We publish with pleasure some extracts of a letter from our esteemed correspondent, E.B. We should be glad if he would, from time to time give us his views on the political movements of the day. Will our Fenchurch Street friend apprize him to this effect.

ROTHESAY, ISLE OF BUTE,
Dec. 14, 1849.

MY DEAR FRIEND: I lately heard a popular preacher, who opened his sermon with the axiom that "Christianity was the religion of a gentleman;" and he admirably maintained his proposition by the teachings and the deportment of its founder and its early votaries. Well, then, if the above proposition be a truth, in what category are we to place the arrogant and the rude? Both incompatible with the attributes of a gentleman, and consequently with those of a Christian.
It is a striking fact, that the Almighty made choice of men remarkable for meekness to be the founders of the two great religious systems anterior to Christianity - the Patriarchal and the Levitical. How beautifully is this attribute displayed in Abraham's conduct towards Lot, in surrendering to him the right of choice of land.
The meekness of Moses has become a proverb. In one memorable instance it forsook him - his resentment of the cowardly maltreatment of a child of bondage, by his oppressor. He had looked upon the burdens of his enslaved brethren, and the miseries of their condition caused his meekness to be in abeyance during a moment of indignation.
The whole life of the Saviour was a personification of this virtue. Superficial observers have confounded meekness with pusillanimity. Was the exposer of the Pharisees, the purger of the temple, ever pusillanimous? Never. By him meekness was elevated to an elegant refinement, a dignified complacency; and the meek will commonly be found to possess the fortiter in re, as well as the suaviter in modo.
It is seen, in the majority of instances, that those persons who have suddenly risen from a low station in society, to a higher, are more arrogant and assuming than those who are born in the higher spheres of the community. And the United States seem to exhibit nationally the characteristics that the low-bred manifest individually
Why will the Americans, by their coarse rudeness, remind a stranger that their existence among civilized nations is of a recent date?
M. Guizot has said that France is the only country in a perfectly civilized state. Either his assertion is untrue, or Christianity is not an instrument in civilization; for in France, vain, glory and arrogance are much more conspicuous than humility and meekness.
Outward polish is pleasing, and the observance of conventional forms convenient, but to deport oneself as a complete gentleman, requires something more. These are mere outward displays of good breeding; but a gentleman acts from a sentiment and an inward perception of propriety. He will so demean himself in his intercourse with those of an inferior grade to himself, as to cause in them a cheerful acquiescence in the inequality - a conviction that it is for the well-being of society that it should be so.
How beautiful would be the social intercourse of Christian principles, were innate and Christian precepts carried out! Christianity supplies rules for all conditions, all circumstances, and all contingencies. But, alas! the votaries of false religions often by their conduct put self-styled Christians to shame.
Contrast the recent acts of the Mussulman towards the Hungarian, the Polish, and the Italian refugees, with the bloodthirstiness of the Russian and the Austrian Christianity. The contrast almost palliates the apostacy of a Bem and his ninety comrades.
Until there be on earth "peace and goodwill to men," the adaptation of benign Christianity to restore a fallen world, will not be seen; the extinction of war and slavery will be the precursor of the suppression of all other ills.
In mentioning slavery, contrast the feelings of Lawrence Sterne with those of the citizens of the United States. << Ignatius Sancho>> , who was an emancipated slave resident in London, wrote to Sterne his gratitude for Sterne's denunciation of slavery, thanking him for advocating the cause of his African brethren. Sterne in reply says, "My dear Sancho, the Africans are no more your brethren, than mine."
I close this letter with a quotation from the "Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation," by a "Citizen of America:" "The soul finds rest only in meekness; never in pride or selfishness." E.B.

October 2, 1841
THE COLORED AMERICAN
New York, New York

For the Colored American.
THOUGHTS - NO. XVII.

The nature of the human mind may be urged as a reason why we should make a diligent effort to secure a high state of mental and moral improvement. Says Akenside:

"Call now to mind what high capacious powers
Lie folded up in man; how far beyond
The praise of mortals, may the eternal growth
Of Nature, to perfection half divine,
Expand the blooming soul. What pity then
Should sloth's unkindly fogs depress to earth
Her tender blossom; choke the streams of life,
And blast her spring! FAR OTHERWISE DESIGNED
ALMIGHTY WISDOM."

The human intellect loves knowledge, and knowledge is the food of the intellect. Nature has amply provided for the mind, and with lavished kindness,

"Bids the longing appetite
The rich provision taste."

The immortality of its nature - its boundless capacity to improve - its ability to expand the solemn destiny which clothes its existence - the progress that it must make in virtue or vice, are so many potent reasons why it should be rightly improved.

The principles which it grasps - the fact which it stores - the ideas which it originates - will fit it to exert a tremendous influence upon other sentient beings for weal or for woe; while, at the same time, as its own moral taste is correct or false, will its own existence be pleasurable - a blessing or a curse. It is for us to unite with James Durham, Benjamin Bannaker, Thomas Fuller, Phillips Wheatley, << Ignatius Sancho>> , and Capitein, with many which might easily be named, and say to the world, that the color of the skin has no destructive affinity with the mind!

Knowing that we have these "high capacious powers" - that there is knowledge to be obtained - that without such knowledge the intellectual powers cannot be developed in their vast extent, and strengthened for the grand and important duties devolving upon it in this life, and to what boundless scenes is it to be ushered in that world which is to come, can we do less than to improve and adorn it with the immortal science of truth, and be just ourselves?

