100 EFFECTS OF [CHAP. XXV. 



where the white workmen bound themselves not to 

 return to their employment until the master had 

 discharged all his coloured people. Such combina 

 tions will, no doubt, forward the substitution of 

 white for negro labour, and may hasten the era of 

 general emancipation. But if this measure be pre 

 maturely adopted, the negroes are a doomed race, 

 and already their situation is most critical. I found 

 a deep conviction prevailing in the minds of expe 

 rienced slave-owners, of the injury which threatened 

 them ; and, more than once, in Kentucky and else 

 where, in answer to my suggestions, that the time 

 for introducing free labour had come, they said, &quot; I 

 think so ; we must (jet rid of the negroes.&quot; &quot; Do 

 you not think,&quot; said I, &quot; if you could send them all 

 away, that some parts of the country would be de 

 populated, seeing how unhealthy the low grounds 

 are for the whites?&quot; &quot;Perhaps so,&quot; replied one 

 planter, &quot; but other regions would become more pro 

 ductive by way of compensation ; the insalubrity of 

 the Pontine marshes would be no excuse for negro 

 slavery in Italy. All might end well,&quot; he added, 

 &quot; were it not that so many anti-slavery men in the 

 North are as precipitate and impatient as if they 

 believed, like the Millerites, that the world was 

 coming to an end.&quot; 



One of the most reasonable advocates of immediate 

 emancipation whom I met with in the North, said to 

 me, &quot; You are like many of our politicians, who can 

 look on one side only of a great question. Grant the 

 possibility of these three millions of coloured people, 

 or even twelve millions of them fifty years hence, 



