existence of slavery. In any event, come what will, transpire what may, the institution must be abolished. The evils, if any, which are to result from its abolition, cannot, by any manner of means, be half as great as the evils which are certain to overtake us in case of its continuance. The perpetuation of slavery is the climax of iniquity.

Two hundred and thirty-seven years have the negroes in America been held in inhuman bondage. During the whole of this long period they have toiled unceasingly from the gray of dawn till the dusk of eve, for their cruel task-masters, who have rewarded them with scanty allowances of the most inferior qualities of victuals and clothes, with heartless separations of the tenderest ties of kindred, with epithets, with scoldings, with execrations, and with the lash-and, not unfrequently, with the fatal bludgeon or the more deadly weapon. From the labor of their hands, and from the fruit of their loins, the humanmongers of the South have become wealthy, insolent, corrupt, and tyrannical. In reason and in conscience the slaves might claim from their masters a much larger sum than we have proposed to allow them. If they were to demand an equal share of all the property, real and personal, which has been accumulated or produced through their efforts, Heaven, we believe, would recognize them as honest claimants.

Elsewhere we have shown, by just and liberal estimates, that, on the single score of damages to lands, the slaveholders are, at this moment, indebted to the non-slaveholding whites in the extraordinary sum of $7,544,148,825.

Considered in connection with the righteous claim of wages
for services which the negroes might bring against their
masters, these figures are the heralds of the significant fact
that, if strict justice could be meted out to all parties in
the South, the slaveholders would not only be stripped of
every dollar, but they would become in law as they are in
reality, the hopeless debtors of the myriads of unfortunate
slaves, white and black, who are now cringing, and fawn-
ing, and festering around them. In this matter, however,
so far has wrong triumphed over right, that the slavehold-
ers-a mere handful of tyrants, whose manual exercises
are wholly comprised in the use they make of instruments
of torture, such as whips, clubs, bowie-knives and pistols
-have, as the result of a series of acts of their own vil-
lainous legislation, become the sole and niggardly propri-
etors of almost every important item of Southern wealth;
not only do they own all the slaves-none of whom any
really respectable person cares to own-but they are also
in possession of the more valuable tracts of land and the
appurtenances thereto belonging; while the non-slavehold-
ing whites and the negroes, who compose at least nine-
tenths of the entire population, and who are the actual
producers of every article of merchandize, animal, vegeta-
ble, and mineral, that is sold from the South, are most
wickedly despoiled of the fruits of their labors, and cast
into the dismal abodes of extreme ignorance, destitution
and misery.

For the services of the blacks from the 20th of August, 1620, up to the 4th of July, 1863-an interval of precisely two hundred and forty-two years ten months and fourteen

days their masters, if unwilling, ought, in our judgment, to be compelled to grant them their freedom, and to pay each and every one of them at least sixty dollars cash in hand. The aggregate sum thus raised would amount to about two hundred and forty-five millions of dollars, which is less than the total market value of two entire crops of cotton-one-half of which sum would be amply sufficient to land every negro in this country on the coast of Liberia, whither, if we had the power, we would ship them all within the next six months. As a means of protection against the exigencies which might arise from a sudden transition from their present homes in America to their future homes in Africa, and for the purpose of enabling them there to take the initiatory step in the walks of civilized life, the remainder of the sum-say about one hundred and twenty-two millions of dollars-might, very properly, be equally distributed amongst them after their arrival in the land of their fathers.

Dr. James Hall, the Secretary of the Maryland Coloniza tion Society, informs us that the average cost of sending negroes to Liberia does not exceed thirty dollars each; and it is his opinion that arrangements might be made on an extensive plan for conveying them thither at an average expense of not more than twenty-five dollars each.

The American colonization movement, as now systematized and conducted, is simply an American humane farce. At present the slaves are increasing in this country at the rate of nearly one hundred thousand per annum; within the last ten years, as will appear below, the American Colonization Society has sent to Liberia less than five thousand negroes.

The average of this total is precisely four hundred and twenty-eight, which may be said to be the number of negroes annually colonized by the society; while the yearly increase of slaves, as previously stated, is little less than one hundred thousand! Fiddlesticks for such colonization! Once for all, within a reasonably short period, let us make the slaveholders do something like justice to their negroes by giving each and every one of them his freedom, and sixty dollars in current money; then let us charter all the ocean steamers, packets and clipper ships that can be had on liberal terms, and keep them constantly plying between the ports of America and Africa, until all slaves shall enjoy freedom in the land of their fathers. Under a well-devised and properly conducted system of operations, but a few years would be required. to redeem the United States from the monstrous curse of negro slavery.

few years ago, when certain ethnographical oligarchs proved to their own satisfaction that the negro was an inferior "type of mankind," they chuckled wonderfully, and avowed, in substance, that it was right for the stronger race to kidnap and enslave the weaker-that because Nature had been pleased to do a trifle more for the Caucasian race than for the African, the former, by virtue of its superiority, was perfectly justifiable in holding the latter in absolute and perpetual bondage! No system of logic could be more antagonistic to the spirit of true democracy. It is probable that the world does not contain two persons who are exactly alike in all respects; yet "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." All mankind may or may not be the descendants of Adam and Eve. In our own humble way of thinking, we are frank to confess, we do not believe in the unity of the races. This is a matter, however, which has little or nothing to do with the great question. at issue. Aside from any theory concerning the original parentage of the different races of men, facts, material and immaterial, palpable and impalpable-facts of the eyes and facts of the conscience-crowd around us on every hand, heaping proof upon proof, that slavery is a shame, a crime, and a curse-a great moral, social, civil, and political evil-an oppressive burden to the blacks, and an incalculable injury to the whites-a stumblingblock to the nation, an impediment to progress, a damper on all the nobler instincts, principles, aspirations and enterprises of man, and a dire enemy to every true interest.