*

their slaves to the south, before the act of abolition went into operation; and did she farther inquire, from what colonies the vessels and crews were fitted out which brought the African to America and sold him to the south? A little more inquiry might have resulted in her hearing,-to her surprise no doubt-that the province of Carolina was the very first from which a prayer ever arose to the British government, that this trade should be abolished, and no more slaves be permitted to enter within its territories.* But we proceed.

In order to prove the insecurity of the whites in the slave states, and their dread of the black population, we have a number of little anecdotes, some ludicrous enough, and others merely vicious or foolish, without being ludicrous. We quote a single paragraph, and

face of truth is necessary to this lady when she has a favorite theory to sustain. In doing this, it will be seen how singularly obtuse the mind may become, even of one so generally acute as Miss Martineau, when inveterate in the pursuit of a given object, and yielded up entirely to the one controlling prejudice.

mocrat, or rather a leveller. She was opposed to the policy of her own government in many respects, and consequently pleased with ours in all those particulars, in which, departing from that which she hourly assailed, it seemed to approach more nearly to her theory. But she could neither have been ignorant of our people, our institutions, nor of our society; and that she had opinions previously formed in respect to them, is everywhere obvious throughout her volumes. It is, indeed, from these previous opinions that many of her errors have arisen. Her notions of democracy, for example, lead her frequently to overlook the fact, that, as a nation, we have a limited and restraining charter, which is continually conflicting, in its operations, with the cherished idea in her mind. On the subject of American slavery, her detestation is avowed as being enter-will analyze it, by way of showing how small a surtained long before entering the slave states; and so cordial is this detestation, that it is fed and fattened by everything she sees, and in sundry cases, we are sorry to add, at the expense of truth. I do not mean to say that she has wilfully related falsehoods. Not so-1 think the book of Miss Martineau written in good faith throughout. But she was biassed and bigoted on this subject to the last degree; and could neither believe the truth when it spoke in behalf of the slaveholders; nor doubt the falsehood, however gross, when it told in favor, or fell from the lips of the abolitionist. Thus, for example, in proof, not less of this unhappy bias, than of the dogmatism of the writer, we are told that the abolitionists sent no incendiary tracts among the slaves, and that they use no direct means towards promoting their objects in the slave states. "It is wholly untrue that they insinuate their publications into the south." Such is her bold assertion, yet, “Mr. Madison made the charge, so did Mr. Clay, so did every slaveholder and merchant with whom I conversed. I chose afterwards to hear the other side of the whole question; and I found, to my amazement, that this charge was wholly groundless." Here the lady undertakes to decide a question of veracity with singular composure, in favor of her friends, and at the expense of the first names in our country.

"At Charleston, when a fire breaks out, the gentlemen all go home on the ringing of the alarm bell; the ladies rise and dress themselves and their children. It may be the signal of insurrection: and the fire burns on, for any help the citizens give, till a battalion of soldiers marches down to put it out.”

Now, we take it, that in any city in the world, slave or free, the gentleman who happens to be absent from his family when the fire bell rings, will be apt to hurry home to see that all is safe, and to quiet the alarm of his wife and children-particularly, indeed, in a large city, where it is so very difficult to determine at all times where the fire is. There is nothing peculiar in such a fact. But, in a city that is chiefly built of wood, such as Charleston, and where a fire extends with amazing rapidity, it becomes doubly necessary that the gentleman should not only hurry home, but that the lady should get her children and her jewels ready for flight. This would seem natural enough; but the rest of the paragraph commits a felo-de-se, which a moment's reflection would have prompted the author quietly to avoid. "The fire burns on for any help the citizens

