confined to the inferior men-the cyphers of the house. It very rarely happens, that a representative of conspicuous talent or services, fails of a re-election, if he desire it. In the Southern States, at least, there is as much stability in this respect, as could be expected or even desired. Neither must it be forgotten, that most of our politicians in Congress, go through a previous noviciate in the Legislatures of the States, and bring with them into their new business, a considerable stock of experience. Although, therefore, there be some inconveniences arising out of this frequency of change in the constitution of those bodies, they do by no means amount to any very serious evil.

On the subject of Southern institutions, we have been most agreeably surprised by the opinions of Captain Hall. We had every reason to expect, from what we heard was his manner of expressing himself while among us, a far more uncompromising hostility to this part of our social polity, even than to the spirit of democracy itself. We were aware, however, that he was doing all he could to inform himself fully upon the subject—that he conversed freely and frequently about it with some of our most experienced and intelligent men, and that he went "poking about," as he terms it, into every hole and corner where anything connected with the condition of the slave or the master, was to be seen or heard. It is gratifying to us to be able to state, that the result of this investigation, thus undertaken with a prejudice against us, is precisely such as we think all reasonable men must come to, who examine the question in any other spirit than that of a jacobinical and murderous fanaticism.

It is, indeed, one of the most extraordinary revolutions that have ever occurred in the history of the human mind-the change of opinion on this subject within the last forty years. Before that time, the voice of a few philanthropists was heard, here and there, amidst the busy hum of a prosperous commerce, pleading for the victims of that infernal traffic, by which the great trading nations of Europe were endeavoring to swell the mass of colonial produce for their own benefit. Virginia, now so deeply intent upon the means of getting rid of this evil, in vain exerted herself to prevent it. It was decreed by those who had our destinies in their hands, that the Southern regions of America should be crammed with this barbarous and abominable population-the commercial navy of the whole world vomited it forth upon us by hundreds of cargoes-every capitalist embarked in the profitable speculation-every insurance office greedily snatched at the premium paid for indemnity against the chances of this traffic in blood and tears-and in the most rational department of modern jurisprudence, the question was seriously

entertained whether "these beings with immortal souls," might not, in case of necessity, be flung overboard like any other merchandize, according to the Lex Rhodia de Jactu! As long as colonial possessions were held in high estimation, there was no portion of mankind worth mentioning, but partook in the guilt, whatever it was, of this commerce. The whole world was implicated in it. It was a conspiracy of all Europe and the commercial part of this continent, not only against Africa, but, in a more aggravated sense, against these Southern regions. The sternest justice can demand no more than that we should be thought as bad as those who brought this evil upon us. But, in a more considerate view of the case, the pander even of a confessedly vicious appetite, is worse than the libertine whose lusts he is base enough to subserve; and it is an absurdity without a parallel in the whole history of human extravagance and folly, to hear the people of Old England or New England, or of any other portion of Christendom, coolly lecturing us upon the sin of keeping our fellow-men in bondage! They accuse us of violating the law of nature, who, by the law which they themselves prescribed, drew us into this supposed offence! They talk about the imprescriptible rights of mankind, and question the very titles which they became bound to warrant, by selling us the property! A father, whose vices had entailed disease upon his offspring, and who should cast him off for this hereditary uncleanness, presents something like a parallel-the only one we have been able to imagine-to this instance of prodigious ef frontery.

Whether slavery is, or is not reconcileable with what is called by philosophers the law of nature, we really do not know. We find the greatest theoretical publicists divided upon the subject, and it is, no doubt, a very good thesis for young casuists to discuss in a college moot-club. We shall not undertake it, for we have no taste for abstractions. We will not quote Grotius or Huber. It is enough for us, that when the Southern people consented to receive the African race into their territory, it was upon the express condition of perpetual service, and that this condition was then as lawful as any other arrangement of civil society. Servitus est constitutio juris gentium. It was a Christian Emperor, zealous above all men, to promote the manumission of slaves, who laid down this rule five centuries after Christ had positively enjoined obedience upon slaves, eo nomine.* It was emphatically the law of nations. No people, from the

This is the proper translation, and were the Bible read in the original Greek or in a literal version, we should, probably, be less troubled with the ravings of fanatics upon this subject.

most remote antiquity, had ever thought of calling it in question. They all deduced the right of holding an enemy in bondage, from that of murdering him in battle, as in all things else whatever is greater contains the less. They could see nothing very absurd in the conduct of him who went out to destroy, if he saved a life, by which his own country was to gain as much as the enemy lost. His intents, perhaps, were not very charitable, but his reasoning was certainly consequential. The Thracian or Theban captive, instead of being devoured by the vultures, became a useful labourer in Attica. The modern world has kept up the greater sin; but it affects to shudder at the minorit concedes the premises in this dreadful enthymeme, but thinks it criminal to adopt the conclusion. This may be all very well for some people; but we must be allowed to hold on to the old logic a little longer. We have still occasion for it in justifying, not ourselves, but our present revilers, if possible, in their own eyes. They told us that they had conquered these slaves in battle-that they had acquired them fairly jure belli— at least, that they had delivered them out of the hands of victorious and cruel enemies. They will not wonder, therefore, if we are steadfast in our original convictions, and do not yet see how property, recognized and confirmed by all mankind in all ages, can be no property at all—especially after it has passed into the possession of a bona fide purchaser, has been consecrated by an uninterrupted prescription from time immemorial, and identified with the whole frame and constitution of civil society.

