not necessarily inhibit all compulsory labor, and point to the rural code of St. Domingo and the apprentice system of the West-Indies; they are reproached with wishing to substitute one kind of slavery for another. But, in truth, they are under no obligation of duty or policy to propose any specific plan. No Temperance Society has felt itself bound, because it pronounced the traffick in ardent spirits to be sinful, to furnish venders with plans for employing their capitals in other occupations.

The details of emancipation, and the various legal provisions proper to render it safe and convenient, are not prescribed by the great principles of justice and religion, but by considerations of local policy. It is not probable, that if all the Southern Legislatures were sincerely anxious to abolish slavery, any two of them would do it in precisely the same manner, and under the same regulations. We have seen one plan pursued in St. Domingo, another in Bermuda and Antigua, a third in the other British WestIndies, and still different plans in South America.

Of all these plans, that adopted in Mexico, Bermuda, and Antigua, of immediate, total, and unqualified emancipation, will, there is reason to believe, be found in all cases the most safe and expedient.

This plan removes from the slave all cause for discontent. He is free, and his own master, and he can ask for no more. Yet he is, in fact, for a time, absolutely dependent on his late owner. He can look to no other person for food to eat, clothes to put on, or house to shelter him. His first wish, therefore is, to remain where he is, and he receives as a favor, permission to labor in the service of him whom the day before he regarded as his oppressor. But labor is no longer the badge of his servitude, and the consummation of his misery: it is the evidence of his liberty, for it is voluntary. For the first time in his life," he is a party to a contract. He negociates with his late master, and returns to the scene of his former toil, and the scene of his stripes and his tears, with a joyful heart, to labor for HIMSELF. The wages he has agreed to accept, will, in fact, be little more than the value of his maintenance; for it is not to be expected, that in a treaty with his employer, his diplo macy will gain for him any signal advantages; but still there

will be a charm in the very name of wages, which will make the pittance he receives, appear a treasure in his eyes. Thus will the transition from slave to free labor be effected instantaneously, and with scarcely any perceptible interruption of the ordinary pursuits of life. In the course of time, the value of negro labor, like all other vendible commodities, will be regulated by the supply and demand; and justice be done both to the planter and his laborers. The very consciousness, moreover, that justice is done to both parties, will remove their mutual suspicions and animosi ties, and substitute in their place, feelings of kindness and confidence. No white man in Antigua, surrounded as he is by blacks, now dreams of insurrection, or fears the midnight assassin. Can as much be said of our Southern planters ?

CHAPTER XI.

Danger of continued Slavery.

WHILE slave holders and Colonizationists delight to expatiate on the danger of immediate emancipation, and to represent its advocates as reckless incendiaries, ready to deluge the country in blood, they seem scarcely conscious that any danger is to be apprehended from slavery itself. Yet the whole history of slavery is a history of the struggles of the oppressed to recover their liberty. The Romans had their servile wars, in one of which forty thousand slaves were embodied in arms-Italy ravaged, and Rome herself menaced.

A European writer remarks: "The formidable rebellion of the Jamaica slaves, in 1762, is well known; and in almost every island in the Archipelago, have repeated insurrections broken out; sometimes the result of plans laid with the utmost secrecy, and very widely extended, always accompanied by the horrors of African warfare."

The destruction of property in Jamaica, in the insurrection of 1832, was estimated by the Legislature at

£1,154,583. Any commotion of the emancipated slaves, that should cost the island one-hundredth part of this sum, would be hailed both there and here, as demonstrative of the folly and hazard of emancipation.

And have we not in our own country, had melancholy, heart-rending proofs of the danger of slavery?

In 1712, and 1741, negro insurrections occurred in New-York, and we may judge of the alarm they excited, by the shocking means used to prevent their recurrence. Of the leaders of the last insurrection, thirteen were burned alive, eighteen hung, and eighty transported. In the single State of South-Carolina, there have been no less than seven insurrections designed or executed. In 1711, the House of Assembly complained of certain fugitive slaves, who "keep out armed, and robbing and plundering houses and plantations, and putting the inhabitants of this province in great fear and terror." In 1730, an open rebellion occurred, in which the negroes were actually armed and embodied. In 1739, there were no less than three rebellions, as appears from a petition from the Council and Assembly to the king, in which they complain of an “insurrection of our slaves, in which many of the inhabitants were murdered in a barbarous and cruel manner; and that was no sooner quelled, than another projected in Charleston, and a third lately in the very heart of the settlements, but happily discovered time enough to be prevented." In 1816, there was a conspiracy of the slaves in Camden and its vicinity, "the professed design of which was to murder all the whites and free themselves." The conspiracy in Charleston in 1822, and the sacrifice of human life to which it led, are well known. But in no instance, has the danger of slavery been so vividly illustrated, as in the tragedy of Southampton.

