change of constitution (bodily and mental), be it for health or
disease. There are positive physical defects which produce positive mental
ones; the diseases of the muscular and nervous systems descend from father
to son. Upon the agency of one corporal power how much that is not
corporal depends; from generation to generation internal disease and
external deformity, vices, virtues, talents, and deficiencies are
transmitted, and by the action of the same law it must be long indeed
before the offspring of slaves--creatures begotten of a race debased and
degraded to the lowest degree, themselves born in slavery, and whose
progenitors have eaten the bread and drawn the breath of slavery for
years--can be measured, with any show of justice, by even the least
favoured descendants of European nations, whose qualities have been for
centuries developing themselves under the beneficent influence of freedom,
and the progress it inspires.

I am rather surprised at the outbreak of violent disgust which Mr. ----
indulges in on the subject of amalgamation; as that formed no part of
our discussion, and seems to me a curious subject for abstract argument. I
should think the intermarrying between blacks and whites a matter to be as
little insisted upon if repugnant, as prevented if agreeable to the
majority of the two races. At the same time, I cannot help being
astonished at the furious and ungoverned execration which all reference to
the possibility of a fusion of the races draws down upon those who suggest
it; because nobody pretends to deny that, throughout the South, a large
proportion of the population is the offspring of white men and coloured
women. In New Orleans, a class of unhappy females exists whose mingled
blood does not prevent their being remarkable for their beauty, and with
whom no man, no _gentleman_, in that city shrinks from associating; and
while the slaveowners of the Southern States insist vehemently upon the
mental and physical inferiority of the blacks, they are benevolently doing
their best, in one way at least, to raise and improve the degraded race,
and the bastard population which forms so ominous an element in the social
safety of their cities certainly exhibit in their forms and features the
benefit they derive from their white progenitors. It is hard to conceive
that some mental improvement does not accompany this physical change.
Already the finer forms of the European races are cast in these dusky
moul