But fully to comprehend the dignity of the human mind, we are not only to look at its capacity to acquire knowledge - to store itself with the rich facts with which the world is stored - its power to originate ideas bright and valuable - the splendid achievements it has gained in its career - the influence which it exerts upon the destinies of kindred beings - the amazing amount of happiness or misery which it must experience - the wide circle of years which it must pass in its onward state of existence; but at its high origin - its likeness to its maker - its impress of DIVINITY - this stamps it with a dignity transcending the richest, the grandest, the most noble displays of OMNIPOTENCE in the material world.

When we think of the dignity of the immortal mind, that it is to live forever, filled with the ideas which it gains here - let us resolve, and act upon that resolution, that it shall be improved in virtuous knowledge. Its existence is secured - when dashing streams shall flow, and the lofty mountains shall flee away, the fragrant flowers shall cease to bloom, and when the sun shall have shed his last golden rays, the pillars of creation riven, the walls of the universe crumbled - the immortal mind shall live! Let it be improved and adorned with the precious gems of truth and virtue - let it be filled with pure thoughts and bright conceptions - let it grasp firmly the glorious principles of the Eternal Throne - let its invigorated strength, its awakened powers

"burn,
Holding communion with kindred spirits,
Mingling thought with thought -
Mind responsive echo back to mind."
A.G.B.
New Haven, Conn.

June 16, 1832
THE LIBERATOR
Boston, Massachusetts, Volume 2 No. 24

THE LIBERATOR.

'That the black people possess mental powers capable of extensive cultivation has been sufficiently evinced in the instances of Gustavus Vasa. << Ignatius Sancho>> , Lislet, Capitien, Fuller, Wheatley, and many others; and the time may arrive when the lights of freedom and science shall shine much more extensively on these dark children of bondage, when the knowledge of the true faith shall awaken the nobler principles of their minds, and its practice place them, in moral excellence, far above those who are now trampling them in the dust. How will the spirit of regret then sadden over the brightness of our country's fame, when the muse of history shall lead their pens to trace the annals of their ancestors, and the inspiration of poetry instruct their youthful bards to sing the oppression of their fathers in the land of freedom.'&#151 LEWIS'S HISTORY OF LYNN.

March 24, 1832
THE LIBERATOR
Boston, Massachusetts, Volume 2 No. 12

CAPACITY OF BLACKS.

A number of instances are cited in the Liberia Herald, of celebrated black men who have distinguished themselves, notwithstanding every disadvantage. Among them are, Hannibal, an African, who rose to the rank of
lieutenant-general in the Russian corps of Artillery. Francis Williams, a black, born in Jamaica, was educated in the University of Cambridge. After his return to Jamaica, he taught Latin and the Mathematics. Anthony Williams Amo, born at Guinea, took the degree of Doctor in Philosophy at the University of Wittemburg, and distinguished himself in metaphysics; he was also skilled in the learned languages. Job Ben Solomon, son of the Mahometan king of Banda, was taken in 1730, and sold in Maryland. He found his way to England, and became acquainted with Sir Hanse Sloane, for whom he translated Arabic manuscripts. James Eliza John Capitein, and African, was carried as a slave to Holland, where he acquired several learned languages, and took degrees in theology at the University of Leyden. He was sent out as a Calvinistic minister to Guinea. << Ignatius Sancho>> distinguished himself as a literary character in England, died 1780. Thomas Fuller, an African, who, although unable to read or write, performed difficult arithmetical calculations with amazing facility. Balinda, after being a slave for forty years in Massachusetts, addressed, in 1782, and eloquent petition to the Legislature of that state, for the freedom of herself and daughter. The petition has been preserved in one of the volumes of the American Museum. Othello published, in 1784; at Baltimore, an eloquent essay against the slavery of Africans. Cesar, a black, of North Carolina, wrote several popular pieces of poetry.

ITEM #2469
May 13, 1837
THE COLORED AMERICAN
New York, New York

(From the New York Evangelist.)
INTELLECT OF NEGROES.

Extract from Good's Book of Nature.

It may appear singular, perhaps, that I have taken no notice of the wide difference which is supposed to exist in the intellectual faculties of the different varieties of man. To confess the truth, I have purposely omitted it, because of all the arguments that have ever been offered to support the doctrine of different species, this appears to be the feeblest and most superficial. It may suit the narrow purposes of a slave merchant, of a trafficer in human nerves and muscles - of a wretch, who, in equal defiance of the feeling and the laws of the day, has the impudence to offer for sale, on the polluted shore of our own country, in one and the same lot - as was the case not long since - a dead cameleopard and a living Hottentot woman - it may suit their purpose to introduce such a distinction into their creed, and to let it constitute the whole of their creed - but it is a distinction too trifling and evanescent to claim the notice of a physiologist for a moment.

The understanding of the Negro race, it is admitted, is in many tribes strikingly and habitually obtuse. But let the man who would argue from this single fact, that the race of Negroes must be necessarily and inferior species, distinct from all the rest of the word, compare the taste and talents, the genius, the erudition that have at different individuals of this despised people, when placed under the fostering providence of kindness and cultivation, with his own, or those of the generality of his own countrymen, and let him blush for the mistake he has made, and the injury he has committed.

