Dixon's line," into North and South; not, indeed, that all the friends of freedom are on the one side, or all the coadjutors of oppression on the other; the issue would be a far easier one to meet, if it were so.

Those who are familiar with the history of recent events will scarcely need to be reminded of the formation of the Free Soil party, its subsequent growth, and the consequent committalism of the Northern leaders of the other parties to its avowed purpose; or of the proceedings of the last session of Congress; so remarkable for accomplishing next to nothing, and thus doing a vast deal in behalf of human freedom, when not able, for the first time in the history of recent sessions, to do any more for Slavery. These are indications of a brave work going on bravely, though slowly, as it must needs be.

The main question, towards which these things all very plainly look, has not yet come to be tried; and perhaps the people are not ready, North or South, to say whether Slavery shall any longer be allowed as heretofore to rule the destinies of the Republic, by its existence on the statute book, and on its soil, where the jurisdiction is exclusively national. The earnestness with which vulnerable positions are defended, shows that there will yet be a fearful war of argumentation, and a sad loss of temper, if not of life and property, before Slavery can be exterminated: that is, if these gentlemen have their own way!

The purposes of the documents above named is to check, if it be possible, the "anti-slavery agitation," which already puts on, in the view of the champions of oppression, too much of the manly spirit and courage so well befitting its humane object. Mr. Fisher even boldly argues in favor of Slavery from its manifest results, as it has always been common to infer the beneficence of the Creator from the beauty and goodness of the creation. This gentleman was once, we have heard, so zealous in opposition to slave-labor, that he avoided the use of any of its products! He dwells in a Free State now; is surrounded by free associations, among which, we presume, he lives voluntarily, and addressed an audience of young men in the city of Cincinnati, in praise of Slavery from its influence upon society!

Such a document is entirely new in the controversy. The array of "fictitious facts," as the elder Pitt styled the charges against himself, will astonish every one. Indeed, in this wonderful production we have a new synonyme for Slavery:

"the unrivalled system of Southern civilization; against which are exhibited in striking colors the woes and wretchedness, the celibacy, penury, and profligacy of New England, where "multitudes [of the young men] die by dissipation in her cities; and her lonely and deserted women are placed, not in convents, but in factories." "In Boston, one person out of every fourteen males, and one out of every twenty-eight females, is arrested annually for criminal offences;" while, of course, "there must be many, who escape detection altogether."

We have neither space nor inclination to follow Mr. Fisher through the pamphlet in which he demonstrates, to his own satisfaction, that the Free States are in a sad way of decline, as to wealth, population, morals, and religion, when compared with the Slave States; and that the complaints with which Southern papers have so long teemed, of the degeneracy and stagnation, in all respects, of Southern cities, and of the Southern population generally, are wholly untrue. Mr. Fisher deduces conclusions from the comparison of the rural districts of one section with the dense population of the cities of another; and thus constructs an argument, which New Orleans or St. Louis would scarcely have afforded, in favor of the moral and social position of men in the region of Slavery! It may seem strange to some of us, that the laborers of the South so much increase the aggregate wealth, because they are slaves, while the laborers of the North do the reverse; that Virginia without schools is quite as well off as Massachusetts with them; and that the liberal tendencies of Northern theology contrast unfavorably with the formalism of Episcopacy, and the bigotry of the more exclusive sects which thrive best in the Southern and South-western States! Yet these are some of the results of "the unrivalled system of Southern civilization," which is, it seems, bearing aloft to heights yet unattained, the character, the enterprise, the thrift, the intelligence, and the religion of such as live on other men's unrequited toil! Reply is needless.

Mr. Clay's letter presents a different view of the subject. Himself a slave-holder, and ever watchful of the interests of his associates in slave-holding, he yet dissents entirely and radically from the positions of Mr. Fisher. Indeed, he has here

*[There has been an able reply to this work of Mr. Fisher, in which his "facts" and arguments are carefully examined: - Review of Ellwood Fisher's Lecture on the North and the South, by Osgood Mussey. Cincinnati. 1849. 8vo. pp. 98. - ED.]

given us an important admission, in intimating the indirect evil influence, socially and morally, of the institution upon the master. It is gratifying also to have the confession from that side of the absolute and necessary instability of the system of oppression.

And yet it is saddening to find a statesman so eminent deliberately preparing and publishing such views of emancipation; doing this as with his latest breath, and after all the considerations, which any baffled hope of advancement may have heretofore suggested, must have passed away. Let it be conceded that this letter gave hope and cheer to the friends of freedom. in Kentucky, at a moment when they were likely to be dismayed and disheartened by the turn of events at home,even although this shall be deemed the best scheme which could find any favor at the hands of men who will most require to be counselled, entreated, and convinced,-still, with all its admissions and concessions, it is too thoroughly selfish in its arguments and too neglectful of the natural rights of the slave to find any great favor with the friends of humanity anywhere.

