“2. That any scheme of emancipation ought to be prospective, operating exclusively upon negroes born after the adoption of the scheme, and connected with colonization.

“3. That we recommend the following points as those to be insisted on in the new constitution, and that candidates be run in every county in the State, favorable to these or similar constitutional provisions. 1. The absolute prohibition of the importation of any more slaves into Kentucky. 2. The complete power in the people of Kentucky to enforce and perfect in or under the new constitution, a system of gradual prospective emancipation of slaves.

“4. This convention confines its recommendation to the question of negro slavery, and makes no expression of opinion on any other topic. HENRY CLAY, of Bourbon, President. HENRY WINGATE, } V. Presidents. W. P. BOON, } Frank Ballinger, } Secretaries. Bland Ballard, } O. S. Poston, } Assistant Secretaries. Samuel Shy, }

Such is the standard raised by the friends of emancipation in Kentucky. The struggle maintained with so much vigor around it has for the present ended. The members for the convention to revise the constitution of the State have been elected, and not more than one or two emancipationists if any, according to the public papers, have been elected. It may be difficult for those out of the State to discern all the causes of this lamentable defeat. There are, however, some things connected with the subject patent to every observer. In the first place, the failure of the cause of emancipation is not to be referred to any want of ability on the part of its advocates. Those advocates comprise some of the most distinguished men not only of Kentucky but of the Union; men who have no superiors in the power to control public sentiment. If the cause of freedom could have been carried, it must have been carried by such men. If any appeals could produce conviction, it would have been produced by the addresses mentioned at the head of this article. Self-interest, ignorance, and prejudice are proof against any thing, but the human mind, when unbiassed and sufficiently enlightened to comprehend their import, cannot resist such arguments nor harden itself against such sentiments as are here presented. It must be conceded then, that the cause of emancipation in Kentucky has failed for the present, in spite of the exertions of men of the highest order of talents of which the country can boast.

Again, some seem disposed to refer this failure to the lukewarmness of the churches in Kentucky. We are not prepared to speak on this subject for other churches, but surely this reproach cannot fairly be brought against our own church. The Presbyterians have taken the lead in this struggle. There is not a prominent man in the Synod of Kentucky, who has not been conspicuous for his zeal and efforts in behalf of emancipation. No names in connection with this subject, are more prominent than those of Drs. R. J. Breckinridge, John C. Young, William L. Breckinridge, and of the Rev. Mr. Robinson of Frankfort. As far as we know, there is not a single Presbyterian minister, whose name is found among the advocates of slavery. We advert to this fact with the more satisfaction because the steady opposition of our General Assembly to the principles of the abolitionists, has subjected our church to the reproach or misconstruction of fanatical parties both at home and abroad. It is now seen that the principles which our church has always avowed on this subject, are as much opposed to the doctrine that slavery is a good institution, which ought to be perpetuated, as to the opposite dogma, that slaveholding is in itself sinful, and a bar to Christian communion. With perfect consistency our church has borne its testimony against the doctrine that immediate and universal emancipation was the imperative duty of all slaveholders; and the no less fanatical opinion that one class of men may rightfully keep another in ignorance and degradation, in order to keep them in bondage. It has steadily inculcated on the one hand, that the holding of slaves is analogous to political despotism, and is therefore right or wrong according to circumstances; and, on the other, that neither the slave owner nor despot have a right to use his power to prevent the intellectual, moral, and social improvement of its subjects, in order that his authority may be undisturbed and perpetuated. The old school Presbyterians have been the great conservative body, in reference to this subject in our country. They have stood up as a wall against the flood of abolitionism, which would have overwhelmed the Church and riven asunder the State. But at the same time they have been the truest friends of the slaves and the most effectual advocates of emancipation. Their failure in Kentucky is in a great measure due to the unhealthy state of the public mind produced by the abolition controversy, and to the want of preparation on the part of the people. We sincerely rejoice that Presbyterians as a body, were found on the right side in this great conflict, and that the failure deplored, is not to be imputed to their remissness or indifference.

