sion of Congress, it would be made if the bargain were to be struck again.' It is manifest that, while the federal compact subsists in its present form, to make attacks upon slave property, is a violation of that compact. When it is rescinded, and then only, can we interfere with the Institutions of our neighbors.

As the Society places its hopes of ultimate success upon the popularity, the confidence, and the moral influence which it will one day obtain, it manifestly ought to do nothing to destroy that confidence, or to make any portion of the Union believe that it will act in violation of public order, or public law, or in subversion of the vested enjoyment of recognized property. It wishes to act under the sanction and within the pale of the laws of the land. It wishes to abolish slavery not by bloodshed, not by forcibly severing the slave from his master, but by the conviction on the mind of the master that it is for his interest to relinquish the slave.

Even were it practicable or lawful to emancipate by one act the whole of our slave population, still in our opinion it would be utterly inexpedient. The time is not yet ripe for total emancipation. Imagination can hardly conceive a greater evil that could befall our Southern brethren-not to mention our own case-than such a measure. Let us picture to ourselves nearly three millions of human beings without property, without education, suddenly left to their own resources, deprived by the same act of the means of subsistence, and of the right of demanding it from any other persons.What peace, what security can then exist, south of the Potomac. The demands of nature will and must be satisfied; and if a starving and lawless population cannot obtain food and shelter in any other way, they will turn every village into a desert, and every house into a funeral pyre, in the accomplishment of their object. Even their gladness for recovered freedom, would be sufficient to convert such a population into murderers. It is urged that a spirit of gratitude will keep the newly emancipated blacks in quiet. But such is not the course of nature. All bodies of men under sudden and immense changes are ungovernable. The fervid spirit of liberty worked so strongly, when the orderly people of Massachusetts were delivered from the comparatively easy burdens of the British supremacy, that it broke out in tumults and insurrections, which endangered the existence of the Commonwealth. And can

it be expected that better rule may be kept with a people acknowledging no law but their own feelings, when disenthralled, and placed within the reach of those whom education and habit have ever taught them to consider as their direst foes?

We dread and deprecate, then, the extension of the principles of those who, opposed both to slavery and Colonization, would let loose

the slaves like wild beasts, to desolate and possess the land. We have not arrived at such a sickly pitch of philanthropy, as to advocate a measure which would certainly lead to the extermination of one of the parties at the South, and would leave the other in a deplorable state of weakness and distress, merely because every man having an abstract right to freedom, that right should be carried into immediate fruition, be the consequences what they may. In point of fact, the whole composition of society is based upon the relinquishment or violation of abstract rights. The power of inheritance is in derogation of that abstract right of the living which takes all control of property from the dead, and leaves it for the enjoyment of the first occupant. Punishment also is a violation of the abstract right, in virtue of which no one man is answerable to others for his injustice to a third. But do we therefore, leave the criminal merely to the vengeance of God? Men always run into absurdities when they act on abstract principles, without taking into consideration the existing circumstances which modify or control them. If we insist on the enforcement of all abstract rights, we must go back to a state of nature, to which the only road lies through as many centuries of anarchy, as have been necessary to bring mankind from the state of nature to that of civilization.

For ourselves we have no fears of the difficulty of emancipation. We consider it one of the least obstacles with which the Society has to contend. We are willing to believe and hope, that slavery among the best and most intelligent Southern men, is looked upon as an enormous evil, and a crying injustice; and that it is still supported because of the belief of the utter impracticability of getting rid of it. When the Colonization Society has sufficiently developed the means for obtaining this end, there can be no doubt that the southern masters will gladly contribute their aid to relieve themselves from their burdens. This is abundantly demonstrated by the experience of the last few years, as it is well known that the Colonization Society has been obliged to refuse hundreds of emancipated slaves offered to them by their masters for the purpose of transportation to Liberia, on account of the low state of their finanUntil this difficulty is removed, the operations of the Society cannot be very much extended, and its success in its limited sphere will only serve to point out the way and demonstrate the practi ability of rational, humane, and universal emancipation.

ces.

In the mean time, the Society is doing all that it may. To the extent of its power, it offers to the African a fertile region of his native soil, and offers to make him the paramount Lord of the soil. It offers education and respectability, the means of wealth and the certainty of independence. It no longer sends out its emi

grants, on a doubtful or dangerous expedition, to a barren waste. When we compare the prospects of these modern pioneers of civilization with those of our own pilgrim ancestors, how infinitely more happy, more encouraging does the situation of the former appear. Our fathers were obliged to leave by stealth, their native land where they had been so persecuted that their injuries overcame even the love of country, and exiled themselves forever. They were obliged to cross a stormy s a, and to encounter on their arrival here, the extremities of cold and hunger, and to behold the companions of their wanderings dying around them, while they feared to let even the voice of their sufferings be heard across the Atlantic, lest it should be answered by new persecutions.

On the other hand, the African leaves this country, which has always been to him as the land of the stranger, with every comfort and convenience which a liberal spirit of benevolence can bestow; and he is cheered from the shore by the acclamations of thousands bidding him God speed. On his arrival, he is welcomed by friends who are ready to point out the means of life, and to assist him until he can win independence from his own exertions. He stands on that soil, a regenerated being; he feels the pride of freedom, he looks upon one of the most fertile regions of the earth, and rejoices in the knowledge that he has no superior, that all around is his own. When he looks further, when he reflects upon the influence which his exertions and his example will have upon posterity; when he considers that he is setting in motion the causes which will ultimately effect the regeneration of his fellow men in both hemispheres, well may he say, his is the proudest destiny that has ever fallen to the lot of mortal man.

