276 
EEPTJBMCS OF SPANISH AMERICA. 
the whites, have been hitherto the most powerful causes of 
the security of the mother’ countries, and of the maintenance 
of the Portuguese dynasty. Can this security, from its 
nature, be of long duration ? Does it justify the inertness 
of governments who neglect to remedy tlie evil while it is 
yet time ? I doubt this. When, under the influence of 
extraordinary circumstances, alarm is mitigated, when coun- 
tries in which the accumulation of slaves has produced 
in society the fatal mixture of heterogeneous elements, may 
be led, perhaps imwillingly, into an exterior struggle, civil 
dissensions will break forth in all their violence, and Euro- 
pean families, innocent of an order of things which they 
have had no share in creating, will be exposed to the most 
imminent dangers. 
We can never sufficiently praise the legislative wisdom of 
the new republics of Spanish America, which since their 
birth, have been seriously intent oh the total extinction of 
slavery. That vast poi-tiou of the earth has, in this respect, 
an immense advantage over the southern part of the United 
States, where the whites, during the struggle with England, 
established liberty for their own profit, and where the slave 
population, to the number of 1,600,000, augments stiU more 
rapidly than the whites.* If civilization, instead of ex- 
tending, were to change its place ; if, after great and 
deplorable convulsions in Europe, America, between Cape 
Hatteras and the Missouri, were to become the principal 
seat of the light of Christianity, what a spectacle would be 
presented by that centre of civilization, where, in the sanc- 
tuary of liberty, we could attend a sale of negi-oes after the 
death of a master, and hear the sobbings of parents who are 
separated from their children ! Let us hope that the gene- 
rous principles which have so long animated the legislatures 
* In 1769, forty. si.-: years before Ibe declaration of the Congress at 
Vienna, .and thirty-eight years before the abolition of the slave-trade, de- 
creed ia London and at Washington, the Chamber of Representatives of 
Massachusetts had declared itsell against “ the unnatural and unwarrant- 
ohle custom of enslaving mankind.” (See Walsh’s Appeal to the United 
States, 1819. p. 312.) llie Spanisli writer, Avendafto, was perhaps the 
first who declaimed forcibly not only against the slave-trade, abhorred 
even by the .Xfghans (Elphinstone's Journey to Cabul, p. 245), bu 
against slavery in general, and " all the iniquitous sources of colonia- 
wealth.” t'riiesaurus Ind., tom. i, tit. 9, cap. 2.) 