Again, the impression seems very general that the emancipationists have been defeated by the slaveholders. This is a great mistake. A large and most influential class of the slaveholders are themselves emancipationists. The struggle was not between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding part of the community. Had such been the case, the issue would have been very different. It is probable, indeed, that a majority of the slaveholders are opposed to emancipation, but they form numerically too small a portion of the State to determine its action. Dr. Breckinridge estimates the slaveholders in Kentucky, as only one-eighth of the population. The State has about 600,000 white inhabitants, and 200,000 slaves. There are 140,000 persons entitled to vote, and of these not more than 20,000 are owners of slaves. Here then we have 120,000 non-slaveholding voters, and 20,000 voters owning slaves, and yet the State has gone for slavery by an overwhelming majority. This is not the work of the slaveholders. If any suppose that though numerically a small portion of the people, by their superior wealth they influence the votes of their poorer neighbors, they evince a great ignorance of the real state of feeling in this country. Officeholders and actual subordinates whose bread is dependent on the favor of superiors, may be under their political control. But in the great majority of cases, there is an antagonism between the rich and the poor. The whole tendency of our system is not only to throw the actual power into the hands of the masses, but to make them jealous of any appearance of control. They almost uniformly assert their independence by going, on mere questions of politics, in opposition to the wealthier portion of the community. The fact therefore that the non-slaveholders in Kentucky have voted against emancipation, is not to be attributed to the influence of the slave owners. Their conduct in this matter is to be attributed to various causes. There is a natural opposition between the free whites and the slaves, both as a race and as a class. Without for a moment admitting that there is any essential difference between the different races of men, it must be acknowledged there is the same difference between races that there is between individuals of the same race. We do not deny the name of brother to a man of the Caucasian race who may happen to be intellectually and physically inferior to the majority of the members of the same great family; nor is there any doubt as to the essential equality of those particular families, who from one generation to another exhibit marked inferiority to others of the same nation. This diversity is observable in every department of creation. All oaks of the same species are not alike, much less are the several species of the same standard. In like manner all men are not equally endowed with the gifts of God, neither are the several races of men on a perfect equality. There is a marked difference, physical, intellectual and social, between the Caucasian and the Malay. They are indeed of one blood. They are the children of the same parents. They are brethren having the same nature in all its essential attributes, but separation and the protracted operation of physical and moral causes, have given each its peculiar and indelible type. And where there is diversity there is sure to be superiority and inferiority. While therefore we joyfully admit the negro race to be bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, to be brethren of the same great family to which we ourselves belong, it would be folly to deny that the blacks are as a race inferior to the whites. This is a fact which the history of the world places beyond dispute. Whether under a process of culture, extending through generations, they might rise to an equality with their more favored brethren, is a question which we need not discuss. It is probable that in their highest developement they would retain their distinctive characteristics, and be our superiors in some attributes of our common nature, and our inferiors in others. However this might be, it is indisputable that at present, in all parts of the world, the blacks as a race are inferior to the whites. This is a fact which cannot fail to have its effects on the minds of men. It leads too naturally to contempt and disregard of the rights and feelings of the inferior race. The more ignorant the whites are, the more violent and unreasonable are their prejudices on this subject. When therefore the question is presented to a community whether an inferior race, hitherto held as slaves, shall be emancipated, one of the strongest sources of opposition to such a measure is sure to be found in this pride of race. The whites, and especially the less cultivated portion of them, revolt at the idea that the distinction between themselves and those whom they have always looked upon as their inferiors, should be done away. They regard it as an insult, or as robbing them of a privilege.

To this is to be added the prejudice of class. The negroes are the laboring class. That portion of the whites who sustain themselves by manual employment, have a great jealousy of the interference of the blacks. They will not associate with them, and they dread the idea of their competing with them as mechanics or laborers. While slaves, the blacks are confined to the plantations of their masters; when emancipated they go where they please, and enter into whatever employment they find open to them. To this association and competition the laboring whites have everywhere the strongest repugnance. We are not surprised, therefore, at the vote of the non-slaveholders in Kentucky. It would be the same to-morrow in New York or Philadelphia. The laboring whites of those cities would doubtless vote to set free slaves at a distance, but if the question was about the emancipation of thousands of negroes to be their own associates and competitors in labor, we doubt not nine out of ten would vote against it. And this was the light in which the question most probably presented itself to the majority of the people of Kentucky. That emancipation was to be gradual, and attended with the expatriation of the blacks, would not produce much impression on their minds. They took the matter up in gross as a simple question of freedom or slavery for the blacks.

There is another consideration, mistaken indeed, but still effective, which is apt to operate on the minds of whites against the emancipation of the blacks. While the latter are slaves their masters are obliged to provide for them when disabled by age, sickness, or dissolute habits. If emancipated, they are thrown on the community. This is a burden which the non-slaveholding whites are not disposed to assume. They are wont to say, Let the masters take care of their own blacks. They have had the good of them, let them retain the burden of their support.

Perhaps a still more operative feeling is that of antagonism to the free States. The recent discussions on abolitionism have generated a state of morbid excitement in the public mind. The unreasonableness of a part of the people in the northern States, has produced a corresponding unreasonableness in a portion of the South. The free and slave States have been placed in a very undesirable position in relation to each other. They are assumed to have opposing interests, if not mutually hostile intentions. The consequence is, we find the whole population of southern States going together on questions relating solely to the supposed interest of slaveholders. The great majority of the inhabitants of those States own no slaves. They have no interest in what enhances or depresses the value of that species of property. Yet all their sympathies are with the slaveholders, and against their non-slaveholding brethren at the North. This is not to be referred to any fondness for the institution of slavery, nor to the predominant influence of slaveholders, but to State pride and State feeling. It is easy to see how this feeling must operate. Whatever identifies or characterizes a community, determines the form which its common life or spirit assumes. If a State is monarchical or aristocratical in its constitution, it will be so in its spirit. It is not only the privileged classes who contend for its peculiar institutions, but the majority of the people are pervaded by the same spirit. It requires a great amount of real oppression to destroy in the middle and lower classes this sympathy with the characteristic constitution of their country. Nine Englishmen out of ten will be found to defend hereditary nobility and a princely hierarchy, especially in antagonism with republicanism. In like manner the non-slaveholders of the South, though almost as numerous in comparison to the owners of slaves as the commons of England in comparison to the aristocratical classes, stand up with fervent zeal in behalf of their peculiar institution. This is the reason why a few thousand slaveholders wield the authority of a whole State, and make the majority of the people think they are contending for their own rights and interests, while in fact they are contending for the exclusive advantage of a small minority.

