tics, who pause not at the prospect of insurrection and slaughter, may, perhaps, regard without nausea, this process of harmonization. They may have sufficiently schooled and perverted their natural feelings, to endure a prospect at which ordinary human nature sickens. But can they, with all their abstractions, persuade the people of this country that white is black? Can they induce them to believe that Cupid is a young negro; or to regard, without a revolt of their feelings, the combination of charms which grace the sooty and fragrant favourites of the fanatics? But this subject can scarce be even referred to, without a breach of propriety, without feelings of nauseated disgust and excited indignation. The man who can insult the fair and accomplished ladies of this country, by conceiving, much less avowing, a belief of the possibility of such deep, unnatural and damning degradation-deserves the most emphatic expression of the abhorrence of society. Yet strange to say, the North does contain men, who openly vindicate the revolting and guilty suggestion-and who yet walk our streets "untarred and unfeathered."

Can these philanthropists blind themselves to the real character of such schemes? Can they not see beneath the mask of benevolence, the hot and hideous features of a monstrous and unnatural lust? Can they not foresee, in the results of the unholy union, the utter annihilation of all sense of virtue? Are they not aware that it would plunge the race into a pit of fathomless and irretrievable degradation and perdition? They are not, they cannot be ignorant, that such guilt would bring down upon us the curse of God and man;; that we would be regarded, with loathing and contempt, by all created beings; and sink into a depth of crime and infamy, of feeble-ness, and horror, for which faney has no picture:

and history no parallel. Commerce would fly our guilty shores; crime would stalk through our streets at mid-day; genius and virtue, and peace would be unknown among us; and we would become, to ourselves, a mass of rottenness and wretchednessto the world, a hissing and a reproach.

Mr. Walsh, referring to this subject, in the work already quoted, says: "there must remain, in any case, a broad line of demarcation, not viewed as an inconvenience by them, but indispensable for our feelings and interests. Nature and accident combine to make it impossible; their colour is a perpetual memento of their servile origin, and a double disgust is thus created. We will not, must not, expose ourselves to lose our identity as it were; to be stained in our blood, and disparaged, in our relation of being, towards the stock of our forefathers in Europe. This may be called prejudice; but it is one which no reasoning can overcome, and which we cannot wish to see extinguished. We are sure that it would exist in an equal degree with any nation of Europe, who might be circumstanced like ourselves; we do not find it so gross in itself, or so hurtful and unjust in its operation, as those of an analogous cast which prevail in England. Men of true speculation,' says Mr. Burke, exploring general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which inheres in them. If they find what they seek, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and leave nothing but the naked reason.

6

CHAPTER XX.

Consequences of Abolition, if effected with the assent of the Slave-holder.

Ir will be said by the Southern reader, that it is unnecessary and idle to inquire into the consequences of an event which is impossible. We admit that it is utterly impossible that the citizens of the South can ever consent to stake their lives upon the perilous and absurd scheme of the abolitionists: but it may be well, by a brief and cursory view of the results which would inevitably flow from such a measure, to open the eyes of honest abolitionists, if such there be, to the real character of the designs which they have been induced to sustain.

The consequences of abolition would be widesweeping and general; they would be felt and deplored by the North as well as the South-by the negro as well as the white man.

To the North its influence would be truly disastrous. The instant the act of emancipation went into effect, a torrent of black emigration would set from the South to the North. The blow given to the South, and the convulsion which would pervade its whole extent, would derange all the pursuits of industry, and drive the negroes to the North for subsistence. They would seek the free States also as the land of promise, and the North would soon be blackened by the ingress of Southern slaves. One of the first results of this emigration would be a

depreciation in the price of labour. The added number of labourers would, of itself, occasion this fall of prices; but the limited wants of the negro, which enable him to under-work the white labourer, would tend still further to produce this result. The honest white poor of the North would, therefore, be either thrown out of employment entirely by the blacks, or forced to descend to an equality with the negro, and work at his reduced prices. It behooves the working men of the North to look into this subject, and take efficient measures to ward off the fatal blow aimed at their rights and interests by the abolitionists. Let the mad scheme of abolition be carried into effect, and the honest poor of the North will be degraded into a state worse than that from which the slaves will be freed. The chains will be taken from the blacks of the South, and fastened upon the poor whites of the North. Degradation, suffering, and oppression will be their lot, thenceforth, for ever; and for the wretchedness thus entailed upon them, they may thank the benevolence of the fanatics.

The North already deplores, not without reason, the number of the free coloured population within her borders. The immense increase of that population, by abolition, would render the burthen thus inflicted upon the community, intolerable. With the increase of their strength, they would become more insolent and overbearing. Their idleness would render them dependent upon the industrious whites; their vices would urge them into crime; and our community would be filled with confusion, violence, and outrage. Our jails and alms-houses would overflow with the lazaroni thus crowded upon us; and the North would be afflicted with all the evils of a worthless coloured population-evils hitherte confined to the

South, but which abolition would spread over the whole country.

It cannot be supposed that this population, ignorant, insolent, and violent, would abstain from the exercise of the political rights extended to them by most of the Northern States. They would enter the arena with their united strength; and the whites would either be driven from the polls, or compelled to maintain their rights, by force. Bitter party conflicts between the blacks and whites, could not be prosecuted without violence; and among the other direful triumphs of abolition, our peaceful streets would be filled with the din of mortal conflict, and our cities exposed to the lust and rage of infuriated and savage negro mobs.

Let the North pause ere she consent to see her peace thus invaded, her safety endangered, and her happiness for ever destroyed. We are now an united, tranquil, and happy people; and every consideration of prudence and duty requires that we should not suffer, much less seek, the triumph of a measure which must involve us in the evils which it would inflict upon the South, and render the free and happy States of the North the scene of an eternal contest between the original white population and a black emigration, ignorant, savage, vicious, and idle. The hour that sees the slaves of the South emancipated, witnesses the prosperity and glory of the North clouded for ever.

If the scheme of emancipation should prove, as we are assured it must, ruinous in its influence on the industry and agriculture of the South, the blow would be still more severely felt at the North. If emancipation is attended here as in St. Domingo, with the destruction of the plantations, and the consequent failure to supply the usual exports, what will become of Northern commerce or manufactures?