tle-field, and by the widowhood and orphanage that have followed the
train of rebellion. This population is a natural element of national
strength, having the same incentives as its brotherhood in the North.
Arms will soon remove the blockade to its intercourse with the North,
and civil liberty once established, will most likely secure it to the
side of national patriotism.

There is a question of equal magnitude respecting the colored
population, not only of the South, but of the whole country. It is
involved in the inquiry: Can the colored population be converted into an
element of national strength? Physiologically and mentally, the native
negro race stands as the middle-man in the five races--the Caucasian and
Malay being above, and the American aborigines and the Alforian below.
The mixture of blood with the Caucasian in America, places the negro
element of the United States at least upon a level with the Malay race
in natural powers, and from association, much the superior in practical
intelligence. Notwithstanding the crushing laws designed by slaveholders
to perpetuate the ignorance and helplessness of the negro, he _would_
improve. Notwithstanding the brutal and studied policy of slaveholders
to slander and disparage the negro capacity for improvement, all the
arts of lying hypocrisy have occasionally been set at naught by some
convincing exhibition of truth, springing from a fair experiment on the
colored man's susceptibilities. The white man's dishonoring inclination
to strike the helpless--made helpless by brutal laws--has occasionally
recoiled in an exposure of the atrocious practice. The late attempt to
introduce a bill into the South-Carolina Legislature, providing for the
sale of the free negroes of the State into slavery, led to a disclosure
worthy of contemplation. The Committee to whom the bill was referred
stated that--

'Apart from the consideration that many of the class were good
citizens, patterns of industry, sobriety, and irreproachable
conduct, there were difficulties of a practical character in the
way of those who advocated the bill. The free colored population of
Charleston alone pay taxes on $1,561,870 worth of property; and the
aggregate taxes reach $27,209.18. What will become of the one and a
half millions of property which belongs to them in Charleston
alone, to say nothing of their property elsewhere in the State? Can
it enter into the min