has grown with our growth, and strengthened with our
strength, until it is now incorporated with every fibre of our social
and political existence. What you say concerning its evils _may_ be true
or false, but we clearly see that your remedy involves a vastly greater
evil, to the slave, to the master, to our common country, and to the
world. We understand the nature of the negro race; and in the relation
in which the providence of God has placed them to us, they are happy and
useful members of society, and are fast rising in the scale of
intelligence and civilization, and the time may come when they will be
capable of enjoying the blessings of freedom and self-government. We are
instructing them in the principles of our common Christianity, and in
many instances have already taught them to read the word of life. But we
know that the time has not yet come; that this liberty which is a
blessing to _us_, would be a curse to _them_. Besides, to us and to you,
such a violent disruption would be most disastrous, it would topple to
its foundations the whole social and political edifice. Moreover, we
have had warning on this subject. God, in his providence, has permitted
the emancipation of the African race in a few of the islands contiguous
to our shores, and far from being elevated thereby to the condition of
Christian freemen, they have rapidly retrograded to the state of pagan
savages. The value of property in those islands has rapidly depreciated,
their production has vastly diminished, and their commerce and
usefulness to the world is destroyed. We wish not to subject either
ourselves or our dependents to such a fate. God has placed them in our
hands, and he holds us responsible for our course of policy towards
them.

This courteous, common-sense, and practical reply, far from closing the
mouths of the agitators, only encouraged them to redouble their
exertions, and to imbitter the epithets which they hurled at the
slave-holders. They exhausted the vocabulary of billingsgate in
denouncing those guilty of this most henious of all sins, and charged
them in plain terms, with being _afraid_ to investigate or to discuss
the subject. Thus goaded into it, many commenced the investigation. Then
for the first time did the Southern people take a position on this
subject. It is due to a citizen of this State, the Rev. J. Smylie, to
say that he was the first to promulgate the truth, as deduced from the
Bible, on the subject of slave