All these causes to which we have adverted as tending to account for the non-slaveholders of Kentucky voting to perpetuate slavery, owe their force, it must be admitted, in a great measure to ignorance. If the people were duly enlightened, they would rise above their influence. This is obvious for two reasons—first, that the most enlightened class of the population in our slaveholding States, unless personally interested in slavery, are opposed to its being perpetuated. The advocates of perpetual slavery are a certain portion of slaveowners, and the uneducated portion of the people. The great body of enlightened and disinterested men even in slave States, groan under the institution of slavery as an incubus, and long for deliverance. Second, it is easy to see that the reasons referred to have no real force, and that they could not control the action of men capable of estimating the real merits of the case. It is a mistake founded in ignorance that emancipation would operate injuriously on the interests of the laboring portion of the whites. It is capable of demonstration, as indeed Dr. Breckinridge has demonstrated, that freeing the blacks, according to the plan proposed in Kentucky, would greatly improve the condition of the working class among the whites. To see this, however, requires both knowledge and attention. It is therefore overlooked or disbelieved by that large class who are too ignorant to calculate remote consequences, and are governed by the mere appearance of things. We fear therefore that the cause of emancipation cannot be carried in those States in which the blacks are generally diffused among the whites, until education has done its proper work among the latter.

In order to the proper understanding of this subject, it is necessary to consider the distinctive features of the plan proposed by the friends of emancipation in Kentucky. It differs essentially from that of the abolitionists. It was, in the first place, to be progressive and not immediate. Against the plan of setting the whole slave population free at once, the objections are so great that it has never been adopted by a slaveholding community. People at a distance, who do not see, and who do not expect to suffer from the evils attending such a measure, under the control of abstract ideas, may clamor for immediate emancipation, but those who are to bear the burden of hundreds of thousands of ignorant and generally indolent blacks, content to live in the lowest condition, will be slow to believe that any principle of duty calls for such a sacrifice. It is not a matter of right as it concerns the slaves. No man has a right to any privilege which he is incompetent to exercise—be he white or black. And even if personally competent, his exercise or enjoyment of such privilege may be rightfully restrained by a regard to the best interests of the community. Minors, as a class, are not competent to exercise the elective franchise; they have therefore no right to exercise it. Individual minors may be as competent as any other men, and yet the good of the whole justifies their being deprived of the privilege. On the same principle the right of voting is denied to females, though personally competent to exercise it with wisdom. If therefore the blacks as a class are incompetent to exercise, with benefit to themselves or others, the privileges of personal or political liberty, then, as long as that incompetency continues, they have no right to those privileges. This argument of course supposes the incompetency to be real. And it furnishes no justification of measures, the design or tendency of which is to produce and perpetuate such incompetency. All we contend for is that there is no foundation in morals for the reckless application of “the doctrine of inalienable rights” to the case of slaves, who from their physical, intellectual, or moral condition, are incompetent to exercise the rights of freemen. It is, therefore, no valid objection to the Kentucky plan of emancipation that it conflicts with the inalienable right of men to personal freedom. Whether it was not too slow in its proposed operation, whether it did not unnecessarily prolong the period of bondage, and unfairly exclude all the existing generation of blacks from its benefits, are questions of detail into which we do not feel competent to enter. The advantages of any plan must depend in a great measure, not only on its radical principles, but on its special provisions. And the question which the friends of freedom may have to decide, is not what plan is best, but what is feasible. It would certainly be unwise to refuse everything, because unable to carry the measure they might consider most desirable.

It strikes us that it would be a great improvement on the plan which contemplates the liberation only of those slaves yet to be born, to engraft some provision for the emancipation of a portion at least of those now in existence. There are many obvious advantages connected with the Spanish system which has been adverted to before in our pages. The essential features of that plan are these. It assumes, what we believe is universally true, that the slaves are allowed and have the opportunity to make money for themselves. This is done by working at extra hours, by raising produce for the market, and by executing errands and commissions of various kinds. The money thus earned they are in all slave countries permitted to use as they please. In the next place, this plan provides for the appointment of a public officer who, on application of the slave, is required to set a value on his services, which the master is bound to accept. As soon as the slave has accumulated one-sixth of the sum at which he has been valued, and paid it to his master, he has Monday free. When he has gained another sixth, he has Tuesday free; and so on until his whole time becomes his own. In this way he is trained to habits of industry and self-control, and prepared to provide for himself. If with this system could be connected some provision for liberating the wives and children of those who had worked out their own freedom, the plan of progressive emancipation would be relieved of much of its apparent injustice. It is undoubtedly hard, that the whole existing generation of slaves should be excluded from the benefit of any plan of emancipation that may be adopted.

