be generally reputed a cruel master. In many plantations no punishment is inflicted except after a trial by a jury, composed of the fellow servants of the party accused. Festival prizes and rewards are instituted, as stimulants to exertion, and compensations for superior accomplishments of labour. They are generally well fed, and well clothed, and that not by an arbitrary award, which might vary with the feelings of the master, but by a periodical apportionment, like the distributed rations of soldiers, of what has been experimented to be sufficient to render them comfortable. Considerable attention is paid to their quarters, and most of them comfortably lodged and housed. Nor are they destitute, as has been supposed, of any legal protection coming between them and the cupidity and cruelty of their masters. The code noir of Louisiana is a curious collection of statutes, drawn partly from French and Spanish law and usage, and partly from the customs of the islands, and usages which have grown out of the peculiar circumstances of Louisiana while a colony. It has the aspect, it must be admitted, of being formed rather for the advantage of the master than the servant, for it prescribes an unlimited homage and obedience to the former. It makes a misdemeanor on his part towards his master a very different offence from a wanton abuse of power towards the servant.* But, at the same time, it defines crimes that the master can commit in relation to the slave: and prescribes the mode of trial, and the kind and degree of punishment. It constitutes unnecessary correction, maiming, and murder, punishable offences in the master. It is very minute in prescribing the number of hours which the master

* Such a distinction is prompted by the dangers arising from the peculiar position of the slave, and the necessity of greater restraint and security.

may lawfully exact to be employed in labour, and the number of hours which he must allow his slave for meal-times and for rest. It prescribes the time and extent of his holidays. In short, it settles with minuteness and detail, the whole circle of relations between master and slave, defining and prescribing what the former may, and may not, exact of the latter. Yet after all these minute provisions, the slave finds the chief alleviation of his hard condition, and his best security against cruel treatment, and his most valid bond for kind and proper deportment towards him, in the increasing light, humanity and force of public opinion. That the slave is in the general circumstances of his condition, as happy as this relation will admit of his being, is

AN UNQUESTIONABLE FACT.

*66

* It can scarcely be necessary to swell the evidences of a · fact, which every intelligent and candid man who has inspected for himself the domestic relations of the Southern planter, will readily admit. We will, however, add the following. Mr. Noah, of New York, remarks, in relation to the slave population of the South: "We speak advisedly, for we have studied the condition of the whites and blacks minutely, and can freely say, that we would infinitely prefer to be a black slave in Carolina, or Virginia, or Cuba, or Barbadoes, to the emaciated and haggard wretches who people the workshops of Birmingham and Manchester, or the poor, shiftless, dissolute free negroes who live in our Northern states." The able editor of the Courier and Enquirer, thus describes the slaves of the South, before the "pernicious labours of the abolitionist destroyed the confidence of the master, and with it, the comfort of the slave." "We speake from our own experience, when we say, they were the gayest, the most contented, and the most comfortable race of labouring people that ever came under our observation; for, as to the pictures and representations which the abolitionists are daily putting forth, of chains, stripes, oppression, and cruelty, we pronounce them wilful and malicious falsehoods, invented to impose upon the world, and stimulate the slaves to insurrection and murder."

Were there no other evidences of the kindness with which the Southern slaves are treated, and the comfort in which they live, it would be sufficient to direct the attention of the reader to the rapidity of their increase. This, at least, is a proof of the prosperous state of the negro, which will not be contested. In the British West Indies, the slave population has required, it is said, renewal every fifteen years: in this country, the natural increase is nearly equal to that of the whites. In England and Wales, the population has nearly doubled in the last hundred years; one fourth of that time is sufficient for the duplication of our Southern negroes. These facts will not be denied, and cannot be explained away. They demonstrate that the condition of the American negro is, at least, not one of physical suffering.

In conclusion, we may remark, that there is reason to doubt whether any country comprises a labouring people better clothed, fed and treated than the slave population of the South-a population with less discontent and fewer causes calculated to excite it. Their intellectual inferiority, the absence of ambition in their character, their improvidence and want of a master to direct and sustain them, and the peculiar adaptation of their physical constitution to labour in a Southern climate, all combine to render their present the best possible condition in which they can be placed; while the kindness and attention of their masters make that condition still more comfortable and happy. It is an error to suppose that the blacks do not regard the kindness of their masters with gratitude and affection. They look up to their liberal and generous masters, and their amiable mistresses, with a feeling absolutely fond and filial. They take pleasure in repaying their care with every service in their power; and, instead of desiring an opportunity to dissolve the

connexion between them, would, in many cases, be found ready to die in defence of the families in which they are so kindly protected and cherished. With these views of the Southern population, how sínister and fiendlike appears that intermeddling spirit which seeks to render the poor slave discontented to transform his nature into that of a revengeful and sanguinary demon, thirsting for the blood of his protectors, anxious to redden the skies of his clime with the glare of conflagration, and dye the soil he has so long and peacefully tilled with the hue of murder. Is it strange that the proceedings of such men are regarded, by every reflecting and benevolent mind, with horror?*

"In this country it has been argued," said the Rev. Mr. Tracy, in a sermon before the Vermont Colonization Society, "that the world belongs to all men equally, and labour belongs to those who perform it, are conclusions as inevitable, as that a man's right hand is his own." And on these grounds, a convention was proposed and publicly urged in the state of New York, in the year 1830, which should order,

An immediate abolition of all debts;

An inventory of all real and personal property within the state;

A census of all the inhabitants, white or black;

An equal division of all the property, real and personal, among such citizens indiscriminately, as have arrived at the age of eighteen, without regard to colour;

An apportionment of a full share to every citizen, as he shall hereafter arrive at the age of eighteen;

The abolition of all interest on money, and the right of making wills.

Do you say, there is no danger that men will reason thus? I answer, men have thus reasoned, and been confident in their reasonings. They have published them, with the intention of inducing nations to adopt them. The party, from one of whose organs the last extract was taken, proposed to have 20,000 followers in the city of New York alone, and nominated its candidate for the Presidency of the United States,

CHAPTER VIII.

Slavery considered.-The right of man to hold his fellow-man in bondage.

WITH all the clamour made by the abolitionists, in relation to "free discussion," there is nothing which they so studiously avoid. They seldom, if ever, resort to candid or manly argument. They appeal to settled prejudices; and, by applying abstract but cherished axioms, without reference to consequences, they urge a course which could never bear the test of cool and practical examination. It is the misfortune of our country that we reason from abstractions. We establish the principle that all men are created free and equal; and following it out, without regard to consequences, often infer that a community of goods is required by a rigid respect for the rights of man. It was this delusion, this proneness to rush recklessly on in the course marked out by some dreamy abstraction, which plunged revolutionary France into the reign of terror. principles were generally sound; but pushed to extremes, and followed without regard to practical results, they led to consequences at which the world even now turns pale. It was the prevalence of the spirit alluded to, which induced the French policy towards St. Domingo; and not only lost that colony to France and to the world, but rendered it a Phlegethon, in which evil spirits held, for years, their carnival of blood. Let our people profit by their

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