or stimulated by excited appeals. We deplore Slavery as a lamentable evil, and regard it as a great human wrong, and yet we may calmly seek out the facts, and judge of them in their true dimensions. When stripped of all exaggeration they will still be found sorrowful enough; for there is sufficient degradation to the black, and injury enough to his master, and detriment enough to society at large, were there no romance to distort the truth, or rhetoric to sweep away our judgment.

The question arises at once, whether we shall speak of the rule, or the exceptions to it. The great majority of slave-owners are men of as much natural humanity as their fellow-men, yet there will occasionally be found a "Legree Legree" amongst them. They have the plainest possible interest in promoting the health and comfort of their people, but occasionally one will be found, whose passions neither humanity nor self-interest can curb. The great mass of the negroes, too, are in the possession of more robust health, more plentiful food, and more exemption from care, than many classes of the labourers of Europe; yet there are instances of cruel griefs, and barbarous suffering amongst them. The abolitionist culls out these exceptional cases, and presents them as samples of the whole. Now it will readily be seen how terrible a picture might be drawn of the atrocities committed in this country every month of the year. That picture might be shaded in with brutality which is not very rare in the colliery districts, or the dense

ignorance existing yet in some few specimens of the agricultural mind,-extracts might be collected from the records of the courts, of murders, and madness, of poisonings, and suicides; and if this picture were presented to the people of Japan, it would give them just as correct an impression of the state of society in England as abolitionist romances convey of the general condition of Slavery in America.

What, indeed, are the simple facts? The negroes have at all times abundant food; the sufferings of fireless winter are unknown to them; medical attendance is always at command; in old age there is no fear of a workhouse; their children are never a burden or a care; their labour, though long, is neither difficult nor unhealthy. As a rule, they have their own ground, and fowls and vegetables, of which they frequently sell the surplus. So far, then, as merely animal comforts extend, their lot is more free from suffering and hardship than those of many classes of European labour. Take the life of a collier, for instance : what can be imagined more dismal, more narrowing to the mind, more repugnant to every impulse of human nature, than to toil through life, crouched in low passages, seldom permitting to stand erect; breathing a close and vitiated air; shut out from voice or face of fellow-man; labouring on alone in the dank gloom, like some solitary insect toiling in a vault; shrouded in darkness, except the miserable glimmer that makes

the blackness visible, and warns him, as it flickers, he is ever trembling on the brink of destruction! Is there anything in hoeing canes in the broad sunlight, or weeding tobacco-plants, or picking cotton, which, as a question of man's employment, is really worse than this?

And there are other pursuits in which men grow old, and haggard, and worn out, before the middle term of life; some in which there goes on a stealthy poisoning of the system; yet these are never wanting in recruits. Or what is really the life of a common sailor? what kind of a home has he in his forecastle? what tranquil sleep does he ever know? what is the length or breadth of his real liberty? and what is the treatment he, poor fellow, too often receives at the hands of captains and mates? If these things be dispassionately considered, we shall find that the labour of the slave, as an employment, will compare favourably with many others that attract no attention, because there are none to utter their complaints.

It will be replied that, though this may be the case, still it is labour under compulsion. But where is there physical labour that is not under compulsion? In Europe a man must work, or starve; there is the compulsion of necessity. He does not work of his own free will, from choice, or inclination, but because he is obliged to work. In tropical countries the fertility of the soil removes this necessity-the labour of a day will support the idleness of a week. There is no

longer the compulsion of circumstance, but, in its place, there is that of the master. If in Alabama, as in England, a negro must either work or starve, he would require no overseer. In Barbadoes, where density of population, and the occupation of every inch of ground, enforces industry, the free black produces as much sugar as in the days of slavery. In Jamaica, where a vast unoccupied district, the whole centre of the island, afforded room to squat, to plant a dozen bananas and the roots of a few yams, and then bask in the sun, this compulsion of circumstance was absent, and the effect was soon apparent when the negro was no longer compelled to work. On reflection, we shall see that compulsion is not confined to the labour of the slave, but is the real source of physical labour in all countries, although the form of its action may be different.

That the condition of the slave in the South is not one of suffering and hardship, may be seen by the following evidence. When the growth of population in the North is corrected, for a just comparison, by abstracting the effects of immigration, it will be found that the ratio of natural increase is greater amongst the slaves than that of the free people of the North. The ordinary rule

is the reverse of this; for the human race is more prolific in cold than in tropical climates. Africa, the home of the negro, is very thinly peopled throughout. In the North, too, abundance of food, and of employment, and of fertile land still

unoccupied-the entire absence of the usual impediments to marriage-all circumstances combine to insure the greatest increase of population. In spite of this, an analysis of the census returns for the last eighty years shows a greater ratio of increase on the side of the negro race. It cannot reasonably be supposed that this could occur amidst an ill-used or overtaxed people. And the physical condition and habits of the negro speak for themselves. They They are a stronger and better developed race than the operative classes of Europe. The men are robust, healthy, and sleek. A thin, careworn negro is common enough amongst the free blacks, but very rarely to be seen as a slave. Their conversation and domestic habits are cheerful. They are fond of singing, and dancing of a very energetic description. Visitors to the Southern States constantly express their surprise at the drollery and gaiety they meet with.

Against this it must be considered, that although there may be a large amount of material comfort -although, indeed, the condition of the slave, as a whole, may contrast advantageously with that of several classes of European labour, as far as mere animal life is concerned, still that he is debased as a man, and that even the very gaiety of his disposition may be a proof of this. It is indeed the true objection to this deplorable system, that it ignores the real nature of man, the existence, in the words of Sallust, of two natures, "of