Another provision of this plan is that it proposed to secure compensation to the owners of slaves. This has been resisted on two grounds, first that the claim to the service of the slaves is an unrighteous claim, and therefore the loss of those services is not a proper ground of compensation; and second, that the master must ultimately even in a pecuniary point of view, be a gainer by emancipation. As to the former of these grounds, it is enough to say that the claim of the master is not necessarily unrighteous. The objection has its foundation in the assumption that all slaveholding is sinful. If that principle is false, then the conclusion drawn from it is vitiated. Besides it is to be remembered that slavery is the work not of the individual, but of the community. It could not exist without positive enactments. The community is responsible for its existence. If the people, in their capacity as a commonwealth, have made laws sanctioning the existence of slavery, they have entered into a tacit but binding contract with their fellow-citizens to respect the right of property in slaves. If they come to think that such right ought to be abolished, or that the interests of the commonwealth demanded the emancipation of the slaves, it would be unjust to make the loss fall exclusively on the owners. The fault or error was that of the community; it was for the common good the laws establishing slavery were enacted, and therefore the whole community should share in the loss attending the repeal of those laws. If by laws of the State men have been authorized and induced to invest their capital in any species of property, be it roads, manufactories, mines, or slaves, it would be obviously unjust to take such property from them without a compensation. In the eye of the law it makes no difference wherein such property may consist, if the law has sanctioned it. The injustice lies in visiting upon the individual the sin of the community. If therefore the State has authorized the holding of slaves, the State must bear the expense of rectifying its own mistakes when it comes to see that slavery is a public burden.

The other ground of opposing all compensation to the owners of slaves, is perfectly valid, if it really exists. If the master suffers no loss, he is entitled to no compensation. If emancipation makes him richer, he has no claim to be paid for it. There may be circumstances, in isolated communities, where slavery is such a burden on the master, that to liberate his slaves would be equivalent to cancelling a mortgage on his estate. Such, however, is evidently not the case in this country. Slavery is everywhere, in some form, profitable to the masters. To deprive them of their slaves would be not only to take from them their capital, but to render unavailable their estates in land. Even if eventually from the rise of real estate, and the general prosperity induced by the abolition of slavery, the slaveowner should find his condition improved, the immediate effect of emancipation would be greatly to limit his resources. The resulting benefit would come in most cases too late to be a real compensation to the present owners. On every principle, therefore, we think the friends of emancipation acted wisely and justly in engrafting the principle of compensation on their proposed plan.

Another feature of that plan was the expatriation of the liberated blacks. This also when feasible is wise. There are natural laws which forbid the union of distinct races in the same commonwealth. Where the difference is slight, as between Saxons and Celts, or the Teutonic and Romaic families, the different elements are soon fused. But even here we find that they often refuse to combine and remain apart for ages, the weaker constantly sinking, and the stronger constantly advancing. We have examples of this in the French paysans of Canada, and Louisiana. The effect of the amalgamation of distinct races is seen in the physically, intellectually and socially degraded mongrel inhabitants of Mexico and South America. In these cases the chief elements were the Spanish and Indians, elements less widely separated than the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro. The amalgamation of these races must inevitably lead to the deterioration of both. It would fill the country with a feeble and degraded population, which must ultimately perish. For it is a well ascertained fact that the mulatto is far more frail than either the white man or the Negro. We read in the disastrous physical effects of the amalgamation of the blacks and whites, a clear intimation that such amalgamation is contrary to the will of God, and therefore is not an end which statesmen ought in any way to facilitate.

If amalgamation would be productive of the most lamentable evils to the country, it is no less undesirable that the two races should live together as distinct. This again is forbid by natural laws which we can neither abrogate nor counteract. It is a law that the stronger and more numerous race should displace the weaker. The weaker may be absorbed and assimilated, where the difference is slight, but if the difference is so great as to keep the races apart, one of two results seems invariably to follow, either the weaker race dies out, or it is reduced to a state of bondage, and is then kept in a good physical condition as an instrument of labor, at the expense of its intellectual and social improvement. The former of these results we see exemplified in the disappearance of the aborigines of this country. The same process is rapidly going on in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. It is very likely that the blacks will prove the stronger race in the West Indian Islands, and in some other places still nearer the equator. In some of those islands the lowest class of the population, is a race of white men. Whether white or black be in the ascendancy, the law is that the weaker sinks and perishes in the presence of the stronger. There can be no question that in this country the blacks are the weaker race, and therefore if emancipated and kept distinct, they must sink and gradually perish. Such has been the experience of the world. Individual instances of excellence and prosperity will doubtless occur, but all experience shows that the only chance for any race radically distinct from another, to arrive at general prosperity, is that it must be kept separate and placed in circumstances favorable to its development.

