882 Letters from the United States of North America. ‘[Oer, 
avail herself of ithe same privilege. What a ¢omment on his ‘ineredulity!! 
what" a’ lesson for judges and critics!’ But enough.—Ranks are esta- 
blished'in' England, ‘you will say; in America they are not. | In England 
you do not profess to be ‘all equal; in America they’ do: and: besides 
if the English were as absurd as I say, in such matters, that wouldmot 
make the behaviour of the Americans either right or wise. Very trues 
but, so long as inequalities do exist in the nature of manj\so lo 
inequalities must prevail in society, whatever may be the’ political 
equality of each man with every other man of the state; and all thatI 
desire to show is, that, inexcusable as may be the prejudice of a white 
American toward a brother-black of his country, it is not so very in- 
excusable, nor so very unreasonable as the majority of the British 
public are getting to believe. But this comes of your poetry; of your 
much speaking ; of Curran’s beautiful apostrophe about the “sacred soil of 
Britain”; of your anti-slavery meetings; of your prodigal charity—and 
of your undoubted, undoubting ignorance of the true state of the blacks 
here. It is bad enough—too bad; but not a fortieth part so bad as you 
suppose. And you—upon my word, you have no idea, I believe, that, 
for slaves and slavery, the Americans are altogether indebted to the 
cupidity of British merchants, and to the short-sighted policy of the British 
legislature; and that, from the first to the last, the British colonies of 
America, now the States of America, have been striving to. get rid -of 
that, which, from the first to the last (so long as they were the colonies 
of the Mother-country), she persisted in forcing upon them—slavery, 
and the curses of slavery.* What I say is true; and if there should be 
any body to gainsay it, I will undertake to establish every word of my 
charge. Be more moderate, I beseech you, therefore, in your outcriés 
about the unnatural behaviour of the whites here toward the blacks here. 
But enough on this head: let us now go to the facts which I spoke of, 
There are supposed to be more than 3,000,000 of children in the United 
States, of an age suitable to elementary education. Of these, nineteen 
twentieths, I'dare say, have it in their power to be well educated forvall 
the common business of life, at the public expense; while a great pro- 
portion of them, throughout New England, may be educated for almost 
any pursuit in life, either at no expense at all, or at an expense so trifling 
as to be within the reach of almost every farmer, tradesman, or mechanic. 
Three years ago, it was computed by Mr. Ingersoll + that more than half 
a million of these children were actually going through their education at 
the public expense; for upwards of 40,000 were so, in a small state 
containing only 275,000 inhabitants;{ and perceive now that in the 
south matters are going on much in the same way; that Maryland, the 
most southerly of the middle states, has already made provision for the 
object; that Indiana ‘has followed, and that; in a word, ‘a new spirit 
appears throughout the whole confederacy. To give youa generaliidea 
of the matter, I shall take a return, which appears inthe JouURNAL/oR 
I 8 pda 
thom & al t vor Share od 
ot Very true: some of the colonies of America were the first to abolish the trade 4 am 
human flesh. The United States were the first, and are yet the only nation’ whé‘ha¥ i ; 
ile it piracy; and, in spite of their sins, the people of the’ United Statesthave done 
more to put an end to slavery than all the rest of the people of all the rest of the 
earth. —X. Y.Z. CO 
+ In his discourse concerning the INFLUENCE OF AMERICA, a very valuable pamphlet 
of some fifty pages or so; republished by Miller ofLiondowei inese die! solliM * 
¢ CONNECTICUL, we suppose.—X. Y. Z. by) SY X—.33 03 