"Nor did it occur to me," she writes, "that, as slaves cannot read," &c. Thousands of slaves do read; and, if this were wanting to their information, the slavehold- | give, till a battalion of soldiers marches down to put it ers assert, though the abolitionists may deny-that gross prints are employed in these abolition newspapers to help the understanding where it may lack, and that these prints are sometimes put upon manufactured cottons, such as are employed entirely for negroes, and insinuated here and there, at decent intervals, among the bales intended for the southern market. Such bales were discovered in a merchant's collection in Charleston, to the knowledge of the writer, but a few years ago. "Slavery of a very mild kind, has been abolished in the northern parts of the union," &c. What knowledge had Miss M., except from parties interested, that this slavery was of a mild kind ;—and did she ask whether the slavery was abolished from principle, or because it was more profitable to work the slaves in a richer soil than that of New England? Did she inquire how long a time was granted to slaveholders to dispose of

*Of course, in all such cases, the charters are defective and anomalous. The ideal of Miss M. is the genuine standard.

out." Now, who are the soldiers, but the citizens,and how can soldiers extinguish a fire? By guns and bayonets? These questions, had she put them to herself, would have saved her from the publication of this absurdity. We have none but a citizen soldiery in Charleston, and by an arrangement, which would be of great advantage if adopted in other cities, a detachment of these is required to appear at all fires for the protection of rescued property, and for preserving public order, which is always liable to be disturbed at such a period. So little is the popular apprehension of the negroes, that of fifteen or twenty fire engines owned by the city, one half of the number is entirely worked by slaves; and they are generally the most uproarious and noisy on such occasions.f

*Vide Hewatt, and public documents.

The "Fire System" is particularly complete in Charleston. In addition to the ordinary engine, hose and axe companies, there is a detachment of citizen soldiery, consisting of three companies or more,-say two hundred men-always on what is

In the chapter devoted to Revenue and Expenditure, | owner in Carolina, though this event may occur once in we are told in an extraneous sentence, which is closed an hundred years,* she declaims upon it lustily; but the with a note of exclamation, that in "South Carolina, crimes of free negroes at the north, with whose condithere is a tax on free people of color!" Had it not tion alone the comparison of the southern slave should been that Miss Martineau was too well satisfied with be made, entirely escape her attention. Her ear is open the surface of the fact, she would have inquired further; to all that may be said against slavery; all that is said in the New England states she certainly would have in its defence, she dismisses as not worth hearing. This done so; but it was quite enough to show, that in Caro-partiality affects her general sense of justice towards lina a special poll tax was set upon the unhappy free slaveholders on other subjects. At page 44, vol. 1, she negro. Let us complete the fact, and probably do away says-"in the senate, the people's right of petition is with the mystery and injustice, by stating that the invaded. Last session, it was ordained that all petisame free person of color enjoys an exemption from tions and memorials relating to a particular subject,— militia, from patrol, from fire and jury duty-for which slavery in the District of Columbia-should be laid on exemption, the white mechanic and laborer would be the table unread, and never recurred to. Of course the very glad to pay ten times the amount paid by the free people will not long submit to this." Mark how her negro as a capitation tax. tone changes, when it is your bull that has gored my ox! At page 70, of the same volume, we find a similar proceeding of Congress dismissed with a complacency quite remarkable, when compared with the evident indignation of the preceding paragraph. She is speaking of Carolina nullification. "Congress went on legislating about the tariff without regard to this opposition; and the protests of certain states against their proceedings were quietly laid on the table as impertinences."

Speaking of the great spread of abolition doctrines, which it is her object to prove in advance beyond all calculation, she asserts the "absolute abolition strength in the House of Representatives to be forty-seven," and draws this inference from the vote taken on the question, whether their petitions should be received or not; though she very well knew that many persons voted to receive the petitions who were yet hostile to their prayer.