Expatriation, therefore, when practicable, is an essential feature of any wise plan of emancipation. It is best for the blacks themselves by removing them from circumstances hostile to their improvement, and placing them in a situation where an unobstructed career is opened before them. It is best for the country, for the places occupied by an inferior race, incapable of general improvement so long as they remain among whites, will soon be filled up by Europeans and Americans. The State, freed from its black population, would soon find itself peopled with intelligent and prosperous farmers and mechanics from other portions of the Union and from the old world. That this would be an advantage, no man in his senses can doubt. The only thing that would be lost by such a change would be the race of masters. There would no longer be a class of men owners of their fellow-men, and exalted by such ownership, in their own conception into a superior class of beings. Few will be disposed to contend, unless slaveholders themselves, that slavery is really desirable from its influence on the masters. It is indeed an argument which privileged classes are accustomed to use, that the institution of nobility is necessary to the highest development of our nature. The robber barons of the middle ages, who could neither read or write, looked with contempt, not only on their serfs, but on the merchants, citizens, and learned men of their generation, and regarded all measures which tended to break down the distinction between themselves and others, as fraught with danger to the true nobility of man. With the progress of civilization, these ideas are fast disappearing from the old world, and they are not likely to find a permanent abode among our planters. Our republican institutions are not favorable to the notion, that free men, though farmers or mechanics, are inferior either to slaves or to their owners. The comparison between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding portions of the Union, as to everything which constitutes national prosperity, must at once settle the question whether slavery be conducive to the general good. The number of men in our country is very small, who deliberately maintain that a State, with a population one-fourth whites and three-fourths blacks, is in a more desirable situation than are those whose inhabitants are free white men. The latter is immeasurably stronger for all the purposes of good, and is more capable of progress in agriculture, commerce, and in all that is desirable. It is, however, labor lost to attempt to prove that a free white population is more to be desired than either slaves, or liberated blacks. It cannot, therefore, be rationally disputed that freeing a State from its colored people, would be the greatest of all temporal blessings that could be conferred upon it. On this subject, all the great men of our history have been of one opinion, whether living at the North or at the South.

The advantages of expatriation or of colonization, however, are confined neither to the blacks nor to the commonwealth from which they are removed. Transported to the rising republic of Liberia, the free negroes carry with them the seeds of religion, civilization, and of liberty to an entire continent. They perform for Africa the high mission which our forefathers have performed for America; and make Africa for the black race what the United States now are for Europe and the world. The designs of Providence are already so far unfolded as to be deciphered with no small confidence. God seems to have brought the negroes to our land that, after sustaining a state of pupilage in this house of bondage, they may return to their land of promise, to the habitation assigned them in the general apportionment of our globe.

To this feature of the Kentucky plan of emancipation several serious objections, however, have been made. It is said to be a violation of the rights of the blacks. This country, it is maintained, is as much theirs as ours; and consequently that we have no more right to send them away than they have to send us. We admit the force of this objection, under existing circumstances, as far as it concerns those blacks who are already free. But the case is very different in regard to those who are now in bondage. To render their present condition permanent would be a great injury to them and to the community. To free them is to confer upon them a great boon, and that gift may rightfully be connected with any conditions which their own benefits and the public good may demand. It is a great fallacy to suppose that the abstract rights of men can be enforced at all times and under all circumstances. The right to choose our own place of abode, as the right of property, is necessarily subject to many limitations. The parent has the right to take with him his minor children when he leaves the crowded provinces of Great Britain or Germany, and seeks a wider and more hospitable home in America or Australia. No injury is inflicted on his children, and their right to remain in their native country is subordinate to the right of the parent. The slaves in this country are in a state of pupilage. They are minors. They stand in that relation of dependence and inferiority in which a state of minority essentially consists. They may, therefore, be rightfully treated as minors and disposed of without their consent in any way consistent with benevolence and justice. If a great good to them, as well as to those they leave behind, be designed in their removal, there is no principle of right violated in their expatriation.

The expense attending any extended scheme of colonization is another objection to the plan. The expense, however, of any scheme is not to be measured by its actual cost, but by the importance of the object and the resources at commaud for carrying it into effect. Measured by this standard, the expense of colonization is inconsiderable. It is too great for individuals, but not too great for a commonwealth. Fifty dollars a head are said to be sufficient to meet the cost, not only of transferring the emigrants to Africa, but also of sustaining them for the first six months after their arrival in their new home. There are many ways in which such a sum could be procured. It is less than the clear profit of one year’s labor of an emancipated slave. It would be more generous for the State to provide for the expense of removal from her general resources, but there would be no injustice in requiring the slave to labor for his own outfit.

A much more serious objection arises from the danger of overwhelming the infant colonies in Africa with an unprepared and therefore reckless population. This danger is great. The history of the world teaches us that civilization does not spring up within any community, it must be introduced from abroad. The original state of man was a state of high civilization, in the truest sense of the term, and savagism is an apostacy perfectly hopeless, so far as the inherent recuperative powers of the race are concerned. If, therefore, we colonize a country with savages, or imperfectly civilized men, they will continue barbarians or soon lapse into a savage state. We have in St. Domingo an illustration of this general truth. The negroes of that island were not advanced to such a condition of moral and social improvement, when they expelled their European masters, as to enable them to make progress in civilization. They are, in most parts of the island, but little in advance of their condition when slaves. And they will remain, in all probability, in their present degraded state, unless the influence of Christianity is brought to bear upon them from without. There is, therefore, great danger that uneducated colonists introduced into Africa, instead of raising the natives should sink into barbarism themselves. To guard against this danger it is essential that the foundations of a colony should consist of truly enlightened and religious men, in such numbers and in such a state of advancement, as to give the community its character, to create its life, so that all new accessions should be mastered and assimilated. This is the first and most important condition for successful colonization, more important even than abundance of land and salubrity of climate. It should never be forgotten that the character of nations is formed in their cradles. It depends mainly upon the germ which is first planted. The character of these United States is distinctly traceable to the character of the first colonists. So is that of Mexico and South America, and it will take ages to counteract the strength of this original impulse. We can never be sufficiently thankful as a nation that the original settlers of this country were pious and enlightened men and true Protestants; and that they were numerous enough to give character to its institutions, and create a public spirit, before the floods of ignorance and Romanism were opened upon us. Except in Maryland, there were scarcely any other than Protestants among the emigrants to this country for nearly a century and a half. Had the annual thousands of Romanists which for the last twenty or thirty years have been pouring in upon us, commenced their flow in the infancy of our country, we should have been overwhelmed, and become an Ireland or Austria on a larger scale. Next then in importance to the original character of a colony, is the character of the annual accessions to their numbers from abroad. The new colonists should not be so numerous as to oppress the resources, and choke the avenues of life in these recent settlements, and they should be sufficiently enlightened to fall in with the spirit of the community of which they become members. As the colony advances in strength it will be able to bear more—to receive and dispose of larger accessions, and even to master uncongenial materials, which at an earlier period of its history would master it.

