1S36.] 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



573 



are in all respects, physical, moral, and political, 

 inferior to millions of ihe human race, who have 

 for consecutive ages dragged out a wretched ex- 

 istence under a grinding political depotism, and 

 who are doomed to this hopeless condition by the 

 very qualities which unfit them for a better. It is 

 utterl}' astonishing that any enlightened American, 

 alter contemplating all the manifold forms in 

 which even the white race of mankind are doom- 

 ed to slavery and oppression, should suppose it 

 possible to reclaim the Africans from their destiny. 

 The capacity to enjoy freedom is an attribute not 

 to be communicated by human power. It is an 

 endowment of God, and one of the rarest which 

 it has pleased his inscrutable wisdom to bestow 

 upon the nations of the earth. It is conferred as 

 the reward of merit, and only upon those who are 

 qualified to enjoy it. Until the "Ethiopian can 

 change his skin," it will be vain to attempt, by 

 any human power, to make freemen of those 

 whom God has doomed to be slaves, by all their 

 attributes. 



Let not, therefore, the misguided and designing 

 intermeddlers who seek to destroy our peace, ima- 

 gine that they are serving the cause of God by 

 practically arraigning the decrees of his provi- 

 dence. Indeed it would scarcely excite surprise, 

 if, with the impious audacity of those who erect- 

 ed the tower of Babel, they should attempt to 

 scale the battlements of heaven, and remonstrate 

 with the God of wisdom for having put. the mark 

 of Cain and the curse of Ham upon the African 

 race instead of the European. 



If the benevolent friends of the black race 

 would compare the condition of that portion of 

 them which we hold in servitude, with that which 

 still remains in Africa, totally unblessed by the 

 lights of civilization or Christianity, and equally 

 destitute of hope and of happiness, they would be 

 able to form some tolerable estimate of what our 

 blacks have lost by slavery in America, and what 

 they would gain by freedom in Africa. Greatly 

 as their condition has been improved, by their sub- 

 jection to an enlightened and christian people, (the 

 only mode under heaven by which it could have 

 been accomplished,) they are yet wholly unpre- 

 pared for any thing like a rational system of self- 

 government. Emancipation would be a positive 

 curse, depriving them of a guardianship essential 

 to their happiness, and they may well say in the 

 language of the Spanish proverb, "save us from 

 our friends, and we will take care of our enemies." 

 If emancipated, where would they live, and what 

 would be their condition? The idea of their re- 

 maining among us is utterly visionary. Amalga- 

 mation is abhorrent to every sentiment of nature; 

 and if they remain as a separate caste, whether 

 endowed with equal privileges or not, they will 

 become our masters,or we must resume the maste- 

 ry over them. This state of political amalgama- 

 tion and conflict which the abolitionists evidently 

 aim to produce, would be the most horrible condi- 

 tion imaginable, and would furnish Dante or Mil- 

 ton with the type for another chapter illustrating 

 the horrors of the infernal regions. The only dis- 

 position, therefore, that could be made of our e- 

 mancipated slaves, would be their transportation 

 to Africa, to exterminate the natives, or be exter- 

 minated by them; contingencies,either of which may 

 well serve to illustrate the wisdom, if not the phi- 

 lanthropy^!' tho.se super-serviceable madmen, who 



in the name of humanity would desolate the fair- 

 est region of the earth, and destroy the most per- 

 fect system of social and political happiness that 

 ever has existed. It is perfectly evident, that the 

 destiny of* the negro race is either the worst possi- 

 ble form of political slavery, or domestic servitude, 

 as it exists in the slave-holding states. 



The advantage of domestic slavery over the 

 most favorable condilion of political slavery, does 

 not admit of a question. It is the obvious interest 

 of the master, not less than his duty, to provide 

 comfortable food and clothing for his slaves; and 

 whatever false and exaggerated stories may be 

 propagated by mercenary travellers who make a 

 trade of exchanging calumny for hospitality, the 

 peasantry and operatives of no country in the 

 world are better provided for in these respects, 

 than the slaves of our country. In the single em- 

 pire of Great Britain, the most free and enlighten- 

 ed nation in Europe, there are more wretched 

 paupers and half-starving operatives, than there 

 are negro slaves in the United States. In all re- 

 spects, the comforts of our slaves are greatly su- 

 perior to those of the English operatives, or the 

 Irish and continental peasantry, to say nothing of 

 the millions of paupers crowded together in those 

 loathsome receptacles of starving humanity, the 

 public poor-houses. Beside the hardship of in- 

 cessant toil, too much almost for human nature to 

 endure, and the sufferings of actual want driving 

 them almost to despair, those miserable creatures 

 are perpetually annoyed by the most distressing 

 cares for the future condition of themselves and 

 their children. 



From this excess of labor, this actual want, and 

 these distressing cares, our slaves are entirely ex- 

 empted. They habitually labor from two to four 

 hours a day less than the operatives in other coun- 

 tries, and it has been truly remarked by some wri- 

 ter, that a negro cannot be made to injure himself 

 by excessive labor. It may be safely affirmed, 

 that they usually eat as much wholesome and sub- 

 stantial food in one day as English operatives or 

 Irish peasants eat in two. And as regards con- 

 cern for the future, their condition may well be en- 

 vied even by their own masters. There is not 

 upon the face of the earth, any class of people, 

 high or low, so perfectly free from care and anxi- 

 ety. They know that their masters will provide 

 for them, under all circumstances, and that in the 

 extremity of old age, instead of being driven to 

 beggary, or to seek public charity in a poor-house, 

 they will be comfortably accommodated, and kindly 

 treated, among their relatives and associates. Cato 

 the elder, has been regarded as a model of Roman 

 virtue; and yet he is said to have sold his superan- 

 nuated slaves, to avoid the expense of maintaining 

 them. The citizens of this state may not aspire 

 to rival the virtue of the Romans; but it may be 

 safely affirmed, that they would doom to execra- 

 tion that master who should imitate the inhuman 

 example of the. Roman paragon. The govern- 

 ment of our slaves is strictly patriarchal, and pro- 

 duces those mutual feelings of kindness on the 

 part of the master,and fidelity and attachment on 

 the part of the slave, which can only result from a 

 constant interchange of good offices, and which 

 can only exist in a system of domestic or patriarch- 

 al slavery. They are entirely unknown either in 

 a state of political slavery, or in that form of do- 



