SLAVERY. 199 



but little exertions needed to gain a complete control over 

 the whole race. Some 30,000 ivhites in East India gov 

 ern some 200,000,000 of Indians. 



To establish such a colony in Africa would be a far 

 simpler thing to effect than to conquer Cuba, and it 

 would be a means of gradually relieving this country of 

 the negroes. 



To emancipate the slaves and leave them in these 

 States would be a step full of the greatest danger, and 

 the most evil consequences would be certain to follow. 

 In America, being freed, there would be no one, as there 

 would be in a colony, to guide and direct them as a 

 body. Therefore the negroes, except in some cases, are 

 not prepared for freedom. They have passed from genera 

 tion to generation without the habit of thinking, and 

 thought is the mainspring to action. The labor of slaves 

 in the Southern States is but a kind of healthy exercise, 

 as their great increase in numbers show and they are 

 altogether taken more effectually care of by their owners, 

 than are the owner s own children ; for affection of the 

 parent is often the ruin of the child, but the negro is 

 ruled by judgment tempered with kindness, and a great 

 deal of leniency. The slaveholder knows that to 

 preserve the negro strong and vigorous in body is 

 for his interest; that ill- treatment or connivance at dissi 

 pation would be detrimental to himself ; a sick negro is 

 a burden, a healthy one is wealth to his owner. There 

 fore these considerations, and the naturally kind and 

 generous feeling of the people of the South, have rendered 

 the negroes the most contented and cheerful people that I 

 have met with in my extensive travels. The abolitionist 

 who would do aught to interrupt that contented condition 