It is true, then, that if the colony of Liberia was to be flooded with thousands of uneducated negroes, just released from bondage, they would be in imminent danger of relapsing into barbarism, and the light of civilization and Christianity just kindled on the dark coast of Africa would be extinguished. The plan in contemplation, however, does not propose to send out new colonists either in such numbers or of such a character, as to incur the danger of which we have spoken. It proposes to send annually only that class which year by year attains a certain age, and which has been in a long course of training for their new responsibilities. Instead of being a burden to the colony, such men would be to it what the annual accessions from Europe were to our country during the first fifty years of its history. The colony would thus be enlarged and strengthened just in proportion as its strength would be taxed. In a few years it would be prepared to receive increasing numbers, until at length it would feel as little burdened by any probable amount of immigration, as we now are by the hundreds of thousands of Europeans, who annually seek among as an asylum from want or oppression. There is no reason why the colonies on the coast of Africa may not in time exhibit the same cheering spectacle of rising republics, which is now afforded by the almost annual birth of new States in our own happy country. Africa affords a wide field of fertile, unoccupied land, a climate suited to the black race; and the native neighboring population belonging to the same great division of the human family, instead of melting away before the colonists, as the Indians have here disappeared before the whites, will gradually be assimilated and absorbed. This is one of the brightest prospects now open for our world. It is the great hope of Africa. We fully agree with Dr. Breckinridge, when he says that the plan of African colonization “is one of the greatest, most fruitful, and most sublime events of any age. The great necessity of the world at this moment, is a free, civilized, Christian, and powerful State within the tropics; a necessity felt through every period of the world’s history, and now about to be realized. The western coast of Africa, is, in every point of view, the most effective for such a State to occupy; the black race, of which there cannot be less than 150,000,000 upon earth, is pre-eminently the race needing such a development, and prepared for it; and the United States are exactly in a condition to found such a commonwealth with this race, under circumstances most glorious to ourselves, the most hopeful to the world, and the most beneficial to the blacks.” P. 14. This glorious prospect never can be realized, or at least very imperfectly, without a large system of emancipation in this country. This is the source whence the materials for this Christian commonwealth on the coast of Africa, must be principally derived. It would, therefore, be a great calamity to the world, if, in our blindness, we should dam up this current, and instead of allowing it to flow out as a healthful stream, force it to become a stagnant pool, converting our own land, in some of its fairest portions, into malarious swamps. Let us, however, remember it is not simply men that Africa needs, but enlightened and Christian men, who shall carry with them religion and knowledge, the minister and the schoolmaster.

The radical principles of the plan of emancipation, then, as proposed in Kentucky, we believe meet the cordial approbation of the enlightened friends of the negro and of the country; a plan which contemplated a gradual emancipation, consistent with the rights of the slaveholder, and providing for the colonization of the liberated blacks. Though this plan, notwithstanding its merits, and the ability with which it was advocated, has failed for the present, we are persuaded it must ultimately succeed.