Freidig, of Vienna, was an excellent architect, and a capital performer on the violin. - Hannibal was not only a colonel of artillery in the Russian service, but deeply skilled in the mathematical and physical sciences. So, too was, Lislet, of the Isle of France, who was in consequence made a member of the French Academy. And Arno, who was honored with a deploma of doctor of philosophy by the University of Wirtemberg, in 1734. Let us add to these the names of Vasa and << Ignatius Sancho>> , whose taste and genius have enriched the polite literature of our own country. And with such example of Negro powers before us, is it possible to do otherwise than adopt the very just observation of a very quaint orator, who has told us that the "negro, like the white man, is still God's image, though carved in ebony." - Page 226.

Nor is it to a few casual individuals among the black tribes, appearing in distant countries and in distant eras, that we have to look for the clearest proofs of human intelligence. At this moment, scattered like their own oases, their islands of beautiful verdure, over the eastern and western deserts of Africa, multitudes of little principalities of Negroes are still existing, multitudes that still have, of late years been detected, and are still detecting, whose national virtues would do honor to the most polished states of Europe. While at Timbuctoo, stretching deepest towards the east of these principalities, from the western coast, we meet, if we may credit the accounts we have received, with one of the wealthiest, perhaps one of the most populous and best governed cities in the world, its sovereign, a Negro, its armies Negroes, its people Negroes; a city which is the general mart for the commerce of western Africa, and where trade and manufactures seem to be equally esteemed and protected.

Mr. Jackson in describing this city, says, "It is about twelve miles in circumference, but without walls. There is a perfect toleration in matters of religion, except as to Jews. the police is extolled as surpassing any thing of the kind on this side the Desert; robberies and house-breaking are scarcely known. - Page 227.

The intellects of Africans are so far from being of an inferior order, that one finds it difficult to account for their acuteness, which so far transcends their means of improvement. - Wadstrom.

I can with truth declare, that among my negro scholars I have found as great a variety of talents as among the like number of whites - and I am bold to assert, that the notion of their inferiority is a vulgar prejudice, founded on the pride of those who keep them at such a distance as to be unable to form a right judgment of them. - Anthony Benezet.

Mr. Good, in the Virginia Legislature of 1832, "earnestly pressed upon the House the effects of what was passing upon the slaves themselves. Many of them he represented as wise and intelligent men, constantly engaged in reflection, informed of all that was occurring, and having their attention fixed upon the Legislature.

"Egypt holds a conspicuous place in history, on account of its great antiquity, and early attainments in the arts. It has been styled the cradle of the sciences, and it claims the honor of the invention of the art of writing. At a period when Greece and Italy were immersed in barbarism, Egypt could boast of arts, learning, and civilization. It was the principal source from which the Grecians derived their information, and after all its windings and enlargements, we may still trace the stream of our knowledge to the banks of the Nile," - Worcester's Elements of History.

May 18, 1827
FREEDOM'S JOURNAL
New York, New York

From the Abolition Intelligencer.
The surprising influence of prejudice.

