Taking the blacks as they are, and comparing them also with what they
would be in Africa, or if set free, to remain in connection with the
whites, slavery is not a curse. To be free is, of course, in itself a
blessing. But it depends on many things whether, under existing
circumstances, being a slave here is practically a curse. Our people
generally insist that it must be, and therefore that it is. Here they
are mistaken, as I now view the subject. The British people and the
French, looking at the blacks in a colony, settle the question of
emancipation in their own minds without much difficulty. But it would be
found to be a different thing to emancipate the colored race, to live
side by side with the English people in the mother-country. In that
case, a contest between the two races for the possession of power, and
innumerable offences and practical difficulties, would, in time, lead to
the extermination, or expatriation, of one of the two races, or to their
intermarriage, if the universal history of such conjunction of races is
any guide.
I do not wonder that the good lady with the "marsh-mallow" exclaimed so
at your groundless commiseration of the sick among the slaves.
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