In the first place, it is demanded by the eternal principles of right. We have ever maintained that slaveholding is not in itself sinful, that the right to personal liberty is conditioned by the ability to exercise beneficially that right. We have ever been opposed therefore to the abolitionists, who demand immediate and universal emancipation, and who would exclude slaveholders as such from the communion of the church. But the right to hold slaves does not imply the right to treat them as brutes, or as mere chattels. It does not justify laws which conflict with the great principles of benevolence or justice, or with any of the enactments of the word of God. Men on all sides are apt to confound things essentially distinct. Because the Scriptures allow slaveholding, just as they allow aristocratical or despotic forms of government, slaveholders are wont to appeal to the word of God in defence of slave laws which violate every scriptural principle. On the other hand, those who maintain that slaveholding is not sinful, are represented as sanctioning all the atrocities by which the system is any where or at any time attended. Both of these proceedings are illogical and unjust. Slaveholding may be justifiable, and yet the laws made by slaveholders be atrociously unjust. Slaveholding may be justified, and yet such slave laws be consistently condemned. No Christian has ever raised his voice in defence of the actual slave system as it exists in many parts of this country. Slavery in Kentucky, says Dr. Breckinridge, “presents this aspect: 1st. The rights of property are absolutely and universally abolished as to slaves. 2d. The rights of person and character are unknown, as to them, except as the interest of the master and of the public peace may demand their recognition. 3d. The institution of marriage between slaves, has no legal recognition, nor do marital rights exist as to them. 4th. The relation of parent and child, as between slaves, is not recognized by law, except in determining questions of property.” P. 13. Is it not monstrous to suppose that the Bible sanctions such laws as these? It might as well be said that the Bible sanctions all the cruelty and injustice ever committed by civil rulers, because it sanctions civil government. Every good man must respond to the indignant eloquence of Dr. Breckinridge, when he says, in reference to the rights just enumerated, that every one of them “is inherent in human nature, and that their existence and their protection lie at the foundation of human society, which could not exist for a day, under any form, if these rights were universally abolished. Moreover, they are all of divine authority; and as the state itself—that is, human society—is ordained of God, we have one of God’s institutions abolishing as to an immense number of his rational creatures, the very foundations on which he has erected that institution, and rendered possible the social state he ordained for those creatures. This is a condition of things for whose increase there can be no justification; and whose everlasting continuance can be defended only on grounds which subvert the order of nature, the ordination of heaven, and the foundations of the social state.” It is, therefore, no fair inference from the doctrine that slaveholding is not in itself sinful, that the Bible sanctions the actual system of slavery, or the slave laws now in force in this country. Much less can it be fairly inferred from the abstract lawfulness of slavery, that laws may be enacted and enforced to extend and perpetuate it. It is one thing to treat savages as savages, and another to endeavor to keep them in a state of barbarism. It is one thing to deny to minors the rights of adults, another to debase them that they may never exercise those rights. It is one thing to keep felons in prison, and another to force men to become or to remain felons that we may get their labor for nothing. Admitting, therefore, that a Christian may, with a good conscience be a slaveholder, he cannot be a Christian and deliberately endeavor to keep his slaves in a state of ignorance and degradation in order to perpetuate their bondage. Nothing can be more distinct than the right to hold slaves, in certain circumstances, and the right to render slavery perpetual. Perpetual slavery implies perpetual ignorance and perpetual degradation. This the mass of slaveholders intuitively perceive, and hence in almost all slave States there are enactments, the design of which is to prevent the intellectual and social improvement of the blacks. It is everywhere seen and admitted that gradual improvement must lead to gradual emancipation, and therefore the former is strenuously resisted by those who are determined not to grant the latter. But as it is one of the clearest and highest duties of man to promote the improvement of his fellow men, as this duty is specially binding on parents and masters, in regard to their children and servants, and as the right to intellectual culture and moral and religious education is the most precious of all human rights, it follows that one of the greatest sins a man can commit against his fellows, is to endeavor to keep them ignorant and degraded that he may keep them in bondage.

If then it is the duty of a community in which slavery exists to provide for the education and social improvement of the slaves, which we presume no Christian will deny, then it is the duty of such community to adopt some system for emancipation. It is certainly not less clear, that improvement must lead to liberation, than that degradation is necessary to slavery. No man for a moment believes that if the slaves of the South were as well educated as the people of New York or Massachusetts, slavery could continue a month. Unless therefore men are prepared to adopt the monstrous doctrine that they have a right to keep millions of their fellow-creatures in ignorance and debasement, they must admit that emancipation is a moral duty. Conscience is the only principle capable of competing with self-interest. It is therefore of great importance that slaveholders should be brought to see what God demands of them in this matter; that they cannot without violating his laws and forfeiting his favor, refuse to their slaves the benefits of education and the enjoyment of those rights as parents and husbands which are guaranteed to them by God himself. In other words, they should be brought to see that slavery cannot be perpetuated without doing violence to the most obvious imperative moral principles. Still more important is it that non-slaveholders should be brought to see that they are committing a sin against God, as well as inflicting a grievous injury on their fellow-men, in contending for the increase or indefinite continuance of slavery. We have great faith in the self-evidencing light of moral truth, and in its power over the conscience, we therefore believe that the advocates of emancipation, will yet succeed, if they can but keep up before the minds of the people, the great principle of Duty. This will do more than all arguments drawn from political economy, however just those arguments may be, or however powerfully they may be presented.

In the second place, emancipation is not only a duty, but it is unavoidable. The question which our slaveholding States have to decide is not, whether they will now adopt a system of emancipation, or remain indefinitely as they now are; but, whether they will prepare for emancipation while the evil is manageable, or have it forced upon them when every condition of the problem is a hundred fold more complicated. We believe it to be the intimate conviction of ninety-nine hundredths of the intelligent people in the United States that slavery in this country must come to an end. This conviction is as common at the South as it is at the North. The great effort is to procrastinate the crisis; to throw the decision and the trial on the coming generation. By this selfish policy the evils to be encountered are fearfully increased. Fifty years ago, with a slave population of seven or eight hundred thousand, emancipation and colonization would have been an easy work compared to what it now is, with three millions of slaves. It is an easy work now compared to what it will be fifty years hence. “Kentucky,” says Dr. Breckinridge, “with six hundred thousand white persons, and two hundred thousand slaves, and the whole South wanting slave labor, presents a problem widely different from Kentucky with seven hundred thousand white persons, and five hundred thousand slaves, and the whole South fully supplied with slave labor. The one is a question easily solved, compared with the other; and all the increased difficulty must lie at the door of the non-slaveholder, if his vote produces it.” P. 10. One reason, then, why slavery cannot be perpetual is that the slaves increase in a more rapid ratio than the whites, and by the mere force of numbers must occupy the land. The non-slaveholding whites will rapidly withdraw from a community overstocked with slaves. This is a process which has already been going on for years. Thousands of the best portion of the population of Kentucky have sought homes in the free States of the West. Their places have been occupied by, the blacks. Congregations once large and flourishing have, from this cause, dwindled down to insignificance. The natural tendency of this state of things is to render the disproportion between the whites and blacks constantly greater. And the unavoidable result must be that the negro race will come to possess the land. They will be too numerous to be profitable, and the time predicted by John Randolph (as we believe), must come, when the masters will run away from the slaves. This period may be more or less remote, but it is not the less certain, and the responsibility of bringing about this result will rest on those who vainly attempt to fight against God, in fighting against the laws which he has ordained.

