48 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



tective system think that the policy has been stretched too 

 far, and, on the other hand, the suffering that has been 

 proclaimed so loudly is pronounced by the Union party of 

 South Carolina to be ideal, because their crops sell as well 

 as before the tariff, and their expenses for the clothing of 

 their negroes, &c., are not more than half what they were 

 in years gone by. I suspect that the real danger to the 

 Union grows out of quite another subject, namely, the in- 

 stitution of slavery itself, against which you so justly and 

 decidedly protest. The rapid progress of public opinion 

 in Great Britain, which has already denounced slavery in 

 the West Indies, and will probably not permit it to exist 

 more than a very few years at the utmost, greatly alarms 

 our Southern slaveholders. They had a dreadful example 

 of domestic insurrection in Virginia, in the autumn of 1831 ; 

 not a few persons are engaged in various parts of the Union 

 in denouncing slavery, and in urging its abolition in toto 

 and at once ; and although this may be premature, and, in 

 our actual circumstances, unjustifiable, it has its effect. It 

 seems now apparent that slavery cannot be sustained in- 

 definitely in this country. But the effort which I fear will 

 be made before many years to sustain it will, I also fear, take 

 the form of attempting to rear in the South a distinct em- 

 pire, embracing as many slave States as can be induced to 

 join it, and embracing, perhaps, all except Maryland, West- 

 ern Virginia, and possibly Kentucky; and then they must 

 have Texas per fas aid nefas ; and the great features of this 

 confederacy will be slavery, and dependence on the favor 

 and protection of a foreign power, which must, I suppose 

 of course, be England. They do not seem to take into 

 view at all the tremendous internal danger from their own 

 efficient physical population, the rapid increase of which is 

 encouraged, and, I might say, insured, by humanity, cupid- 

 ity, climate, plenty, &c. This appears to be the aim of at 

 least the most violent of the South Carolina nullifiers, and, 

 indeed, they do not hesitate to avow it ; b'ut the most sober* 