Captain Hall, as will appear from the extracts we shall presently make, considers this great question altogether in a practical light. He will not consent to take it up in the abstract, as if it were res integra. The following passage, in which he quotes a member of our own fraternity, will serve at once, as an expression of his opinion and our own.

"A few days afterwards, in the same State, I had an opportunity of conversing with a gentleman of whose candour I had an equally high opinion with that of my friend above, but whose views, I think, are rather more sound.

"Force-power-or whatever name you give it,' said he, by which one nation gains the ascendancy over another, seems to be, in the practice of life, the grand rule which regulates the intercourse of man with man. Civilization beats the savage out of the woods by its superior intellectual resources. Free and well-governed nations acquire a power over those which are mismanaged. The sovereigns, whether they be the many or the few, who have got the upper hand, give the law, and the inferior party submits. This may not appear just, but so it is; such is the order of our moral and political nature. It has been

só from all time, and will continue, so long as there remain any distinctions between human beings. The slave question is merely one of the varieties of this principle. The blacks were brought to America when these matters were not treated philosophically; they have since extended themselves far and wide, and have now become, to all intents and purposes, an integral part of our society.

"The masters and the slaves, from long habit, and universal usage, have fallen into certain modes of thinking and of acting relatively to one another; and as this understanding is mutual and complete, the whole machinery goes on with the greatest uniformity, and much more cheerfulness than you will at first believe possible. At least an equal period of time, but perhaps ten or a hundred times as long a period may be required to unwind the thread again, and to free the country from this moral and political entanglement.

"In the mean time, it is in vain to deny that-circumstances as they now are the negroes belong almost to a different race-so different, that no philanthropist or abolitionist, however enthusiastic, pretends to say that an amalgamation can take place between them and the whites. There is no reasoning upon this point-it seems a law of our nature, and is felt, probably, as strongly in other countries as here. What English gentlemen, for example, would give his daughter in marriage to a negro? But the prejudice, or whatever it be, is just as strong in the Southern States of America, with respect to a political community of rights and privileges. And if changes in this respect are ever to be brought about, they can only be accomplished by the slowest conceivable degress. In the state of New-York, the negroes have the privilege of voting; and you will see over the country many mulattoes: but these are mere drops in the ocean of this dark question; and we are still centuries before that period which many very sincere men believe has already arrived.

"No one can tell how these things will modify themselves in time. There may be many bloody insurrections aided by foreign enemiesor the States may separate, and civil wars ensue-or servile wars may follow-or the blacks and whites may, in process of ages, by the combination of some moral and political miracle, learn to assimilaté; but in the mean time, I suspect the present generation can do nothing of any consequenc to advance such an object. The blacks, who form the labouring population, are so deplorably ignorant, and so vicious, that in almost every instance where freedom has been given to them, they have shown how unfit they are, to make a right use of it. The practice of manumission is, in consequence every where discouraged, and in many places rendered by law impossible, except in cases of high public service."

We can add nothing to this condensed, yet satisfactory view of the subject. Whatever may be his feelings or opinions in relation to slavery in the abstract, no sensible or conscientious man would undertake to act upon them in so vital a concern, without looking fully into the consequences. Innovators or Revolutionists who go only for an imaginary abstract recti

tude and symmetry in government, are always dangerous, and sometimes the greatest curse with which heaven in its wrath can visit an offending people. There is some excuse for them, however, when they are liable to suffer the consequences of their own presumption and folly. The destruction of a pestilent madman, who has been the means of converting a whole country into a scene of conflagration and blood, is to be sure, but a poor atonement for such unutterable horrors. But language affords no suitable epithet for the cowardly and atrocious wickedness of wretches, who, under the pretext of a sympathy with one order or portion of a community with which they have nothing to do, presume to recommend or to to dictate changes, of which they can neither judge of the propriety, nor feel the consequences. When one contemplates the character of a ruthless and reckless jacobin, like Marat or Danton, the idea that he was destined, at last, to perish by his own measures, redeems him in some small degree from the horror and execration which his crimes excited. L'Ami du Peuple might be rewarded for his philosophic patriotism, as he deserved to be, by the knife of the guillotine. But when Brissot came out as l'Amides Noirs, an ocean rolled between this canting hypocrite and the frightful scenes occasioned soon after, by the application of his doctrines. It is of this, that the slave-holders of the English West-India Islands, have had so much reason to complain. Men were declaring war without peace, truce or quarter against them; whose persons, assuredly, were never to be exposed to the dangers of war, and whose appetites, for their dinners would not have been in the smallest degree, affected by the intelligence, that every slave-holder in the world had been exterminated. We are even disposed to doubt, whether, their exalted ideas of poetical justice would be quite satisfied with anything short of this. There was a time, however, when these very men held the following language. "The negroes are truly the jacobins of the West-India Islands-they are the anarchists, the terrorists, the domestic enemy. Against them it becomes rival nations to combine, and hostile governments to coalese. If Prussia and Austra felt their existence to depend on a union against the revolutionary arms in Europe (and who does not lament, that their coalition was not more firm and enlightened?) a closer alliance is imperiously recommended to France, and Britain, and Spain, and Holland, against the common enemy of civilized society, the destroyer of the European name in the new world. We have the greatest sympathy for the unmerited sufferings of the unhappy negroes; we detest the odious traffic which has poured their myriads into the Antilles :