But there is another reason why slavery cannot be perpetuated. It is from its nature a transition state. It supposes a low form of civilization, and must disappear as society advances and the slaves rise in intelligence and power. Under eastern despotism and the debasing systems of Paganism, the people may be kept in such degradation as to be perpetual bondmen; but in such a country, and in such an age as this, and under the all-penetrating light of the gospel, this is impossible. The state of our slave population is now immeasurably above that of the negroes under the dominion of the Portuguese in Brazil. Their condition must continue to improve under the controlling influence of a Christian public sentiment. It will be out of the power of slaveholders to make laws to keep out the light and warmth of Christian truth; and they themselves will not have the heart to persevere in the attempt. In this way, if in no other, slavery must cease. The slaves will cease to be minors; they will outgrow their state of pupillage, and their bonds will either drop from their limbs or be shaken off. We consider nothing more certain, under those laws which God has established, than that all attempts to perpetuate slavery in these United States must fail. The attempt, however, to render it permanent will, for this very reason, be all the more disastrous. It is an attempt to counteract the laws of nature and ordinances of God, and must of necessity overwhelm in hopeless ruin those who engage in so insane an enterprise. The only safe course, as it is the only one consistent with Christian duty, is to improve the slaves, and to emancipate and remove them as rapidly as they are prepared for freedom. And as this can now be done without loss to the masters, or with full compensation for such loss, and with the prospect of removing the liberated blacks from the country, it is infatuation to resist the proposed plan. Hereafter emancipation must be granted, without compensation, and without the possibility of removal.

There is another consideration involved in what we have said, but which deserves separate mention. If slavery is founded on ignorance and degradation, if it is contrary to the will of God that such ignorance and degradation should be rendered permanent, then every attempt to perpetuate such a state is a direct violation of his will. It is a national sin, as it must be committed by the people in their capacity as a commonwealth, and, therefore, will inevitably lead to national calamity. The history of the world is one continued proof that God visits the iniquities of the fathers on the children of the third and fourth generation of those who hate him. Nations never sin with impunity. If they are guilty of habitual injustice towards their own dependent members, or against others, they are but laying up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath. So sure, therefore, as a righteous God rules among the nations, so certainly must the attempt to perpetuate slavery by keeping the slaves ignorant and degraded, work out a fearful retribution for the descendants of those by whom such attempt is made.

When to the considerations that emancipation is a duty, and that it is ultimately unavoidable, is added the obvious and weighty benefits which it must confer on all concerned, it is wonderful that a plan so fraught with blessings should not command universal favor. It will raise the black race from the degradation of uneducated bondmen, into enlightened freemen, the founders of a new empire for a continent. It will substitute white free men for negro slaves, as inhabitants of the fairest portions of our own country. It will give thousands of hands to guard our hearths, in place of thousands to be guarded against. It will give us the materials for flourishing schools and churches, instead of moral desolation. It will multiply many fold the resources of the State, and secure its progress in all the arts and comforts of life. It will benefit all classes of the people, the slaveowner as well as others. They must reap the advantage of increasing prosperity. If emancipation be attended, as in the West Indies, by circumstances which depress all the resources of the country, then the slaveowners become the chief sufferers. But if for the slave population removed from the land, is substituted an enterprising race of free white men, then the slaveowners are the greatest gainers. No class of men in England has gained so much by the abolition of vassalage, and by the prosperity of the country, as the nobility. Instead of serfs and hovels their estates are covered with free men and cities. And if to-morrow the blacks of Kentucky could be transmuted into such men as make cities and villages spring up like cornfields, through the State of New York, the former slaveowners would find themselves princes. They are striving against their own best interests, as well as the interests of the whole commonwealth in clinging to an institution which must die, and which must poison the air where its disjected members lie.

We hope the friends of emancipation in Kentucky will not give up all for lost. Let such addresses as that of Dr. Breckinridge be spread over the State, and kept permanently in contact with the minds of the people. Though this is the only argument in favor of emancipation we have had the good fortune to meet with, we are sure, from the character of Dr. Breckinridge’s associates, that there are many other addresses of a like kind, which ought to be preserved, and kept constantly in circulation. With the blessing of God on what is right and true, the people must ultimately be convinced that emancipation is a duty and a necessity.

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