That savage nations enveloped in the darkness of ignorance, inured to scenes of rapine and cruelty and murder, should become so lost to all the finer sensibilities of our nature as that "their tender mercies are cruel," is not a matter of very great astonishment. But it is really something more than marvelous that the man whose character has been humanized by civilization, whose mind has been illumined by the rays of science, and whose heart has been renovated by the power of the gospel, should become the advocate of the cruel policy of those dark and ruthless sons of nature.
Should the origin of African slavery be enquired for, it must be sought among the most barbarous nations, and will be found growing out of the most sordid and malignant passions of the human heart; while fraud and violence have in almost every instance, been the means by which our slaves were originally procured. Yet are there multitudes in our own enlightened country, in our boasted land of liberty, who, with the book of God in their hands, and a public profession of allegiance to the compassionate Saviour in their mouths, unblushingly stand forth as the advocates of this cruel system.
How shall we account for such conduct? By supposing that such characters are sturdy hypocrites, who have continued to do violence to their own sense of duty until "their consciences have become seared as with a hot iron?" This may in some instances be the fact; but we are persuaded that in most cases their conduct should be regarded merely as a specimen of the surprising influence of prejudice on the human mind. The prejudice of education, of example, and self interest, all uniting, prepare the mind to receive the most glaring sophistry and to settle down upon its deductions as securely as upon those of the most logical reasoning.
In our last we attended to the argument drawn from the colour of our slaves in support of African slavery. In the present No. we will notice that which is drawn from the assumed fact of the inferiority of the blacks in point of intellect. That the blacks are inferior to the whites in intellectual powers is constantly asserted with the utmost confidence as a fact by the advocates of the system. And from this fact they seem to think the inference fair that they were intended for slaves. But we do not hesitate to declare that the fact is gratuitously assumed, and that the history of mankind not only contradicts but abundantly refutes the assumption.
But before we refer to history we ask how is this inferiority of African intellect to be established" By comparing the slave with his master? Yes, the poor African born in the land of strangers, denied the advantages of education, excluded from all means of mental improvement, bowed down under the burden of a hopeless and perpetual slavery, without any motive to exertion, save the fear of the lash, is brought into contrast with the high minded and aspiring son of fortune, who has been dandled on the lap of affluence, favoured with all the advantages of education, and stimulated with the high hopes of distinguishing his character, immortalizing his name, and ennobling his posterity. Is this fair, is it candid, is it honest? And almost equally unfair would it be to compare the inhabitants of our own country, or of any of the civilized nations of Europe, with the barbarous and uncivilized tribes of Africa; and from the comparison to pronounce an original and permanent inferiority of mind as characterising the African. Let it be remembered that climate and manners and customs and religion and government all have influence in giving character to a nation, and that in all these respects the African labours under an obvious disadvantage. Nevertheless their character is doubtless far superior to what is generally represented by those who feel interested in defaming them.*
Now keeping in mind the many disadvantages under which for so many ages they have laboured both at home and abroad, let us turn our attention to the character of a few individuals whom history represents as having, by the energies of their own native geniuses, arisen to a degree of eminence, which not only rescues their race from the charge of original inferiority of mind, but also sheds a brilliancy and dignity over their own characters.
Hannibal, an African who had received a good education, rose to the rank of lieutenant-general and director of artillery under the Peter the great of Russia, in the beginning of the last century.
The son of Hannibal, above mentioned, a mulatto, was lieutenant-general in the Russian corps of artillery. Greg. p. 173.
Francis Williams, a black, was born in Jamaica about the close of the 17th century. - He was sent to England and there entered the University of Cambridge. After his return to Jamaica he opened a school and taught Latin and the mathematics. He wrote many pieces in Latin verse in which he discovered considerable talents. Greg. 207 - 219.
Antony Williams Amo was born in Guinea, and brought to Europe when very young. - Under the patronage of the princess of Brunswick, he pursued his studies at Halle in Saxony, and at Wittemburg, where he greatly distinguished himself by his talents and good conduct. In 1734 he "took the degree of doctor in philosophy at the university of Wittemberg." "Skilled in the knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages," and "having examined the system of ancients and moderns," he delivered "private lectures on philosophy" with great acceptance. "In 1744 he supported a thesis at Wittemberg, and published a dissertation, on the absence of sensation in the soul, and its presence in the human body." He was "appointed professor," and the same year supported a thesis, "on the distinction which ought to be made between the operations of mind and those of sense." Gregorie highly commends these "two dissertations," as evincive of a mind "exercised in reflection" and addicted to "abstruse discussions." In the opinion of Blumenbach they "exhibit much well digested knowledge of the best physiological works of the time." In a memoir of Amo, "published at the time by the academic council, his integrity, talents, industry, and erudition, are very highly commended." Gregoire was unable to discover what became of him afterwards. Greg. p. 173-176. Rees under man.
Job. Ben Solomon, son of the Mahometan king of Banda, on the Gambia, was taken in 1730 and sold in Maryland. He afterwards found his way to England, where his talents, dignified air, and amenity of character procured him friends, among the rest Sir Hans Sloane, for whom he translated several Arabic manuscripts. After being received with distinction at the Court of St. James, he was sent back to Bunda. The letters which he afterwards wrote to his friends in England, and America were published and perused with interest. This man is said to have been able to repeat the koran from memory. Greg. p. 160 - 161.
James Eliza John Capitein was born in Africa. At the age of eight he was purchased on the river St. Andre by a slave dealer, who made a present of him to one of his friends. By the latter he was carried to Holland, where he employed himself in painting, and acquired the elements of the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic languages. He afterwards went to the University of Leyden, where he devoted himself to the study of theology. "Having studied four years he took his degrees, and in 1742 was sent as a Calvanistic minister to Guinea." What became of him was never known. While in Holland he published an elegy in Latin verses, two Latin dissertations, (one on the calling of the Gentiles, and the other on slavery,) and a small volume of sermons. Greg. p. 196 - 207.
<< Ignatius Sancho>> was born on board a slave ship on her passage to Carthagena in South America. Before he was two years old he was carried to England, where in the course of his life he distinguished himself as a literary character. He died in England in 1780. After his death an edition of his letters was published in two octavo volumes, which were well received by the public. - Greg. p. 227 - 234. Rees under man.
Thomas Fuller, a native of Africa, and a resident near Alexandria in the district of Columbia, though unable to read or write, excited surprise by the facility with which he performed the most difficult calculations. - Being asked one day how many seconds a person had lived who was seventy years, seven months and seven days old, he answered in a minute and a half. On reckoning it up after him a different result was obtained. - "Have you not forgotten the leap years?" says the black. This omission was supplied, and the number then agreed with his answer. When this account was given by the late Dr. Rush, Fuller was seventy years old. Greg. p. 183 - 185. Rees under man.
Belinda was brought from Africa at the age of twelve, and sold in Massachusetts. - After being a slave to one man forty years, she addressed to the legislature of that state, in 1782, an eloquent petition for the freedom of herself and daughter, which has been preserved in one of the volumes of the American Museum. Greg. p. 167 - 168.
An African by the name of Maddocks, was a Methodist preacher in England. Rees under men.
Othello published at Baltimore in 1789, an essay against the slavery of negroes. "Few works can be compared with this for force of reasoning and fire of eloquence. Greg. p. 185 - 187.
Caesar, a black of North Carolina, was the "author of different pieces of printed poetry which have become popular." Greg. p. 168.
Ottobah Cugoano was born on the coast of Fantin in Africa. He was dragged from his country and carried to the island of Grenada. Having obtained his freedom he went to England, where he was in 1788. - Hiatoli, a distinguished Italian, was for a long time acquainted with him in London, "and speaks in strong terms of his piety, his mild character and modesty, his integrity and talents." Cugoano published a work on the slave trade and the slavery of negroes, which discovered a sound and vigorous mind, and which has been translated into French. Greg. p. 288 - 299.
Gustavus Vasa, whose African name was Olando Equiano, was born in the kingdom of Benin in 1746. At the age of twelve he was torn from his country and carried to Barbadoes. After passing into various hands and making several voyages to Europe, he at length obtained his freedom, and in 1781 established himself in London. There he "published his Memoirs, which have been several times reprinted in both hemispheres" and read with great interest. "Vasa published a poem containing 1122 verses;" and in 1789 he presented to the British parliament a petition for the suppression of the slave trade. His life and works are familiarly known in England. Greg. p. 219 - 227. Rees under man.
Phillis Wheatly, born in Africa in 1753, was torn from her country at the age of seven, and sold in 1761 to John Wheatly of Boston.
Allowed to employ herself in study, she "rapidly attained a knowledge of the Latin language." In 1762, at the age of nineteen and still a slave," she published a little volume "of religious and moral poetry, which contains 39 pieces," and has run through several editions in England and the United States." She obtained her freedom in 1775, and died in 1780. Greg. p. 234, 241.
Benjamin Banaker, a black, of Maryland, applied himself to astronomy with so much success, that he published almanacks in Philadelphia for the years 1794 and 1795. - Greg. p. 185, 188.
The son of Nimbana, of Niambanna, "king of the region of Sierra Leone," who "ceded a portion of his territory for the use of the colony," (New York Spectator, No. 2019,) "came to England to study." "He rapidly acquired different sciences, and in a short time was so well acquainted with the Hebrew as to be able to read the Bible in the original. This young man who gave such promising hopes, died a short time after his return to Africa. Greg. p. 161, 162.
James Derham, born 1767, was formerly a slave in Philadelphia. "In 1738, at the age of twenty-one, he became the most distinguished physician at New Orleans." "I conversed with him on medicine," says Dr. Rush, "and found him very learned. I thought I could give him information concerning the treatment of diseases, but I learned more from him than he could expect from me." Greg. p. 182, 183.
Toussaint Louverture, general of St. Domingo, was once a slave. He was a man of "prodigious memory," brave, active, indefatigable, and really great. Greg. p. 102, 105.
Christophe, the late king of Hayti, arose from slavery to a throne, and has displayed great energy of character.

