of the emancipated slaves, supposing slavery to be immediately abolished, by the present character of the free negroes. These last, in the slave States, are a hated and persecuted race. They are kept not only in ignorance, but in idleness. The planters will not employ them, for fear they will contaminate the slaves; and the whole legislation of the Southern States, towards this people, is to degrade and brutify them. But these wicked efforts are the results of slavery, and would cease with it. Were slavery abolished, then it would be the obvious interest of the South to improve the black population, and the causes which necessarily render the free blacks vicious, would no longer operate. The same remark applies, although with less force, to the free blacks of the North. Colonization and slavery have both had their influence in keeping alive, and aggravating the prejudices against color, and these prejudices have led to that system of persecution and oppression to which the free blacks here are subjected.

And now what injury or loss would the planter sustain, by the emancipation of his slaves? As a trader in human flesh, nis vocation would, indeed, be gone, but as the cultivator of the soil, his profits would be undiminished. The number of laborers would be as great as before; and they would still be dependent on labor for their support. They now cost their owner their food and clothing, and their maintenance in sickness, in

youth, and in old age; the expense also of the idle and worthless, is as great as that of the good. Their cost as free laborers would be but little more than at present, while their characters would be improved, and the employer could select such laborers as his occasions required. The laborers, finding their wages, and of course their comforts depending on their good conduct, would be prompted to industry and sobriety; and having nothing to gain by insurrection, and feeling no injuries to avenge, all malignant designs against their employers would be laid aside, and they would soon make such advances in intelligence and morality, as would contribute no less to the good order and peace of society, than to their own happiness.

Abolitionists are constantly called on for a plan of emancipation. They have little encouragement to respond to the call. If they propose the simple plan of proclaiming by act of the State Legislatures, the immediate and unqualified abolition of slavery, they are denounced as reckless incendiaries. If they intimate, that abolition does not necessarily inhibit all compulsory labor, and point to the rural code of St. Domingo and the apprentice system of the West Indies, they are reproached with wishing to substitute one kind of slavery for another. But, in truth, they are under no obligation of duty or policy to propose any specific plan. No Temperance Society has felt itself bound because it pronounced the traffic in ardent spirits to be sinful, to furnish venders with plans for employing their capi tals in other occupations.

The details of emancipation, and the various legal provisions proper to render it safe and convenient, are not prescribed by the great principles of justice and religion, but by considerations of local policy. It is not probable, that if all the Southern Legislatures were sincerely anxious to abolish slavery, any two of them would do it in precisely the same manner, and under the same regulations. We have seen one plan pursued in St. Domingo, another in Bermuda and Antigua, a third in the other British West-Indies, and still different plans in South America.

Of all these plans, that adopted in Mexico, Bermuda and Antigua, of immediate, total and unqualified emancipation, will, there is reason to believe, be found in all cases the most safe and expedient.

This plan removes from the slave all cause for discontent. He is free, and his own master, and he can ask for no more. Yet he is, in fact, for a time, absolutely dependent on his late owner. He can look to no other person for food to eat, clothes to put on, or house to shelter him. His first wish therefore is, to remain where he is, and he receives as a favor, permission to labor in the service of him whom the day before he regarded as his oppressor. But labor is no longer the badge of his servitude, and the consummation of his misery: it is the evidence of his liberty, for it is voluntary. For the first time in his life, he is a party to a contract. He negotiates with his late master, and returns to the scene of his former toil, and the scene of his stripes and his tears, with a joyful heart, to labor for HIMSELF. The wages he has agreed to accept, will, in fact, be little more than the value of his maintenance; for it is not to be expected, that in a treaty with his employer, his diplomacy will gain for him any signal advantages; but still there will be a charm in the very name of wages which will make the pittance he receives, appear a treasure in his eyes. Thus will the transition from slave to free labor be effected instantaneously, and with scarcely any perceptible interruption of the ordinary pursuits of life. In the course of time, the value of negro labor, like all other vendible commodities, will be regulated by the supply and demand: and justice be done both to the planter and his laborers. The very consciousness, moreover, that justice is done to both parties, will remove their mutual suspicions and animosities, and substitute in their place feelings of kindness and confidence. No white man in Antigua, surrounded as he is by blacks, now dreams of insurrec tion, or fears the midnight assassin. Can as much be said of our Southern planters ?