In her remarks upon the policy and institutions of Carolina, to which I chiefly confine myself, there are sundry little errors of fact and inference like the preceding-which it is not worth our while to pursue-into which she has fallen from the single cause to which these have been referred,-namely, her bias upon the * subject of slavery. This bias has been of so tyrannic a sort, as not to permit to her the free exercise of a correct judgment or true observation in any matter with which this topic is connected, however remotely or incidentally. To those who think for themselves, and examine the subject honestly, these errors will, in the greater number of cases, carry their own refutation along with them. They are the errors of a mind solicitous to obtain a support for its theory at all hazards, and consist accordingly of a very hotchpot collection. She records the vague apprehensions of women, the partial rumors, received in the cities, of doings upon borders;-stories which have a narrow base of fact, upon which wanton conjecture, and wide-mouthed declamation are always prompt to raise the most towering superstructures. All the crimes committed in the south, of whatever kind, and among whatever class, are studiously ascribed to slavery; of the rapes, and escapes, if he be not poor. If he be poor, he goes to the gallows or the state prison. The finding of the jury, declaring hangings, and burnings upon the frontiers, she has an that the supposed murderer is not guilty, does not do away with ample collection, and records many, of which the good the fact that the poor woman is murdered-nor does it diminish people of the south themselves never heard. She makes the aggravation that she is invariably murdered with impunity. no inquiry into these matters at the north; she does not The newspapers frequently record forgeries by priests, by priests' seem to have asked about the offences of New York sons, and by the founders of splendid cities, and while they and Philadelphia, or the quality and color of the offen-chief regrets are, the loss of such enterprising citizens to the wonder passingly that such good people should be so bad, their ders in those cities.* If she hears that a slave poisons an fine cities which they did so much for. Alleged rapes, by ne

called alarm duty. They are relieved every three months. Their duty, as stated in the text, is chiefly to receive and protect the rescued goods, and to preserve order; since fires are most commonly the work of incendiaries, who avail themselves of the public alarm to plunder. Nor is this the only respect in which the fire police in Charleston is superior. There is a salaried officer,--an engineer-who, with certain assistants is required to appear at every fire properly provided, with powder made up into certain forms, and with the necessary chevaux de frise, for blowing up houses in order to the more summary arresting of the conflagration by making a vacuum. Had these two de. partments been connected with the ordinary fire department of New York, the destructive fires of that city would be greatly curtailed--since the presence of the military would defeat the aim of the incendiary, and the timely blowing up of a house would arrest the flame when an engine could not.

She dwells upon the hatred entertained by the white towards the colored population. "Lafayette," she says, in illustrating her remarks on this point, "on his last visit to the United States, expressed his astonishment at the increase of the prejudice against color. He re

groes upon white girls, are frequently stated by northern journalists, and one of these was tried, to the writer's knowledge, but a few years ago in Connecticut. We refer to Mr. Tappan for such particulars as resulted from the examination of the Commissioners of the Magdalen Asylum into the morals of New York; and we regret that Miss Martineau had not looked more closely into the negro quarters, and into the various police trials of negro offenders in the different cities of the free states. Had she done this, she would have spared us the entire chapter on the morals of slavery. Indeed, had she as narrowly examined the brothels and the stews and the alleys and sinks of London, with as keen a nostril, as she has thrust into the southern country, she would have paused before taking ship for the new world; and, as a good christian, would have set to work for the refor mation of her own home. It is a modern British statistician who tells us, that, in London alone, there are five thousand persons who will cut your throat for a shilling. No wonder our country should be tainted when we have not only the provision, but the reformation, of all these rascals, thrust upon our hands.

*And yet what daily atrocities reach our ears from the north How many women are cruelly murdered in the cities-sometimes by priests, sometimes by merchants and merchants' clerks. The very instance which she records was given to her as a reWhat a volume of depravity was unfolded in the trial of Robin-markable one. She infers it to be a common occurrence in spite son; and there was the case of Avery. Of course the offender of its notorious isolation.

Here is a passage which should not have been published except on the most unquestionable proof: "A planter stated to a sugar refiner in New York that it was found the best economy to work off the stock of negroes once in seven years." Truly, the credulity of

fectly English. It would be difficult to point to this Louisiana planter; and, we venture to say, that the sugar refiner might not be so readily forthcoming to support the indictment. If he is, he should come forth,

