extraordinary, and to those who are not incredulous, may seem astonishing.

14. The first opportunity that ever occurred to me, of viewing a slave plantation, was furnished by a journey during the summer of 1815, from Pittsburg to the city of Washington. In the course of my route I travelled through part of Virginia, west of the Blue Ridge, by way of Winchester, and through part of Maryland by way of Fredericktown, on the east side.

15. My first contemplation of the magnificent edifice,[3] towering over the surrounding clusters of huts, and the extensive fields, impressed an idea of their similarity to the castles of European princes, dukes, lords, barons, &c. with the cottages of their tenants. But a closer consideration led me to this unavoidable conclusion: that these splendid fabrics are virtually the palaces of hereditary absolute monarchs;—that the labourers and people over whom they reign, are their lawful subjects or vassals—constituting kingdoms in miniature;—with this difference from eastern monarchies, that the king here, instead of receiving merely a revenue from his subjects, has legitimate power (if he is disposed to avail himself of it) to exercise the most unlimited and tyrannical despotism[4] over their persons, and to extort the whole of the products of their industry, except what may be indispensable to prevent starvation.

16. It is not my intention by any means, to intimate that every possessor of slaves must necessarily be a Nero, but that, if he chooses to be one, there exists no earthly political power to prevent him. Excess of power, like other unnatural stimulants, exerts a deleterious and an intoxicating influence upon the human mind, which but few possess the capacity and firmness to withstand. In tracing the endless catalogues of kings, presented in history, how seldom is the eye dazzled with transport at the name of an Alfred! There are, undoubtedly, Alfreds, among these numerous states; but as long as the diffusion of the humanizing principles of pure religion, and the auxiliary lights of natural, moral, and political philosophy, continues to be limited to its present boundaries, it is feared the number of Alfreds will remain comparatively small.

17. The rod of a tyrant wielded over a few, is infinitely more terrible, than when the number of its victims is great, and detached over a wide extent of country.[5]

18. Mr. Jefferson, in his Note on this subject, exclaims, "I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep for ever." The late Professor Barton, in his work on Botany, while treating on the article of rice, and its cultivation by uncompensated slaves, expresses a similar sentiment: "Shall we never learn (says he) to be just to our fellow creatures? Shall we blindly pursue the imaginary advantages of the moment, and neglect the still but solemn voice of God, until

"————Vengeance in the lurid air
Lifts her red arm expos'd and bare?"

19. Without offering an opinion on the propriety of the expression of Mr. Jefferson, I must add, that I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice is ever active and continually executing its commission! The truth of this may be easily recognised by any observer, who has not been familiarized to the constant presence of slavery, from infancy. Indeed, the possessors of slaves, with whom I have conversed, while travelling through several slave districts, frequently acknowledged that they "have inherited a curse from their ancestors, and that it would be better for the country if the slaves were all out of it." And with respect to the red arm of vengeance, exposed and bare, it must often menace those neighbourhoods, whence the citizens frequently write to their friends in the north, that, "it is high time to leave a country where one cannot go to bed in the evening, without the apprehension of being massacred before morning!" I have been assured by citizens having personal knowledge of the fact, that the rage of the slaves is such, in some districts, and especially near Savannah, that their masters and overseers are obliged to retreat to some secure place during the night, or employ armed sentinels. Four slaves were executed but a few months since, in Maryland, for destroying the life of their master's brother, while he was in the act of inflicting corporeal punishment upon them. A citizen of Philadelphia very lately related to me the most shocking heart-rending instance of ferocious vengeance that can be possibly conceived: It very forcibly exemplifies the infatuation and temerity of subjecting those, to whom our persons must necessarily be frequently accessible, to a state of the most savage moral debasement, and then of tampering with their furious untamed passions. A female slave having been flogged by her mistress, watched for an opportunity to indulge her resentment, which she executed in a manner too horrible to describe, and which it is not deemed prudent to specify.

20. Many instances have existed, where slaves, in a state of enraged desperation, have involved their masters and themselves, of course, in mutual destruction. A gentleman of high respectability lately informed me, that he personally knew a master of slaves who retreated every night into an upper room, the entrance into which was by a trap door, and kept an axe by his side for defence!

21. Does not self-preservation, as well as the obligations of religious duty and brotherly love, enjoin the education and civilization of our sable heathen neighbours in our own dwellings, equally as imperatively as of our tawny ones in the wilderness, and of both, on this side of the Atlantic, as well as on the other?[6]

22. While at a public house, in Fredericktown, there came into the bar-room (on Sunday) a decently dressed white man, of quite a light complexion, in company with one who was totally black. After they went away, the landlord observed that the white man was a slave. I asked him, with some surprise, how that could be possible? To which he replied, that he was a descendant, by female ancestry, of an African slave. He also stated, that not far from Fredericktown, there was a slave estate, on which there were several white females of as fair and elegant appearance as white ladies in general, held in legal bondage as slaves. These facts demonstrate that the peculiar hue, with which it has pleased God to paint the surface of the body of an African, is not the only circumstance which reconciles to the conscience of the European, (white man) the act of depriving him of his liberty and the fruits of his labour. Hence it appears to be a melancholy truth, that man, in a morbid state of intellect, (which I consider to be the case with every individual, whose rule