nation. In all my wanderings and wretchedness, I have found them uniformly kind and compassionate; and I can truly say, as my predecessor, Mr. Ledyard, has eloquently said before me, To a Negro woman I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship without receiving a decent and friendly answer. If I was hungry and thirsty, wet or sick, they did not hesitate, like the men, to perform a generous action. In so free and kind a manner did they contribute to my relief, that if I was dry, I drank the sweetest draught, and if hungry, I eat the coarsest morsel, with a double relish."

These are the people whose progressive improvement will, I hope, ere long, vindicate the prophetic strain of one of our most beautiful and devotional poets:

-But his mother's eye

That gazes on him from her warmest sky,
Sees in his flexile limbs untutored grace,
Power on his forehead, beauty in his face;
Sees in his breast where lawless passions rove,
The heart of frendship, and the home of love;
Sees in his mind, where desolation reigns,
Fierce as his clime, uncultured as his plains,
A soil where virtue's fairest flowers might shoot,
And trees of science bend with glorious fruit;
Sees in his soul, involved in thickest night,
An emanation of eternal light,

Ordained midst sinking worlds his dust to fire,
And shine for ever when the stars expire.

But I must lay down my pen for the present: though I have much more to say on the subject, and shall resume it before I leave this place.-I am, &c.

LETTER XV.

Natchez, Stute of Mississippi.

I Now resume the afflicting subject on which I was addressing you. An extensive Slave-trade is carried on between these regions and those western parts of the States of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, in which they find it more profitable to breed slaves for the market, than to raise the appropriate produce of the soil. I have already mentioned the numerous gangs which I continually fell in with in my route from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico; and I have understood that from Maryland and Virginia alone, from 4000 to 5000 per annum are occasionally sent down to New-Orleans; a place, the very name of which seems to strike terror into the slaves and free Negroes of the Middle States. I was asked by a very intelligent free Black servant at the house where I lodged in Philadelphia, to tell him really whether the free Negroes whom the Colonization Society were professing to send to Africa, were not actually sent to New-Orleans; as it was said, that as soon as the vessel was out of sight of land, she steered her course thither; that he knew there were friends to the Negroes in the Society, who would not agree to deceive and sell them, but he thought they might be deceived themselves, and that nothing but this apprehension had prevented him from offering to go to Africa, as he much liked the plan.

Instances are not rare of Slaves destroying them

selves, by cutting their throats, or other violent measures, to avoid being sent to Georgia or NewOrleans. An instance is on record of a poor Black woman, in the winter of 1815, torn from her husband, and destined for transportation to Georgia, throwing herself at daybreak from the third story of a tavern in Washington; and slaves are marched in open day in manacles, on their melancholy journey southward, past the very walls of the Capitol, where the Senate of this free Republic conduct their deliberations. Indeed, this trade between the Middle and Southern States has given rise to the horrible practice of kidnapping free black men, and has introduced into the heart of a country pre-eminently proud of her free institutions, a sort of tegria, or man-stealing, which one had hoped was confined to the deserts of Africa. It is stated by Mr. Torrey, an American physician, in a work which he has published, called “American Slave Trade,” that under the existing laws, if a "Free Coloured man travels without passports certifying his right to his liberty, he is generally apprehended, and frequently plunged (with his progeny) into slavery by the operation of the laws." He observes; "The preceding facts clearly exemplify the safety with which the free-born (Black) inhabitants of the United States may be offered for sale, and sold, even in the metropolis of liberty, as oxen, even to those who are notified of the fact, and are perhaps convinced that they are free."

But why do I enter into these sad details? Is it to reproach America with a stain with which our own immaculate country is unsullied? I have not

so forgotten the nature of our own colonial bondage, nor the melancholy fact that Britons first introduced slavery on these western shores.

Is it, then, to place her capital in humiliating contrast with the metropolis of my native land? I can see no distinction in principle between selling a gang of Negroes in the city of Washington, and executing in the city of London a bill of sale of a similar gang in our own West India islands.

Is it then to stigmatize slave-holders in general, as lax in their moral principles, savage in their dispositions, and dead to every feeling of justice and humanity? Nothing is farther from my intention than to insinuate an imputation so belied by facts. Among those who have the misfortune to be slave-holders, I can number some of the most enlightened and benevolent individuals it has ever been my lot to know. And were it otherwise, can I forget that General Washington was a Virginian slave-holder?

Why, then, do I enter into these sad details? why but to disclose to you the innate deformity of slavery itself, the evils inherent in its very nature; to exhibit to your view the dark aspect which it assumes, and the horrid atrocities which it gives birth to, even under a government pre-eminently free; in the bosom of a young and enlightened people, and in the broad daylight and sunshine of benign and liberal institutions. And is this a system which England and America, pre-eminent among the nations, can justify and uphold? Is this a system which they are willing to perpetuate? Is this a system which in our day and generation, a

day and generation of Bible Societies and Missionary Societies, we can be content to hand down to posterity without one note of reprobation, one evidence of contrition, one step towards its ultimate, even though remote, extinction? Do we glory in having abolished our Slave-trade, and shall we smile with complacency on slavery itself? Shall we, the younger sons of our highly favoured island, glorious in arts and arms, resplendent with literature and science, but yet more resplendent with the flame of philanthropy, and most of all with the bright light of Christianity,-shall we deem it sufficient to glow with admiration of the labours of our illustrious compatriots, instead of stretching forward to catch their mantle, imbibe their spirit, and humbly, but resolutely, follow up their work?

If to reduce the African to slavery was a violation of his natural rights, to hold him in bondage one moment longer than is necessary to prepare him for freedom, is to perpetuate and participate in the injustice. And what though the sacrifice should be a costly one, and the task of emancipation perplexing and difficult? no sacrifice is so costly as the sacrifice of justice and humanity; no expectation more unfounded and puerile than that of returning without pain and effort from the dark and devious labyrinths of er

ror.

"Facilis descensus Averni ;

Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus; hic labor est.

But even if principle did not require the sacrifice, an enlightened view of self-interest would suggest it. If the Gordian knot be not untied, it will be