membered, he said, how the black soldiers used to mess with the whites in the Revolutionary war." Had Miss Martineau asked the reason of this change, which she should have done, she would have found that it was a change which was altogether confined to those regions where slavery had been done away with! The black | Miss Martineau on the subject of slave cruelty is persoldiers of whom Lafayette spoke were slaves, and were satisfied with their condition of inferiority. By emancipation, the coarse and uneducated negro became lifted into a condition to which his intellect did not entitle him, and to which his manners were unequal-he became pre-like an honest man, and denounce by name the heartsumptuous accordingly, and consequently offensive;-less wretch by whom the speech was uttered. and the whites who had regarded him with favor in his inferior and proper place, could not easily endure him as a tyrant, for such always is one lifted into a condition beyond his merits. The case is very different in the south, where slavery exists.* There the negro is not hated. Far from it. He is there regarded as filling his true place, and as occupying his just position; and while he does so, he does not offend, but meets with favor and indulgence. It is only in the northern regions, where he contends for an equality with a people to whom he is morally and physically inferior, that he provokes hatred, and lives in a state of continual personal insecurity. We proceed with Miss Martineau. "When to all this is added that tremendous curse, the possession of irresponsible power over slaves," &c. There is no such irresponsibility in America. The laws protect the slave as a being of an inferior caste, it is true; but they do protect him. He is secured from murder as effectually as the white man, and from all wanton or aggravated punishments. That there are instances in which he suffers wrong, brutality and loss of life, is un-val in Kentucky or Virginia, (we forget which, and the questionable; but these risks are not peculiar to the slave.

The hatred which Miss M. has seen in the eyes of the clergymen, and the ladies, while speaking of this subject (see p. 382, vol. I,) was only seen through the medium of her heated and extreme prejudice. She looks, as 'through a glass darkly.' Her eyes are jaundiced-they are not healthy. They need the operation of that great oculist, Truth,-and even he will not be able to operate upon her with success, until she has first had them well washed by that gentle handmaid, whom moralists call Humility. As yet, she is too talkative to listen, and too dogma

tical to learn, even from truth himself.

I need not refer to the frequent demolition of the houses and the property of the negroes which take place at the north. This the abolitionists will ascribe to the slaveholders. They already

We have been apt to think and say, in the south, that there were few people so very happy, hearty and well satisfied with their condition, as the southern negro. Such, indeed, has been the general admission of the traveller; but the testimony of Miss Martineau is far otherwise. She never saw "in any brute an expression of countenance so low, so lost, as in the most degraded class of negroes. There is some life and intelligence in the countenance of every animal; even in that of the silly sheep, nothing so dead as the vacant, unheeding look of the depressed slave is to be seen."* But that it was necessary to the opinions of Miss M. that such a depression of countenance and such brutality should result from slavery, we think it probable that such would not have been her observation. But it is curious, not to say amusing, to remark how singularly indulgent our senses become to the prevailing moods and desires of our minds. An instance of this lately met my eye in the travels of a very pleasant writer and amiable citizen of our country, Mr. Hoffman of New York. On his arri

volume is not by us,) he sees, for the first time, one of those sights which remind him painfully that he is in a slave state. What is that sight? A stout, able-bodied white man is sitting or lying at his ease in his piazza, while an old negro is at work in the fields without. Now this is what we see hourly in the streets of New York. We continually encounter the nabob riding in his chariot, or sitting at his palace windows, while the aged laborer plies his heavy task of paving the streets, or piling wood or bricks, or doing a thousand things far more laborious than the task of any slave in the south. The one proves the existence of slavery no more than the other. They both simply testify to the universal inequalities of fortune in all parts of the world.

