Litany, and exclaim, 'Good Lord, deliver us.' They would think no more of robbery and murder than of eating their dinner; and a paymaster with a chest of money was a chance not to be neglected.

"I took the seat alongside the driver, with a revolver in my hand, put my clerk behind to protect the rear, made a mental promise to shoot the first man that touched the horses' heads, and told the driver to make time.'

"How I watched as we went up that hill! Every stump of a tree was a man crouching by the road; every cricket that chirruped was the cocking of a musket; every bush that rustled was a person moving in the undergrowth. Twice we met a couple of soldiers going to camp, and each time I expected to see the horses' heads seized, and was surprised when they passed by as a matter of course.

"Didn't I feel relieved when we came out of that dark, uncertain road on to the turnpike? and wasn't a load lifted off my breast when I answered the challenge of the sentry at the head of the Chain Bridge, showed my pass, crossed the bridge, and felt the ambulance rattling along at a fast trot over the river road to Georgetown? I slept well that night. And so ended my first trip as a paymaster."

XXII.

The Immolation and Redemption of the African Race.

NATIONS pay dear for Liberty. Civilization--the sole object of free government-crystallizes slow. But, once firmly established, it resists the untiring "course of all-impairing Time."

The true civilization, in perfection, is yet to come. The world has been filled with false civilizations; and history shows that they have not vitality enough to preserve nations from decadence.

It has been just as plainly proved that where slavery existed it either destroyed civilization or was destroyed by it. The two never could live together. China and Japan are the only two ancient Asiatic nations that have preserved their early civilization, or even their existence. Slavery never existed among them.

So in Europe: slavery destroyed every European nation that maintained it. Greece, Rome, the empire of the Othman,where are they? But slavery never existed among the Magyars or Slavonic nations; nor have they ever been subjugated, much less destroyed. Hungary is a vast and illuminated nation, and is advancing in civilization; while Russia has removed the last encumbrance to her progress by emancipating twenty million serfs, and is now moving on to complete civilization faster than any other people. The Swiss never breathed the tainted air of slavery; her people have always been free, and in civilization they have lagged behind those of no other country.

At an early period England and France abolished villan

age, and followed in the wake of Italy, which was the first of the nations to give revival to letters, commerce, and arts.

So we find that just in proportion as nations emancipated themselves from the thraldom of a system of forced or involuntary labor, just in that proportion they advanced in knowledge, wealth, and the elements of endurance. A careful survey of truthful history would establish this as a fixed and clearly-determined law for the physical and moral progress and development. of states. Nations may grow strong, or rather formidable, for a while, under the sceptre of a tyrant and the slave-lash of an oligarchy. But such strength is weakness: it does not last. It is against all the ordinances of God that it should.

This is pre-eminently true in our age, when daylight is dawning upon all peoples. Darkness has lost its power. Universal light is now asserting its dominion. No power can contend against it. Darkness must give way.

So far as my argument on the subject of slavery in the United States or elsewhere is concerned, it matters not whether the reader accept or not the code of revealed religion which I offer as authority; for profane history coincides with it perfectly. There is no sort of conflict between the two. The plagues that wasted the vitals of dead nations are just as legibly inscribed on their tombs, for their readers, as they were on the pages of prophecy before the events took place. God alone writes history before it happens. Both records are so clear that he who runs may read; and the wise and good man who reads either will run to rescue his country from the curse which God has chained to the chariot-wheels even of the mightiest empires which dare to make war on the eternal principles of justice which support his empire.

Go where we will, from the Pillars of Hercules to the gates of the Oriental morning,—

"Rude fragments now

Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood.
Their palaces are dust."

Journey through the home of the Saracens,-a race of scholars and warriors,

Let us calculate the debt which America owes to Africa. We can reach something like an approximation to the number of Africans or Africano-Americans who have lived and died on our soil. We do not propose to enumerate any considerable portion of the wrongs we have inflicted on that people,-how many we stole from their homes,-how many perished in the passage, how many cruelties and indignities they and their descendants have suffered, and are suffering to this hour. That were a work for which any created being would find himself unequal. It will be found to occupy no inconsiderable space in the records of the last tribunal before which the human race will be cited to appear.

We will therefore determine, as accurately as we can, how many lives Africa has offered up for this nation. But first let us glance at the origin of slavery in the United States. We borrow a striking passage from the classic and powerful pen of Senator Sumner, who has probably investigated the whole African question, in all its relations, more profoundly than any other man living, certainly more so than any other American. In one of his orations he draws the following picturesque and startling contrast:

"In the winter of 1620, the Mayflower landed its precious cargo at Plymouth Rock. This small band, cheered by the

valedictory prayers of the Puritan pastor, John Robinson, braved sea and wilderness for the sake of liberty. In this inspiration our Commonwealth began. That same year another cargo, of another character, was landed at Jamestown, in Virginia. It was nineteen slaves, the first that ever touched and darkened our soil. Never in history was greater contrast. There was the Mayflower, filled with men,-intelligent, conscientious, prayerful,-all braced to hardy industry, who, before landing, united in a written compact by which they constituted themselves a 'civil body politic,' bound 'to frame just and equal laws.' And there was the slave-ship, with its fetters, its chains, its bludgeons, and its whips, with its wretched victims,-forerunners of the long agony of the slave-trade, and with its wretched tyrants, rude, ignorant, and profane,

and who carried in their hold the barbarous slavery whose single object is to compel labor without wages, which no just and equal laws can sanction.

"Thus in the same year began two mighty influences; and these two influences still prevail far and wide throughout the country. But they have met at last in final grapple; and you and I are partakers in this holy conflict. The question is simply between the Mayflower and the slave-ship."

Beginning with the first importation of Africans in 1620 (nineteen), we find their increase till 1790, slave and free, amounting to 757,363. From 1790 (first census) to 1860 (eighth census), slave and free, 4,441,730. It is and will always remain impossible to determine the number of the African race whose ashes sleep in our soil; but, applying the ratio of increase from 1790 to 1860 to the period undetermined, it is easy to approximate the number. My most careful estimate renders it certain that the number of persons of