Men of such distinguished ability will always be censured when they restrain the movements which they ought to lead. Mr. Clay does not stand in the foreground. It would seem to be the office of one so well qualified, in the crisis through which his own State is passing, urged on by noble spirits, pigmies in influence to him, to carry the noblest work of the day to its successful and holiest termination. Incautiously for the integrity of his purpose, Mr. C. admits that Slavery is a terrible woe to the victims, and scarcely any thing less to the masters; that it was commenced in wanton and violent outrage, and is continued only by force; and yet declares that he shall be opposed to any scheme of emancipation, to any restoration of violated rights, to any relief from the woe to the one side, and from the direct or indirect injury to the other, without a system of colonization, the impracticability of which within one hundred years seems to put off all redress and deliverance almost indefinitely!

We are mistaken if Mr. Clay has not signally failed, in this as in other schemes of his, to gain any thing but reproof. The day is passing for such temporizing policy. He has ever been recognized as a "compromiser," "a man of expediency, more ready to patch up dilapidated structures than to erect new ones, and not a little disposed to sacrifice great interests for immediate advantages. It seems a pity, in such a contro

versy, that all the expediency should be applied on the side of the oppressor.

The emancipationists in Kentucky and elsewhere, whether gradualists or immediatists, will not fail to take advantage of the admissions which come in good season, precisely one month after the delivery of Mr. Fisher's lecture. They will rejoice that Mr. Clay has told his fellow-citizens what he and they might long ago have learned from other sources, that Slavery is never a blessing to either the enslaver or the enslaved; and that the inferiority of the colored race, if there be such inferiority, entitles that race to protection, not to insult and injury. But on what reasonable ground is the slave, so wrongfully oppressed, held in bondage by no divine right, to be required to purchase his freedom at such an exorbitant price over and above his daily living, and to pay for his subsequent expatriation? The victim surely is the last man under the sun who ever should be mulcted for his sufferings. Not many of the hired men of the North could contrive to pay for themselves at such rates, or at rates correspondingly increased as white labor receives so much higher compensation, and for all the infirm and disabled, young and old, within the circle of a given number of miles, and accumulate in the mean time sums sufficient for the transportation of the whole number across the Atlantic! Well does our author affirm, that the first sacrifice on the part of any slave-holder would be at a distance of at least thirty-five years! especially as the right to sell out of the State into regions even less humane is to be held inviolable!

But one word more upon this favorite scheme of colonization or the motion for indefinite postponement of the whole subject of emancipation: - It might be difficult to prove that the colored race of America was not as much a native race as any other class of persons who happen now to dwell here, excepting the Aborigines. It is generally argued, such is Mr. C.'s position, that the descendants of Africans should be removed, because they and the European race cannot live together. This alternative is a gross assumption. Freedom will not make a difference half so much to be dreaded as the present state of things. Would there be more estrangement between employers and employed than between masters and serfs? But granting the fact for argument's sake, and consenting, for a moment, to bow before the bugbear of amalgamation as an unavoidable consequence of freedom, even more so than of Slavery with its varied hues, will any one show us the white

man's right to remain upon this side of the ocean, and to compel his sable neighbour to remove to the other? Let us be just if we cannot be generous. We are as far from our natural home as is the African; and it would cost much less, in a pecuniary point of view, provided the two races cannot dwell harmoniously side by side, to transport five hundred thousand whites to a more congenial spot, than to convey across the At lantic the present number of three millions of reputed blacks. At least, expatriation is a better word than colonization, when it is proposed to remove compulsorily. Mr. Clay's plan strikes us as being entirely impracticable, and abhorrent to all ideas of justice. Confessing the difficulty of the subject, we do not so much complain that he has not removed it all, as that he has chosen to view it only in this one-sided, unjust, we had almost said, perfectly absurd manner.*

But every intelligent friend of mankind will feel that these are side issues after all. Mr. Fisher's comparison of the thrift and prosperity of different sections when a great question of humanity is to be solved, seems to be very mean and contemptible. If all that Mr. F. says in his Lecture were as true as it is generally false, if his arguments were of decent validity, and his figures of tolerable accuracy, still nothing of this kind can touch the question of Freedom or Slavery. If the South be richer than the North, the argument from the fact is best answered by a reference to the ideal treasure which one Captain Kyd is currently reported to have buried somewhere in the sand,the results of predatory and piratic enterprises; for wealth does not always prove the honesty, integrity, or blessedness of the ways in which it was amassed; it is therefore no adequate sponsor for the character of the possessor. We wonder that the same author should have trusted himself on the moral and religious grounds of preference for Slavery! If the results of licentiousness can anywhere else in the civilized world be as plainly observed as at the South, the fact has never yet been brought to light.

Then as to the scheme of colonization, one word more.

do not marvel that it should seem hard to those who have nurtured the bantling to a period when it was to assume the raiment and do the offices of manhood, to find it something less

*It used to be argued that Slavery was to be tolerated because the fertile fields of the South and South-west could only be tilled by the African race. Is it proposed, in colonizing this whole people, to relinquish this argument for slave-labor, or to leave the plantations uncultivated?