ascribe an influence to the slaveholders over the most noble "There is an obligation by law to keep an overseer, communities of the north (as Miss Martineau does in her acto obviate insurrection." This is said of Alabama. We count of the friendly relations of Boston and Charleston) which is not less insulting and degrading to those communities, than it are not aware of the obligation by law to keep an overis complimentary to the minds and characters of those supposed seer, and we believe there is none in Carolina; but it so to influence them. But this is ridiculous. The south,--Miss strikes us as sufficient authority for doing so, that the Martineau tells us in the very next breath,-is teaching disunion, profits of the plantation would be sadly diminished because she has no influence. She also treats us with frequent anecdotes of the envy and hatred of the latter to the north. The without one; and in Carolina, as in New England, the true reason for the hostility of the whites to the blacks in the interest of the proprietor is a paramount motive. We free states, is that given in the text. The latter become pre-know, indeed, of no part of the world, where, if the sumptuous; and their habits of idleness increase their presump-subordinates be numerous, the overseer can well be tion. The complaint of the white citizens of the northern cities dispensed with. They are employed, if not necessary, terms with the whites. In fact they will not generally labor if in all the factories in the free states. According to Miss they can help it. They will do light work--they will job, brush boots, go on errands, sweep, tinker, and thieve; but they avoid the most manly and honorable toils, which the laboring whites boldly undertake and resolutely perform. The black seeks for the menial situation, and will always be considered-as he must be--an inferior, until he grapples with the most difficult and the greatest undertakings of the community.

is constantly to this effect. The blacks do not labor on the same

It is the testimony of most English travellers, Miss Martineau among them, that the American countenance (that of the white man) was that of one careworn, and prematurely old. This is true of the commercial community. Touching the negroes, we may quote a dozen passages from Miss Martineau, however, which do not consist with the preceding.

Martineau, the purpose of the overseer is to prevent | to the slaves,-and the budget of horrors, brutalities,

that which it would be equally his policy, as a white man, to prevent if not one. He is in the same ship with the employer, and the storm which would destroy the one, would never spare the other.

and miscellaneous vices, which the book of Miss M. unfolds, as of occurrence among the free people of the country, should have taught her to hesitate ere she ascribed the evil to slavery. The very abolition of singing and dancing, as the result of the religion, must

"For any responsible service," says Miss Martineau, "slaves are quite unfit."* This is not true; but al-sufficiently show the sort of religion which was busy ; lowing it to be so, Miss M. infers that it is because they are slaves that they are thus irresponsible; and yet we all know how superior is the Virginia and Carolina negro, not only to the people from whom they came, but to the aboriginal North Americans, who invariably defer to them; and, in many cases, as in that of Micanopy and Abraham, make them the " sensekeepers" or "sense-bearers," that is, counsellors and advisers of the nation.

"We have our slaves and mean to keep them," was never uttered by any southern gentleman, by way of argument on the subject of slavery; but simply in answer to a party seeking to exercise a power in the councils of the government, upon a subject upon which the jurisdiction of government is expressly denied by the southron. She asserts that the Southampton insurrection took place "before the abolition movement began." Before it was generally detected,† she should say, for incendiary pamphlets, tracts, papers and preachers had been, according to the assertion of the slaveholders, common enough among the slaves before. But this she will probably deny as a gross slander upon the abolitionists themselves, from whom she has a different account.

and should certainly have produced some pause in the mind of one so subtle on most subjects as the writer, whether the religion itself which, at the outset, subverted the innocent and natural recreations of a people, was not likely to produce even greater evils than it professed to cure. The philosophical mind has long since been anxiously watchful of the fearful progress of a gloomy bigotry throughout the land.*

There is one passage in Miss Martineau's book which calls for the serious attention of the philosopher. We quote the passage entire. She is describing the state asylum, for lunatics, in Columbia, South Carolina. "I observed that no people of color were visible in any part of the establishment. I inquired whether negroes were as subject to insanity as whites. Probably; but no means were known to have been taken to ascertain the fact. From the violence of their passions, there could be no doubt that insanity must exist among them. Were such insane negroes ever seen? No one present had ever seen any. Where were they then? It was some time before I could get a clear answer to this: but my friend the physician said, at length, that he had no doubt they were kept in outhouses, chained to logs, to prevent their doing mischief." The fact above statednot the conjecture of the physician-is a curious one, and well deserves the consideration of the public. It is singular, indeed, that we should find so very few insane persons among the blacks. The restraints of labor, tending to the subjection of those brutal passions of which Miss Martineau speaks, and which are not in consequence so active, I am inclined to think, in the negro as in the white man, must greatly abridge the * On this point the notes of Miss Martineau are full of contra-inferior activity of their minds, may be one cause of tendency to insanity; and it may be that, the generally dictions. In one place we are told, that the slaves prove themselves susceptible of education in numberless instances, (that their security from this dreadful malady. Certain it is, they are susceptible of continual improvement there is no sen- that we have few or no madmen among the negroes. sible slaveholder who will not assert, and that they have im-The idea that they are chained in outhouses to logs, is proved and are improving in their bondage, there is no honest idle enough; since, in that condition, they would re

