1830.] United States of America, and British West Indies. 529 



a singular species of pride on these occasions in fetching a high price,, 

 holding it amongst themselves as disgraceful to be sold for a small sum 

 of money. This fact, besides showing how difficult it is to subdue 

 utterly the love of distinction, may perhaps be useful in teaching us 

 never to take for granted that any one boasting the human form, how- 

 ever degraded in the scale, is without some traces of generous feeling." 



The opinions of various well-informed Americans on the abstract 

 question of slavery are stated. Some of them hold it to be a very great 

 evil, and others maintain a contrary doctrine. " They (the slaves com- 

 pared with freemen) work much less," say the latter ; " they are as well 

 fed ; they have no care for the future, very little for the present ; they are 

 in a state of happy ignorance, and know nothing of those things which 

 make freemen miserable ; and as they are generally well used, they be- 

 come attached to their masters, and work on in their service cheerfully." 



fe Force, power, or whatever name you give it," said another, " by 

 which one nation gains the ascendancy over another, seems to be, in the 

 practice of life, the grand rule which regulates the intercourse of man 

 with man. * * * * This may not appear just, but so it is ; such is 

 the order of our moral and political nature. It has been so from all time, 

 and will continue so as long as there remain any distinctions between 

 human beings. The slave question is merely one of the varieties of this 

 principle. 



" The blacks were brought to America when these matters were not 

 treated philosophically; they have since extended themselves far and 

 wide, and have now become, to all intents and purposes, an integral part 

 of our society. 



" The masters and the slaves, from long habit and universal usage, 

 have fallen into certain modes of thinking and of acting relatively to one 

 another ; and as this understanding is mutual and complete, the whole 

 machinery goes on with the greatest uniformity, and much more cheer- 

 fulness than you will at first believe possible. At least an equal period 

 of time, but perhaps ten or a hundred times as long a period, may be 

 required to unwind the thread again, and to free the country from this 

 moral and political entanglement. 



" In the meantime it is in vain to deny that, circumstanced as they 

 now are, the negroes belong almost to a different race ; so different, that 

 no philanthropist or abolitionist, however enthusiastic, pretends to say 

 that an amalgamation can take place between them and the whites. 

 There is no reasoning upon this point : it seems a law of our nature, and 

 is felt probably as strongly in other countries as here. What English 

 gentleman, for example, would give his daughter in marriage to a negro ? 

 But the prejudice, or whatever it be, is just as strong in the southern 

 states of America, with respect to a political community of rights and 

 privileges ; and if changes in this respect are ever to be brought about, 

 they can only be accomplished by the slowest conceivable degrees. 



" The blacks who form our labouring population are so deplorably 

 ignorant, and so vicious, that in almost every instance where freedom has 

 been given to them, they have shown how unfit they are to make a right use 

 of it. The practice of manumission is, in consequence, everywhere dis- 

 couraged, and in many places RENDERED BY LAW IMPOSSIBLE ! except in 

 cases of high public service." (P. 159.) 



Every person acquainted with the present state of the labouring popu- 

 lation in the British West Indies, and the daily acts of kindness and 



M. M. New Series. VOL. IX. No. 53. 3 Y 



