thstanding the
curse of slavery, which, like a poisonous upas, taints the very air they
breathe with the murdered remains of its victims, the white citizens of
the south are extremely sensitive of their civil and political rights,
and seem to regard the palladium of independence secured by their
progenitors as an especial benefit conferred by the Deity for their good
in particular. Actuated by this mock patriotism (for it is nothing
less), the citizens of the south omit no opportunity of demonstrating
the blessings they so undeservedly inherit, and which, if I am not
mistaken, will, ere many years elapse, be wrested from them, amidst the
terrible thunders of an oppressed and patient people, whose powers of
endurance are indeed surprising.

Leaving the square, I passed up King-street, at the top of which was my
intended boarding-house. The shops in this fashionable resort are fitted
out in good style, and the goods are of the best description. After
sunset the streets are often lined with carriages. The city lies flat,
like the surrounding country, and, owing to this, is insalubrious;
stagnant water collects in the cellars of the houses, and engenders a
poisonous vapour, which is a fertile source of those destructive
epidemics, that, combined with other causes, are annually decimating the
white population of the south of the American continent in all parts.

At the top of King-street, facing you as you advance, is a large
Protestant episcopal church. I went there to worship on the following
Sunday, but was obliged to leave the building, there being, it was
stated by the apparitor, no accommodation for strangers, a piece of
illiberality that I considered very much in keeping with the
slave-holding opinions of the worshippers who attend it. This want of
politeness I was not, however, surprised at, for it is notorious, as has
been before observed by an able writer, that, excepting the Church of
Rome, "the members of the unestablished Church of England--the
Protestant Episcopalian, are the most bigotted, sectarian, and
illiberal, in the United States of America. Being fully persuaded," to
follow the same writer, "that prelatical ordination and the three orders
are indispensable to their profession, they are, like too many of their
fellow professors in the mother country, deeply dyed with Laudean
principles, or that love of formula in religion and grasping for power
which has so conspicuously shown itself among the Oxford tr