you may ruin the planter. Secondly, that you may free--without
benefiting--the slave. Thirdly, that each State, as it becomes free,
tends to give additional value to the property of those States which
choose to hold on to slavery; and all these results may occur despite
the wisdom (?) of senators, and an indemnity of 20,000,000l.

Surely, then, the Southern planter may well assert that he sees not
sufficient inducement to follow our hasty wholesale example. But while
such convictions are forced upon him, he will be a degenerate son of
energetic sires, if he be so scared at our ill-success as to fear to
look for some better path to the same noble object; and there is one
most important consideration which should impel him, while avoiding all
rash haste, to brook no dangerous delay; that consideration is, that the
difficulty of dealing with the question is increasing with fearful
rapidity, for the slave population has nearly quadrupled itself since
the beginning of the century. The capital involved is, we have seen,
gigantic; but the question of numbers is by far the most perplexing to
deal with, in a social point of view. The white population of the Slave
States is, in rough numbers, 6,000,000; the slave population is more
than 3,000,000, and the free blacks 250,000. Does any sane man believe
that, if slavery had existed in Great Britain, and that the slaves had
constituted one-third of the population, we should have attempted to
remove the black bar from our escutcheon, by the same rapid and summary
process which we adopted to free the negro in our colonies?

An American writer on Slavery has said, and I think most justly, "that
two distinct races of people, nearly equal in numbers, and unlike in
colour, manners, habits, feelings and state of civilization to such a
degree that amalgamation is impossible, cannot dwell together in the
same community unless the one be in subjection to the other." So fully
am I convinced of the truth of this statement, and so certain am I that
every one who has been in a Slave State must be satisfied of the truth
of it, that I feel sure, if the South freed every slave to-morrow, not a
week would elapse before each State in the Union without exception would
pass stringent laws to prevent them settling within their borders; even
at this moment such a law exists in some States.

With all these difficulties constantly before them, who can wonder that
a kind-hearted planter, while gazing on the