In concluding this chapter, we beg leave to address the fol lowing questions to the reader, and we beseech him seriously to inquire, what duties are prompted by the answers which his conscience and understanding may compel him to return.

Do you believe it to be agreeable to the will of God, and the welfare of our country, that slavery should be perpetual? Is it either possible or probable, that slavery can or will be removed by colonization Î

If slavery be not abolished by law, is it not probable, that it will, in time, be terminated by violence?

Do the precepts of christianity, and the lessons of history, recommend gradual in preference to immediate emancipation?

CHAPTER XI.

DANGER OF CONTINUED SLAVERY.

WHILE slave holders and Colonizationists delight to expatiate on the danger of immediate emancipation, and to represent its advocates as reckless incendiaries, ready to deluge the country in blood, they seem scarcely conscious that any danger is to be apprehended from slavery itself. Yet the whole history of slavery is a history of the struggles of the oppressed to recover their liberty. The Romans had their servile wars, in one of which forty thousand slaves were embodied in arms-Italy ravaged, and Rome herself menanced.

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A European writer remarks: The formidable rebellion of the Jamaica slaves, in 1762, is well known; and in almost every island in the Archipelago, have repeated insurrections broken out; sometimes the result of plans laid with the utmost secrecy, and very widely extended, always accompanied by the horrors of African warfare."

The destruction of property in Jamaica, in the insurrection of 1832, was estimated by the Legislature at £1,154,583. Any commotion of the emancipated slaves, that should cost the island one-hundredth part of this sum, would be hailed both there and here, as demonstrative of the folly and hazard of emancipation.

And have we not in our own country, had melancholy, heartrending proofs of the danger of slavery?

In 1712, and 1741, negro insurrections occurred in NewYork, and we may judge of the alarm they excited, by the shocking means used to prevent their recurrence. Of the leaders of the last insurrection, thirteen were burned alive, eighteen hung, and eighty transported. In the single State of SouthCarolina, there have been no less than seven insurrections designed or executed. In 1711, the House of Assembly complained of certain fugitive slaves, who "keep out armed, and

robbing and plundering houses and plantations, and putting the inhabitants of this province in great fear and terror." In 1730, an open rebellion occurred, in which the negroes were actually armed and embodied. In 1739, there were no less than three rebellions, as appears from a petition from the Council and Assembly to the king, in which they complain of an "insurrection of our slaves, in which many of the inhabitants were murdered in a barbarous and cruel manner; and that was no sooner quelled, than another projected in Charleston, and a third lately in the very heart of the settlements, but happily discovered time enough to be prevented." In 1816, there was a conspiracy of the slaves in Camden and its vicinity, "the professed design of which was to murder all the whites and free themselves." The conspiracy in Charleston in 1822, and the sacrifice of human life to which it led, are well known. But in no instance, has the danger of slavery been so vividly illustrated, as in the tragedy of Southampton.

A fanatic slave conceived, from some supposed signs in the heavens, or peculiarity in the weather, that he was called by God to destroy the whites. He communicated his commission to five other slaves, who engaged to aid him in executing it.

The conspirators agreed to meet at a certain place, on the night of the 21st August, 1831. They assembled at the appointed hour, and the leader, Nat Turner, beheld with surprise a sixth man, who had not been invited by him to join the enterprise, but who had learned from another source, the cause of the meeting; and on inquiring for what purpose he had come, received the remarkable answer: 'My life is worth no more than that of others, and my liberty as dear to me." With these six associates, Turner commenced the work of destruction. By sunrise, the number of murderers was swelled to fourteen, and by ten o'clock the same morning, to forty!

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From the testimony given on the trial of Turner, and which has been published, it appears, that there was no previous concert, except between Turner and his six original associates, and that no white or free colored man was privy to their design

The dates we have given of the various insurrections, prove conclusively, that they were in no degree connected with discussions respecting Abolition; and at the time of the Southampton massacre, there was no Anti-Slavery Society in the United States advocating inmediate emancipation.