*The African," says Sir James Yeo, who has for a considerable time been stationed upon the coast of Africa, "is very superior in intellect and capacity to the generality of Indians in North America. They are more sociable and friendly to strangers, and except in the vicinity of European settlements, are a fine and noble race of men." (Sir James Lucas Yeo's letter to John Wilson Croker, Esq. published in the New York Spectator for Nov. 7th, 1817.)

September 5, 1840
THE COLORED AMERICAN
New York, New York

"PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR."

Prejudice against color! Pray tell us what color? Black? brown? copper color? yellow? tawny? or olive? Native Americans of all these colors everywhere experience hourly indignities at the hands of persons claiming to be white. Now, is all this for color's sake? If so, which of these colors excites such commotion in those sallow-skinned Americans who call themselves white? Is it black? When did they begin to be so horrified at black? Was it before black stocks came into fashion? black coats? black vests? black hats? black walking canes? black reticules? black umbrellas? black walnut tables? black ebony picture frames and sculptural decorations? black eyes, hair and whiskers bright black shoes, and glossy black horses? How this American color-phobia would have lashed itself into a foam at the sight of the celebrated black goddess Diana of Ephesus! how it would have gnashed upon the old statue, and hacked away at it out of sheer spite at its color! What exemplary havoc it would have made of the most celebrated statues of antiquity. Forsooth they were black! their color would have been their doom. These half-white Americans owe the genius of sculpture a great grudge. She has so often crossed their path in the hated color, it would fare hard with her if she were to fall into their clutches. By the way, it would be well for Chantry and other European sculptors to keep a keen look-out upon all Americans visiting their collections. American color-phobia would be untrue to itself if it did not pitch battle with ever black statue and bust that came in its way in going the rounds. A black Apollo, whatever the symmetry of his proportions, the majesty of his attitude, or the divinity of his air, would met with great good fortune if it escaped mutilation at its hands, or at least defilement from its spittle. If all foreign artists, whose collections are visited by Americans, would fence off a corner of their galleries for a "negro pew," and straight-way colonize in thither every specimen of ancient and modern art that is chisselled or cast in black, it would be a wise precaution. The only tolerable substitute for such colonization would be plenty of whitewash, which would avail little as a peace-offering to brother Jonathan, unless freshly put on: in that case a thick coat of it might sufficiently placate his outraged sense of propriety to rescue the finest models of art from American Lynch-law: but it would not be best to presume too far, for color-phobia has no lucid intervals, the fit is on all the time. The anti-black feeling, being "a law of nature," must have vent; and unless it be provided, wherever it goes, with a sort of portable Liberia to scrape the offensive color into, it twitches and jerks in convulsions directly. But stop - this anti-black passion is, we are told, "a law of nature," and not to be trifled with!" Forsooth! What a sinner against nature old Homer was! He goes off in ecstacies in his descriptions of the black Ethiopians, praises their beauty, calls them the favorites of the gods, and represents all the ancient divinities as selecting them from all the nations of the world as their intimate companions, the objects of their peculiar complacency. If Homer had only been indoctrinated into this "law of nature," he would never have insulted his deities by representing them as making negroes their chosen associates. What impious trifling with this sacred "law" was perpetrated by the old Greeks, who represented Minerva, their favorite goddess of Wisdom, as an African princess. Herodotas pronounces the Ethiopians the most majestic and beautiful of men. The great father of history was fated to live and die in the dark as to this great "law of nature!" Why do so many Greek and Latin authors adorn with eulogy the beauty and graces of the black Memnon who served at the seige of Troy, styling him, in their eulogiums, the son of Aurora? Ignoramuses! They knew nothing of this great "law of nature." How little reverence for this sublime "law" had Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, and those other master spirits of ancient Greece, who, in their pilgrimage after knowledge, went to Ethiopia and Egypt, and sat at the feet of black philosophers to drink in wisdom. Alas for the multitudes who flocked from all parts of the world to the instructions of that negro, Euclid, who, three hundred years before Christ, was at the head of the most celebrated mathematical school in the world. However learned in the mathematics, they were plainly numsculls in the "law of nature!"
How little had Antiochus the Great the fear of this "law of nature" before his eyes, when he welcomed to his court, with the most signal honors, the black African Hannibal; and what an impious perverter of this same law was the great conqueror of Hannibal, since he made the black poet Terence one of his most intimate associates and confidents. What heathenish darkness brooded over the early ages of Christianity respecting this divine "law of nature," when Philip went up into the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch and sat with him, and when the Spirit of God said to him, "Go near and join thyself to this chariot." Both grossly outraged this "law of nature." What a sin of ignorance! The most celebrated fathers of the church, Origen, Cyprian, Tertullian, Augustine, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Cyril - why were not these black African bishops colonized into a "negro pew," when attending the ecclesiastical councils of their day. Alas, though the sun of righteousness had risen on primitive Christians, this great "law of nature" had not! This leads us reverently to ask the age of this law. A law of nature, being a part of nature was created by piecemeal, and this part was overlooked in the early editions, but supplied in a later revisal. Well, what is the date of the revised edition? We will save our readers the trouble of fumbling for it, by just saying, that this "law of nature" was never heard of till long after the commencement of the African slave trade; and that the feeling called "prejudice against color," has never existed in Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Italian States, Prussia, Austria, Russia, or in any part of the world where colored persons have not been held as slaves. Indeed, in many countries, where multitudes of Africans and their descendants have been long held slaves, no prejudice against color has ever existed. This is the case in Turkey, Brazil, and Persia. In Brazil there are more than two millions of slaves. Yet some of the highest offices of state are filled by black men. Some of the most distinguished officers in the Brazilian army are blacks and mulattoes. Colored lawyers and physicians are found in all parts of the country. Besides this, hundreds of the Roman Catholic clergy are black and colored men; these minister to congregations made up indiscriminately of blacks and whites. The same remark may be made of all the South American states and Mexico. General Guerrero, late president of Mexico, was a colored man, so is General Alvarez, one of the most distinguished of the Mexican generals, and some of the most prominent men of the Mexican congress are mulattoes. General Paez, the distinguished president of Venezuela, is also a colored man. General Piar, who bore a conspicuous part in the commencement of the Columbian revolution, was a mulatto. General Sucre, the commander-in-chief at the battle of Ayacucho, in 1824, the most remarkable ever fought in South America, was a black man with woolly hair. In 1826 he was elected president of Bolivia.