The failure of christian preaching among slaves, in making them any better, is insisted upon as the result of the institution. "The testimony of slaveholders was explicit as to no moral improvement having taken place in consequence of the introduction of religion. There was less singing and dancing; but as much lying, drinking, and stealing as ever." It is to be feared that this failure of the teachers is not confined merely

observer who will venture to deny:) in another, they are denied the ability even to cut out the most common garments. The book is full of these contradictions, and in either case the assertion is made to prove the odiousness of slavery. If the negro is alleged to be capable of improvement, she insists he ought to be pable, it is only because he has been degraded by slavery into fatuity. We may add, that some of the best tailors and mantuamakers in the southern states are slaves. In the cities, all of the hair-dressers and barbers, many of the butchers, and sundry of the tavern-keepers, are slaves or free negroes.

free, in order properly to exercise his capacity-if he be inca

quire the constant attention of one or more able slaves, which a master would not be willing to afford; and would be, in other respects, a monstrous annoyance. Were insanity at all common among them, “it would be," in Miss Martineau's own language, "the interest of masters to provide for their useless or mischievous

Miss Martineau should have remembered, while ascribing to slavery the defeat and failure of the professors of religion to Speaking of the Southampton insurrection, Miss Martineau make any impression upon the slaves, what she has herself said says "it happened before the abolition movement began; for it of their progress among the Indians, who are freed from all the is remarkable that no insurrections have taken place since the restraints which she deems so pernicious to the slaves. The friends of the slave have been busy afar off."-" Whereas re-gloomy and ascetic doctrines of our teachers have resulted only bellions broke out as often as once a month before, there have in the greater depravation of the savage; while the French been none since." The effect is here mistaken for a cause. Catholics, who taught an easier faith, and indulgent laws of The insurrection ceased the moment that the labors of the abo-exercise and recreation, have been eminently successful in im. litionists were discovered, and when they were compelled to "be busy afar off." The fact is a remarkable one. The moment that the south grew angry at the abolitionists and drove their laborers away, and burned their pamphlets and papers, the insurrections, which had "broke out as often as once a month before," entirely ceased. Miss Martineau should get glass eyes.

proving them. "Near Little Traverse, in the northwest part of Michigan," says Miss Martineau, "there is an Indian village full of orderly and industrious inhabitants, employed chiefly in agriculture. The English and Americans have never succeeded with the aborigines so well as the French; and it may be doubted whether the clergy have been a much greater blessing than the

traders."

physical injuries, or by a neglect, or perversion of their morals, is not more impolitic than it is dishonorable. We cannot blame Miss Martineau for this chapter. The truth-though it is not all truth-is quite enough to sustain her and it; and we trust, that its utterance may have that beneficial effect upon the relations of master and slave in our country, which the truth is at all times most likely to have everywhere. Still we are not satisfied with the spirit with which Miss M. records the grossness which fills this chapter:-she has ex

