assert, therefore, the right of slavery, because it is just that barbarism shall subserve civilization, we only say it is just that wrong should subserve right;—a proposition, which, certainly, ought to commend itself to the common sense, the intellect, and the conscience of every good man.

Some assert that civilization should subserve barbarism; but when tried by our rule, they at once see that it is preposterous to assume that right should subserve wrong.

FORFEITURE OF NATURAL RIGHT.

Some propose, that the advantages of the great and little, the served and the servant, the good and the bad, should be reciprocal; that that which is used is, or should be, as much advantaged in the using as is the user. I would ask them—what particular advantage it is to the oyster to be devoured? or what return can the earth make to the sun for his rays, constantly poured upon it? Some assert that every human being is unqualifiedly endowed by nature with the right of individual freedom. This we deny. We assert that barbarism is not humanity, and cannot claim to exercise the prerogative of civilization, which it has ignored, or which it never knew. We assert that the murderer has forfeited that right; and more than this, with the element of murder developed in him, originally, he never was entitled to freedom. Prisons, and even dungeons, are as necessary and proper as schools and colleges, but not more so than servitude to the barbarian. They are all appliances of right and justice and civilization, not to make the good subserve the bad, but to make the bad subserve the good.

TAKING THE EXCEPTION FOR THE RULE.

It will not do for men to pretend that they do not know which is right and which is wrong; what is civilization and what is barbarism. The exception for the rule is as proper to adopt in the one case as in the other. We cannot condemn civilization for the incidents of bad government in some cases, false religion in others, and crime in others, when the general tenor of civilization is to protect the weak against the strong, give security to life and property, and by developing the intellect and cultivating the moral faculties, elevate and ennoble the race. Neither can we acquit barbarism if it affords occasional instances of immoderate instinct, closely approximating to intellect, or even intellect itself, and moral worth, or the absence of ferocity, or the presence of positive amiability, render it possible that the barbarian is not a fiend, or that he may be schooled to tolerable docility, while the general tenor of barbarism is to wrong, cruelty, violence, and self-annihilation.

PASSION; SYMPATHY MISAPPLIED.

Nor will it do to ignore reason, and adopt passion when we consider the subject of slavery. Passions have their uses, but how often they are perverted! Reason is sometimes perverted too, and never more than when exercised against truth, justice, and civilization, and in favor of barbarism. There is false sympathy, amounting to passion, that is blindly lavished upon objects which neither need nor appreciate it. We often see it exercised in behalf of the brute animals, whose proper natures are totally unconscious of it; while their gentleness and quietness seem to rebuke this shallow, human sentimentality, as something wandering from its sphere, or as seed wasted upon the sand. Your sympathy has its legitimate uses, and it is against the economy of nature to misuse it, or bestow it upon natures foreign to its own. If we pity the slave because he is not like ourselves, we shall probably receive his pity, in return, for some weakness or power in us, that covers an abyss which he cannot fathom, and from which he turns away in terror. He is adapted to his place, and so are we, if we are content.

PERFECTION OF NATURE'S WORK.

It has been said, with how much truth let us consider,

the reverse of which is, "Where knowledge is bliss, 'tis folly to be ignorant." The first proposition was evidently intended for the Negro, and the last for the white man; as intellectual pleasures and knowledge are esteemed highest by the latter, and animal pleasures by the former. Happiness is the aim of both; the difference is in the mode of attaining it, and the degree of it when attained. The negro is perfect in his kind. Sympathy will not make him a white man. Would you interrogate nature on the wisdom of her works? Would you denounce them as imperfect? Can you improve upon the architecture of the honey-bee, or the method of his distillation? or on nature's processes of germination and vegetation? Your cup of liquid poison is but a mean equivalent for his treasured nectar; your hot-house culture yields nought for the beauties of Flora, nor the sweetness of her priceless perfumes. The spider would not be a butterfly even if you could give him wings. The power to fly would only enable him to spin his web in air, and obscure the sunlight. His own way is best, both for him and man.

THE NEGRO SATISFIED WITH HIS CONDITION.

Reason will bring all things right. We must take things as they are, not as fancy would paint them. It is of no use to get exasperated because the Negro is dark of skin, and because his inferiority and degradation adapt him to the rougher, or rudimental departments and pursuits of civilization. Pity for him on account of the labor which makes his sleep sweet, and his digestion perfect, is thrown away. He knows nothing of the ennui of sloth, nor the misanthropy of idle declaimers. He has his rude affections, and does not hate wrongs which he does not know nor feel, nor is he shocked at manacles which he cannot see, and which hold him from falling into the abyss of barbarism, whence they have lifted him. He loves his condition as a slave to civilization, because his instinct tells him it is better than subjection to the usages and wrongs of the condition from whence he has risen. If he is satisfied with his present condition, it is from an intuitive instinct, teaching him his fitness for it, and shows, by the slowness of the transition from barbarism to civilization, how wide and deep is the gulf which divides the one from the other.

UNITY OF THE AFRICAN RACES.

I use the term barbarism in contradistinction to civilization, and very respectfully refer to authorities of repute in justification of this use of the word, both to designate the quality of the thing, and the precise locality of its fittest application; for although Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians and Greeks applied the term barbari to all who spoke a language different from their own; and even the Hindoos used almost the same word to express the quality indicated, differing only by the accidental dissimilarity of the Sanskrit orthography, which makes it varvvarah or varvvaras, we have the authority of Professor Wilson, who says it means "an outcast, and in another sense, woolly or curly haired, as the hair of the African." And for authorities showing the unity of the Negro races, dialects, and languages, in Western, Southern, and Central Africa, I refer to the writings of Progart, Ritter, Oldendorf, Marsden, Bruseiotti, Harves, Grandpre, Vater, Salt, Ludolf, and Oldfield; who, from other motives than those which have prompted the partial accounts of more recent travelers and writers on the subject, have shown conclusively, that the degrees of barbarism existing in the tribes inhabiting the Western and Southern coasts of Africa, and the interior, are, in fact, mere modifications of that same barbarism, produced by local causes, and