As we find ourselves crowded for space, a variety of facts, illustrating the entire absence of "prejudice against color" in European countries, must be omitted. We can find room for only those that follow: - Anthony William Amo, a full blooded negro, a native of Guinea, was, in 1774, appointed Professor of Philosophy in the University of Wirtemberg, in Germany. He was afterwards removed to Berlin and made a counsellor of state to his Prussian majesty. An African negro named Annibal was a general and director of artillery in the army of Peter the Great, who conferred upon him, as a mark of honor, the order of Saint Alexander Nenski. His son, a mulatto, was, in 1784, a lieutenant-general of artillery in the Russian service. Geoffroy L'Islet, a mulatto, originally an officer of artillery in the French army, was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and was living a few years since. Pelet, a highly respected and popular officer in the National Guards of France, is a dark mulatto. Capitein, who graduated with great applause at the University of Leyden, in Holland, and afterwards became a clergyman, and published a volume of sermons in the Dutch language, was a negro, a native of Guinea. << Ignatius Sancho>> , the associate of Garrick, and the friend and correspondent of the celebrated Sterne, was a negro. Louis Phillipe, the present king of the French, had, in his boyhood, as one of his playmates, Scipio Africanus, a young negro, who was one of the family of the Duke of Orleans, (Egalite.) Scipio afterwards became an officer in the French army under Joubert, and was killed with that officer at the battle of Novi, in 1799. A brave Brazilian negro, named Henry Diaz, who was colonel of a regiment of blacks, and had done the state important service in the Dutch war, was invited to Portugal by King John, IV., who received him at his court with distinguished honor, conferred upon him knighthood, and caused a medal to be struck in commemoration of his services. Benoit, a negro of Palermo, called by historians the "Holy Black," was among the most eulogized and honored saints in the Roman Catholic Church of the age in which he lived. One of the members of the French national assembly, between forty and fifty years since, was Mentor, a negro, a native of Martinique. A mulatto, named St. George, who served in the French army after the revolution, was, as the Abbe Gregoire informs us, the "idol of fashionable society" in the French capital. General Dumas, who for a long time commanded a legion in the French army, and was one of Bonaparte's favorite generals of division, and named by him the "Horatius Cocles of the Tyrols," was a mulatto. Kina, a favorite officer in the British army, and who, on a visit to London, received the most flattering attentions in honor of his services in the West Indies was a negro. Correa de Serra, the secretary of the Portuguese academy, asserts that in Lisbon and other parts of Portugal there are distinguished lawyers and professors who are negroes. A public teacher of Latin at Seville, in Spain, during the last century, was a negro named Don Juan Latino. It is a fact well known, that some of the highest offices in the Turkish and Persian empires have been filled by negroes. Job Ben Solomon, a negro born on the Gambia, was treated with marked attention in the polite and literary circles of England, and received at the court of St. James with high distinction. Jules Raymond, author of various works in French, and a member of the national Institute of France, was a mulatto. Gustavus Vasa, a negro born at Benin, resided many years in London, where he mingled with refined society and was highly respected. His son, Sancho, was assistant librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, and secretary to the Vaccine Institution. One of the most popular lawyers at the royal court of Martinique is M. Papy, a mulatto. A. De Castro, aid-de-camp to the governor general of the Danish West Indies, is a mulatto: his son is aid-de-camp to the governor of St. Thomas. George Washington Jefferson, a mulatto from St. Domingo, who resides near Brighton, England, associates with the most respectable society, and is a director in a bank there. Prince Sanders was a dark mulatto, a native of Boston, but resided many years in London, where he was a great favorite in fashionable circles, was invited to breakfast with the Prince Regent, and received flattering attentions from distinguished literary characters. For a century past a considerable proportion of the Roman Catholic clergy in the Cape de Verd Islands have been negroes. Thomas Jenkyns, a negro, native of Guinea, was, for a number of years, a teacher of a parish school near Edinburgh, in Scotland; he afterwards entered the university, where he distinguished himself for scholarship: he was so great a favorite with the faculty that the professors generally relinquished their fees to assist him in his education. He eventually became a preacher, and was deputed by the British Society for promoting Christian knowledge as a missionary to Mauritius, where he still resides. The secretary of the governor of Antigua, in 1837, was a mulatto: so is a Mr. Athill, who was at the same time postmaster-general of Antigua, and a member of assembly. Edward Jordan, who has been for many years editor of the ablest and most influential paper published in the island of Jamaica, is a mulatto. Mr. J. has also been for some years a leading member of the Jamaica assembly, and alderman of the city of Kingston. Richard Hill, who has been for a number of years at the head of the special magistracy in Jamaica, (a body of about sixty magistrates) and their official organ of communication with the government, is a dark mulatto.
When Lord Sligo was governer of Jamaica Mr. Hill was his official secretary, and an inmate of his family: - his lordship, when in New-York in the summer of '39, on his return to England, speaking of Mr. Hill, said, "With no gentleman in the West Indies was I, in social life, on terms of more intimate friendship." Price Watkis, recently deceased, who for the last ten years of his life was at the head of the Jamaica bar, and for a long time a distinguished member of the assembly, was the son of a negress. Mr. Osborn, another member of the same body, and also the son of a negress, was elected to the assembly by the parish of St. Andrews, in which he was born a slave! Mr. Osborn was, a few years since, appointed by the governor a magistrate of the parish in which he resided, and a judge of the court of common pleas.
- Anit Slavery Almanac.