The advantages of colonization to the African, are so manifest now, that the practicability of it is demonstrated, that I can hardly realize, that serious, honest objections are made to it. If there be any question upon which good men of all parties can unite, this appears to be the one. I can see no bounds to the advantages of this cause, until Africa is christianized and civilized, and the very name of slavery abolished throughout the world. Well might Finley, the apostle of the cause, make the prophetic exclamation, 'I know this scheme is from God.' That prophecy has now become history. The scheme was from God-and God has prospered it. The seed, which, when planted, was no bigger than the grain of mustard seed, has taken root, and sprung up, and spread its branches and yielded its fruit, and promises to become the greatest of the trees of the forest.

LETTER FROM THE SOUTH.

THE following letter, from an accomplished and intelligent gentleman in North Carolina to a distinguished gentleman in the city of Boston, is contained in the Columbian Centinel. It exhibits a specimen of the sentiments which generally, if not universally, prevail on this subject throughout the southern states, and may enable some of our infatuated agitators to perceive the folly and madness of their course:

Sallisbury, Rowan County, N. C., May 29th, 1853.

DEAR SIR,-I shall offer no other apology for troubling you with a letter at this time, than the importance of its matter. I have chosen to address you as being a distinguished philanthropist; and on more than one occasion, a great sufferer in the cause of real humanity; and from the past history of your life, I feel confident that I was not so deceived in the high estimate I formed of your character during our too short acquaintance, that I need fear you have turned a visionary.

It is frequently asserted in many of our southern newspapers, that there exists in the northern and eastern sections of our country, a disposition to interfere with slavery. This I have confidently denied on the strength of conversations I had with distinguished gentlemen when in your section; and on the authority of Mr. Webster's gratifying assertion, that there prevails at the north such a feeling on this subject as the south would wish. More than two years since, in New England, I heard Garrison, whom I looked upon as a misguided enthusiast, and literally, a monomaniac, on the condition of the negroes in America; and I was happy to find that he was discountenanced by the sober and really benevolent portion of the community. I begin, however, to doubt, if I have not been somewhat in error. Something, I know not well by what class, nor as yet to what extent, surely is agitated among you. I am not a miscellaneous reader of newspapers, and 1 receive none from New England, so that my information is limited to extracts occasionally made into more southern journals. Among these, I was greatly struck by the following paragraph taken from the Boston Commercial Gazette: 'At the last quarterly meeting of the New England AntiSlavery Society, the following resolution was adopted unanimously. Among the gentlemen who advocated the adoption was Mr. Amasa Walker, the candidate of the Anti-Masons for Congress.

"Resolved, That the principles and measures of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, are consistent with every duty which we owe to our country, and that benevolence to the masters not less than to the slaves, requires us to advocate the doctrine of IMMEDIATE ABOLITION."

Here is the germ, I fear, (and I tremble while I think of it) that will work the dissolution of our glorious Union. For the moment that interference with the condition of our slaves is seriously attempted by any considerable party in the non-slaveholding states, that moment this Union is at an end. A determination not to suffer the free states to intermeddle in any manner, with the condition of the slaves, unites in them with perfect unanimity every political party, every religious sect, every class of society in the slave-holding states. And I pledge myself for the accuracy of the opinion, that not even an attempt to settle the question growing out of the agitation of slavery, would be made on the floor of Congress.

I love the Union with an unsurpassable affection; language cannot express the strength of it. I derive my being from the early pilgrims of New England, and I shrink from the idea of that ever becoming to me a foreign country. You know that I have regarded my rank of an AMERICAN CITIZEN as a prouder birthright than that of the haughtiest noble of Europe, whose lineage is lost in the darkness of antiquity. But sooner than suffer the Abolitionists to carry into execution their plans, I too would go for a dissolution of this Union. I believe, before God, that justice and humanity to slave, as well as to master, would require of me to do so. This is not a fitting occasion-neither is it necessary in addressing you, my friend, to dwell on the dangers to be apprehended from meddlesome ignorance in so delicate a relation as that of master and slave; nor to expatiate on the unwarrantable interference with the rights of others, nor on the violation of faith solemnly pledged even in the Constitution of our liberties, as is purposed by the Abolitionists. In portraying the dreadful consequences to the master, and still more to the slave, with the vices, crimes, bloodshed and horrors, that would follow immediate abolition, who would fail to be eloquent? But immediate abolition is an event quite out of the question; and one of the certain consequences of any movement, either on the part of the slaves or of the Abolitionists, is the riveting with tenfold severity the chains of the former. This any one may easily perceive, by examining the enactments on this subject, made since the distribution of Walker's pamphlet, and the Virginia_insurrection.

Do not conclude from my carnestness, that I believe the Abolitionists as yet, form a numerous or powerful party-but the contrary. Still, I wish, as much as lies in my humble self, to warn the good and intelligent to repress in its birth, by their strong reprobation, a visionary spirit, which, unchecked, will menace the Union of these United States, while it consigns to a