ignorance existing yet in some few specimens of the agricultural mind,-extracts might be collected from the records of the courts, of murders, and madness, of poisonings, and suicides; and if this picture were presented to the people of Japan, it would give them just as correct an impression of the state of society in England as abolitionist romances convey of the general condition of Slavery in America.

What, indeed, are the simple facts? The negroes have at all times abundant food; the sufferings of fireless winter are unknown to them; medical attendance is always at command; in old age there is no fear of a workhouse; their children are never a burden or a care; their labour, though long, is neither difficult nor unhealthy. As a rule, they have their own ground, and fowls and vegetables, of which they frequently sell the surplus. So far, then, as merely animal comforts extend, their lot is more free from suffering and hardship than those of many classes of European labour. Take the life of a collier, for instance : what can be imagined more dismal, more narrowing to the mind, more repugnant to every impulse of human nature, than to toil through life, crouched in low passages, seldom permitting to stand erect; breathing a close and vitiated air; shut out from voice or face of fellow-man; labouring on alone in the dank gloom, like some solitary insect toiling in a vault; shrouded in darkness, except the miserable glimmer that makes

the blackness visible, and warns him, as it flickers, he is ever trembling on the brink of destruction! Is there anything in hoeing canes in the broad sunlight, or weeding tobacco-plants, or picking cotton, which, as a question of man's employment, is really worse than this?

And there are other pursuits in which men grow old, and haggard, and worn out, before the middle term of life; some in which there goes on a stealthy poisoning of the system; yet these are never wanting in recruits. Or what is really the life of a common sailor? what kind of a home has he in his forecastle? what tranquil sleep does he ever know? what is the length or breadth of his real liberty? and what is the treatment he, poor fellow, too often receives at the hands of captains and mates? If these things be dispassionately considered, we shall find that the labour of the slave, as an employment, will compare favourably with many others that attract no attention, because there are none to utter their complaints.

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It will be replied that, though this may be the case, still it is labour under compulsion. But where is there physical labour that is not under compulsion? In Europe a man must work, or starve; there is the compulsion of necessity. does not work of his own free will, from choice, or inclination, but because he is obliged to work. In tropical countries the fertility of the soil removes this necessity-the labour of a day will support the idleness of a week. There is no

longer the compulsion of circumstance, but, in its place, there is that of the master. If in Alabama, as in England, a negro must either work or starve, he would require no require no overseer. In Barbadoes, where density of population, and the occupation of every inch of ground, enforces industry, the free black produces as much sugar as in the days of slavery. In Jamaica, where a vast unoccupied district, the whole centre of the island, afforded room to squat, to plant a dozen bananas and the roots of a few yams, and then bask in the sun, this compulsion of circumstance was absent, and the effect was soon apparent when the negro was no longer compelled to work. On reflection, we shall see that compulsion is not confined to the labour of the slave, but is the real source of physical labour in all countries, although the form of its action may be different.

That the condition of the slave in the South is not one of suffering and hardship, may be seen by the following evidence. When the growth of population in the North is corrected, for a just comparison, by abstracting the effects of immigration, it will be found that the ratio of natural increase is greater amongst the slaves than that of the free people of the North. The ordinary rule

is the reverse of this; for the human race is more prolific in cold than in tropical climates. Africa, the home of the negro, is very thinly peopled throughout. In the North, too, abundance of food, and of employment, and of fertile land still

unoccupied-the entire absence of the usual impediments to marriage-all circumstances combine to insure the greatest increase of population. In spite of this, an analysis of the census returns for the last eighty years shows a greater ratio of increase on the side of the negro race. It cannot reasonably be supposed that this could occur amidst an ill-used or overtaxed people. And the physical condition and habits of the negro speak for themselves. They are a stronger and better developed race than the operative classes of Europe. The men are robust, healthy, and sleek. A thin, careworn negro is common enough amongst the free blacks, but very rarely to be seen as a slave. Their conversation and domestic habits are cheerful. They are fond of singing, and dancing of a very energetic description. Visitors to the Southern States constantly express their surprise at the drollery and gaiety they meet with.

Against this it must be considered, that although there may be a large amount of material comfort -although, indeed, the condition of the slave, as a whole, may contrast advantageously with that of several classes of European labour, as far as mere animal life is concerned, still that he is debased as a man, and that even the very gaiety of his disposition may be a proof of this. It is indeed the true objection to this deplorable system, that it ignores the real nature of man, the existence, in the words of Sallust, of two natures, "of

which the one is common to us with the gods, the other with the beasts," and that it selects to obliterate and deny the nobler of the two. But although slavery must inevitably be debasing to the intellectual being of man, the popular impression of the extent of this influence is greatly exaggerated. The amount of degradation resulting from any cause must be limited by the height from which there was room to fall. The intellectual condition of the slave has not fallen from that of his race in the home from which he was transplanted. There has been no absolute loss whatever, but, on the contrary, a positive gain. It differs also in no appreciable degree from that of the free black in the North. Strange as it may sound, the term "free nigger" is frequently used by the slaves as an expression of pity and contempt.

Why, we know not, but we do know as a fact, that Nature has ordained a difference in the mental powers of man, as marked and ineradicable as any of the physical distinctions of race. In theory, we may call every man a brother; but, as a reality, take the Esquimaux, or the Australian, and work the theory out. 'The Australian is of all human beings the most entirely unshackled by restraint. He commands freedom in its widest range. No slavery has ever debased him,-the name of it he never heard. Yet what is the mind of the Australian savage? Will all the culture of Europe raise it to our level? How many

efforts have been made to elevate it, and with