A fanatic slave conceived, from some supposed signs in the heavens, or peculiarity in the weather, that he was called by God to destroy the whites. He communicated his commission to five other slaves, who engaged to aid him in executing it. The conspirators agreed to meet at a certain place, on the night of the 21st August, 1831. They assembled at the appointed hour, and the leader, Nat Turner, beheld with surprise, a sixth man, who had not been invited by him to join in the enterprise, but who

had learned from another source, the cause of the meeting; and on inquiring for what purpose he had come, received the remarkable answer : "" My life is worth no more than that of others, and my liberty is as dear to me." With these six associates, Turner commenced the work of destruction. By sunrise, the number of murderers was swelled to four. teen, and by ten o'clock the same morning, to forty!

From the testimony given on the trial of Turner, and which has been published, it appears, that there was no previous concert, except between Turner and his six original associates, and that no white or free colored man was privy to their design.

The dates we have given of the various insurrections, prove conclusively, that they were in no degree connected with discussions respecting Abolition, and at the time of the Southampton massacre, there was no Anti-Slavery Society in the United States advocating immediate emancipation.

Abolitionists have been often charged with a desire to foment insurrections; but the charge is wholly gratuitous, and no proof whatever of such sublimated wickedness has ever been adduced against them. On the contrary, their characters, professions and conduct repel the calumny, The whole history of Abolition shows, that its only tendency is to ensure peace and safety.

We have brought facts to establish the danger of slavery; let us now attend to the confessions of slave holders to the same point. A South-Carolina writer, while urging the necessity of a stricter police over the slaves, thus describes them:

"Let it never be forgotten, that our negroes are truly the Jacobins of the country; that they are the anarchists, and the domestic enemy; THE COMMON ENEMY OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY, AND THE BARBARIANS WHO WOULD, IF THEY COULD, BECOME THE DESTROYERS Of our race.

The Southern Religious Telegraph says:

"Hatred to the whites, with the exception in some cases of attachment to the person and family of the master, is nearly universal among the black population. We have then a FOE cherished in our very bosoms-a foe WILLING

A refutation of the calumnies inculcated against the Southern and Western States,-Charleston, 1822.

TO DRAW OUR LIFE-BLOOD, whenever the opportunity is offered, and, in the mean time, intent on doing us all the mischief in his power."

Now, be it recollected, that these "destroyers of our race," these foes, willing "to draw the life-blood" of the whites, are rapidly advancing to an immense numerical majority. And on what grounds do the whites rest their hope of security from these Jacobins, and anarchists-on equal laws, the diffusion of education, and the influence of religion? Let Governor Haynes of South-Carolina, answer the question.

"A STATE OF MILITARY PREPARATION, must always be with us a state of perfect domestic security. A profound peace, and consequent apathy, may expose us to the danger of domestic insurrection." Message to the Legislature, 1833.

Thus, profound peace, which is a blessing to all other people, will be a curse to the slave holders, and they are to hold all that is dear to them by the tenure of military preparation!

Is it, we ask, possible, for any nation to have a worse population than that described in the preceding extracts, or to be doomed to a more deplorable fate, than that of perpetual military preparation?

We have now seen, what are the religious and political principles, and what are the historical facts which lead the American Anti-Slavery Society to recommend immediate emancipation to their Southern brethren.

But it is demanded, with an air of supercilious triumph, what have Northern men to do with slavery, and what right have they to interfere with the domestic institutions of the South? And is this question addressed to the followers of HIM who commanded his disciples to go into all the world, and to preach the Gospel to every creature?" As well might it be asked of the Christians of America, what they have to do with the religion of Brahma,—what right they have to interfere to rescue the widow from the burning pile, or the devotee from the wheels of Juggernaut ? Christians are no less bound by the injunction to "do good unto all men," to endeavor, by lawful means, to break the fetters of the slave, than to deliver the victim of Pagan