April 1, 1852
FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPER
Rochester, New York

JEFFERSON AND SLAVERY.
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LINDEN WOOD, for St. Charles, Missouri,
Saturday, Sept. 20, 1851.

To the Editors of the N.Y. Tribune:

"Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia," written and published in 1781-2, in answer to certain queries propounded to the author by the Cout de Marbois, has become a scarce book, I believe; else a reference to the book itself, for such of the "Notes" as I am desirous to have republished in your columns, might have saved me the labor of copying them from an old edition, printed in Boston in 1802. The discussion of what may be called "The Negro Question," occupies so many minds, and employs so many pens in this our day, (in too many instances injuriously to the cause of truth and justice,) that I have thought it might serve a good purpose to set before the public what were, nearly seventy years ago, Thomas Jefferson's view of the Negro Race and of Negro Slavery." In reply to the 8th, 14th and 18th queries of M. de Marbois, Mr. Jefferson found himself called on for some particular remarks upon this subject, which he did not fail to furnish. Those elicited and embraced the distinguished author's views and opinions of the then existing condition of the negro race in Virginia; the natural and marked distinction between the white and black races; the true policy and moral duty of the one; the true interest of the other, and of both. These views, written so long ago, when the subject could be calmly and dispassionately considered, when it was not, as it now is, liable to be drawn in and incorporated with, and made subservient to the ephemeral party politics of the day, were presented with the manifestly single object of promoting, in due season, the cause of practical philanthropy and justice, in the premises. High above all the groveling party propensities that actuate men, and inflame their narrow prejudices at this day, on this particular subject, as truly are the opinions here set forth by the great Philanthropist and statesman. A republication of those views and opinions cannot but be acceptable, I am sure, to the readers of your very useful and popular publication. And I trust you will, with your usual candor and fairness, give them a place in the Tribune. - If ever "this blot on our country," is to be removed, and removed it must be, or else - it must be effected by Colonization; and if ever by Colonization, the National power, co-operating with that of the "Slave States," must be used. The races must be widely separated. Shall twenty millions of Whites suffer three millions of Blacks, by their mere presence among us, either nominally free, or in slavery, to mar the peace and endanger the union of this great and mighty Republic? - Surely not, if a remedy can be found. For one, I am prepared and ready now to give my voice unhesitatingly in favor of any feasible plan to send every negro far away (to Africa) from our land, with all possible despatch - "peaceably, if we can, forcibly if we must." This must be done in the spirit of kindness and christian philanthropy toward the blacks, and for the pressing motive of self-preservation on the part of the whites. - And I assume the ground that the latter cannot be secured, unless the other is first accomplished.