negroes ;" and this-were there sufficient occasion- dians; and to treat them brutally, whether by wanton would have been the case. But, in truth, there is little or no madness in South Carolina. The Lunatic Asylum, which originated with the late William Crafts, of Charleston, and was pushed through the Legislature mainly by his efforts, is not a popular institution in the state-as it is known to be unprofitable, and was believed to be unnecessary. The patients are few-not enough to support the establishment-and these, in half the number of instances, are drawn from other states. The few cases of madness known in the state, prior to the establishment of the Asylum, were kept inhibited a zest in searching into the secrets of our prisona small building, devoted to the purpose, in Charleston, connected with the Poor Establishment of that city. Among the inmates, there were one or two negroes, both women-I do not think that there were more. The number was greater during the Revolution, when the building appropriated to their confinement, stood in the same neighborhood with the fabric more recently put to their use, and both within a short distance of the Place of Arms-or arsenal--which, when Charleston fell into the possession of the British, was assigned as the depôt for the reception of the weapons of the defenders. A melancholy fate attended the maniacs in consequence of this propinquity. The American prisoners, ordered to deposit their arms in the arsenal, under the feelings of mortified pride and shame, which naturally enough followed the surrender of their city, threw the weapons and ammunition confusedly together into the hall designed for them, without any regard to the danger of such carelessness. The consequences were dreadful. The building was blown up-the guard of British soldiers, fifty in number, destroyed-and the contiguous houses, the poor house and mad house, destroyed also, with the greater number of their unhappy inmates. But to return. Miss Martineau does not let this opportunity slip, of conveying an imputation of inhumanity at the expense of the slaveholders. "No member of society is charged with the duty of investigating cases of disease and suffering among slaves, who cannot make their own state known. They are wholly at the mercy of their owners." We had almost called these, wilful mistatements. The grand juries of the country are bound to take cognizance of all such matters, and frequently do so. The slaves, themselves, will always contrive to make their sufferings known, and have few scruples in complaining, where they have the slightest occasion to do so. The interest of the owner in the life and health of his slave, it is true, obviates the necessity of any particular supervision of the subject by the public authorities. A madman chained in an outhouse, would be a sufficient source of disquiet to all the country round; and the neighbor-mind of the white will no longer be jealous, and that hood would soon rise en masse, and compel his removal to a place of safekeeping.

house in the slave states, which she does not seem to have shown in any other quarter. The female prostitution of the south is studiously looked after, as if it were the peculiar result of slavery-she makes no corresponding inquiry into the prostitution of the north. She picks up no tales of vice in that quarter-no rapes-no murders-no robberies-no poisoning-no stabbing. She has addressed her whole mind to the search after these things in the slave states; and with a strange singleness of vision, she has entirely forborne the haunts of the negro at the north, and the degraded classes in the free states. She says nothing whatsoever about them. Had she demanded of Mr. Tappan a copy of the Report of the Commissioners of the Magdalen Asylum of New York, of which he was the President and one of the founders, she would have been told by that publication that, in the city of New York alone, not including blacks, there are ten thousand professional prostitutes. We do not answer for the truth of this assertion; but as Miss M. has given elsewhere a most lavish eulogy upon the veracity and general good character of the abolitionists, and as Mr. Tappan has been heretofore regarded as the very Coryphous of that fraternity, she will be able to determine for herself as to the degree of confidence which she should yield to this statement. The fact is, that in the southern states the prostitutes of the communities are usually slaves, unless they are imported from the free states. The negro and the colored woman in the south, supply the place, which, at the north, is usually filled with factory and serving girls. The evil is a dreadful one in both regions, but having its good more particularly in the south. The result of illicit intercourse between the differing races, is the production of a fine specimen of physical manhood, and of a better mental organization, in the mulatto; and, in the progress of a few generations, that, which would otherwise forever prove a separating wall between the white and the black,-the color of the latter,-will be effectually removed; and when the eye ceases to be offended, the

of the colored person will gradually approximate to the general capacity, the inflexible courage, and directness of purpose, which, at present, constitute the moral difference between the two people. But let us turn from this unpleasant subject.

There is one painful chapter in these two volumes, under the head of "Morals of Slavery." It is painful, because it is full of truth. It is devoted to the abuses among slaveholders of the institution of slavery; and Perhaps it may be safe to say, that two-thirds of it gives a collection of statements, which, I fear, are in Miss M.'s books are more or less given to the slave intoo many cases founded upon fact, of the illicit and foul stitutions of the south, either in the shape of metaphyconduct of many among us, who make their slaves the sical speculation, the statement of supposed facts, or victims and the instruments alike, of the most licen- her declamation upon them. Setting forth with a resotious passions. Regarding our slaves as a dependant lution to uproot and utterly destroy an institution and inferior people, we are their natural and only guar-which she has previously resolved to be evil, she sees