48 TRINIDAD. 



him up to the north, and assigned to him the valley of the Amazon 

 as his last resting-place upon this continent. 



" Therefore, humanly speaking, and humanly perceiving, the 

 settlement of the Amazon, its relation to this country, its bearing 

 upon our future commerce and institutions appear to be so close, 

 so intimate, and withal so potential, that the destiny of the United 

 States seems to be clearly connected with, wrapped up in, and 

 concealed by, this question. 



" The institution of slavery, as it now exists in this country, 

 fills the mind of the State man with anxious solicitude. What is 

 to become of it ? If abolished, how are so many people to be got 

 rid of ? If retained, how are they to be controlled? In short, 

 when they have increased and multiplied according to the capacity 

 of the States to hold them, what is to be done with them, whether 

 they be bond or free ? " 



" Unless some means be devised of getting rid of 



the negro increase, the time must come and sooner or late it 

 will come when there will be an excess, in these States, of black 

 people. This excess will be brought about by the operation of 

 two causes natural increase of the blacks on the one hand, and 

 emigration of the whites on the other. As their numbers spread, 

 and as their labour becomes less and less valuable as in process 

 of time it seems likely to do owners will sell or leave their 

 negroes behind, and emigrate to other parts, thus, by their absence, 

 increasing the proportion of blacks to whites. 



"The New England States and the Middle States did not eman- 

 cipate their slaves ; they banished them. They passed their post- 

 natal and prospective laws of emancipation, it is true, but they 

 did not command the master to let the slave go free. Before the 

 time came round to let the slave go free, he had, in most cases, 

 been taken off to the South, and sold there ; so that the so-called 

 emancipation of the North was simply a transfer to the South of 

 the slaves of the North ; an act of banishment nothing more. 



" The South could not, if she would, banish her slaves, and 

 then tell the world that that was emancipation ; for she has no 

 place of banishment to send them to. 



" In the spirit of truth and candour, we do not think we ven- 

 ture too far when we assert it as a probability, that neither New 

 England nor the Middle States would have passed when they did 

 the Emancipation Acts, which sent their slaves into banishment, 

 if they had not had the South or some other place to send them 

 off to. 



" Now, suppose that Maryland and Virgina, Kentucky, Ten- 

 nessee, and Missouri, should wish to pass post-natal free laws, or a 

 law of the so-called emancipation, can it be imagined that the 

 remaining slave states would permit the slaves from those states 

 10 be crowded down upon them, to be brought there and sold, 