A careful, candid consideration of this whole subject, in all its bearings, aided by Mr. Jefferson's masterly views, herewith presented, cannot fail, it seems to me, to convince any rational mind that separation by Colonization is the only remedy - that this remedy must be resorted to, and can only be effectively applied through the power and influence of the National Government, acting in full concert with the "Slaveholding States." Can all this be done? This is a most consequential question, truly; but in behalf of the Republic, I boldly answer Yes. It may cost many millions of dollars; but if the gold mines of California should be exhausted, and as much more, in the enterprise, the consummation would be cheaply purchased.

G.C.S.

In reply to the 8th query - "The number of its inhabitants?" - Mr. Jefferson makes the following statements and remarks: "Free inhabitants, 206,852; slaves, 270,762; 567,614 inhabitants, of every age, sex and condition. Under the mild treatment our slaves experience, and their wholesome though coarse food, this blot on our country increases as fast, or faster than the whites. - During the Regal Government, we had at one time obtained a law which imposed such a duty on the importation of slaves, as amounted nearly to a prohibition, when one inconsiderate Assembly, placed under a peculiarity of circumstances, repealed the law. This repeal met a joyful sanction from the then Sovereign, and no devices, no expedients which could ever after be attempted by subsequent assemblies - and they seldom met without attempting them - could succeed in getting the Royal assent to a renewal of the duty. In the very first session held under the Republican Government, the Assembly passed a law for the perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves. This will, in some measure, stop the increase of the great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature."

In answer to the 14th query - "The administration of Justice, and the description of the Laws?" The author, after enumerating several proposed alterations in the laws, quotes the following, (most probably proposed by himself,) as a plan to rid the State of the "blot" of negro slavery, and then proceeds to give his views, fully and freely, of the character and condition of the black race, &c: - "To emancipate all slaves born after passing the Act. * * * that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up at the public expense, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age; when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper; sending them out with arms, implements of household, and the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c., to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they have acquired strength, and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world, for an equal number of white inhabitants, to induce them to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed." It will probably be asked, why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the State, and thus save the expense of supplying by importation of white settlers the vacancies they will leave? Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties and produce convulsions, which would probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. To these objections, which are political, may be added others which are physical and moral. The first difference that strikes us is that of color. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and the scarfskin, or in the scarfskin itself, whether it proceeds from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color, in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black, which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favor of the whites, declared by the preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of their own species. The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy of attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals - why not in that of man? Besides those of color, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions, proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body; they secrete less by the kidneys and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat and less so of cold than the whites. Perhaps, too, a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late experientalist (Crawford) has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating in the act of inspiration so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliges them in expiration to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labor through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusement to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing that he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome; but this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female; but love seems with them to be more an eager desire than a tender, delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient; those numberless afflictions which render it doubtful whether Heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are felt less and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labor. - An animal whose body is at rest, and who does to reflect, must be disposed to sleep, of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason, much inferior, as I think one would scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. - We will consider them here on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowance for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them, indeed, have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society. Yet many have been so situated that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters. Many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory, such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find a black that had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration - never seen even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture.

In music, they are more generally gifted than the whites, with accurate ears for tune and time; and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. (The instrument proper to them is the banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar.) Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks there is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ostrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the sensibility only, not the imagination. Religion, indeed, has produced Phyllis Whately, but it could not produce a poet - the compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. << Ignatius Sancho>> has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honor to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and show how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments; and his style is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasonings; yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own color, who have presented themselves to the public judgment; yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points, which would not be easy of investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one; and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable, than that of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were confined in separate apartments; because, to raise a child cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted indulgence to his slaves in this particular, took from them a certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. The same Cato, on a principle of economy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old wagons, old tools, old and diseased slaves, and everything else become useless. The American slaves cannot enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose in the Island Aesculapius, in the Tiber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like to become tedious. The Emperor Clandius, by an edict, gave freedom to such of them as should recover, and first declared that if any person choose to kill rather than expose them, it should be deemed homicide. The exposing them is a crime, of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. - Here, it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here, punishment falls on the guilty only; and as precise proof is required against him as against a freeman. Yet, notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances, among the Romans, their slaves were often the rarest artists. They excelled, too, in science; insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. it is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction. Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that I those of the heart, she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft, with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as fundamental, that laws to be just must give a reciprocation of right; that without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience. And it is a problem which I give to the master to solve; whether the religious precepts against the violation of property, were not framed for him as well as his slave? and whether the slave may to as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed, should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new nor peculiar to the color of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so twenty-six hundred years ago.

"Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day
"Makes man a slave takes half his worth away."
Od, 17-323.

But the slaves of which Homer speak were whites. Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity; and as many as among their better instructed masters of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity. The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, the optical glasses, the analysis by fire, or to solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation! Let me add, too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, when our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of being which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and of mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history, then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? The unfortunate difference of color, and PERHAPS of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarassed by the question, "What further is to be done with them?" join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans, emancipation required but one effort; the slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history; when freed he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture."

In answer to the eighteenth query, Mr. Jefferson remarks as follows: "It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether general or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people, produced by the existence of Slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it .... slaves a very small proportion indeed, are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take tide with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. - I think a change is already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is arbitrary; that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition mollifying; the way, I hope, preparing under the auspices of Heaven, for a total emancipation; and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the master, rather than by the extirpation of the slaves."