of your land, and live in the expectation that you will presently rid the other half of it, nay, that you will ultimately be the happy means of expelling it from the world. Yet perhaps there is some deception in your case. Can it be, as one has heard it many times stated, that, had it not been for foreign interference, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware would have ceased to hold slaves ere now? Why, if you would do right, allow your displeasure against "foreign interference" to have any power in inducing you to continue a wrong? Do you not deceive yourselves? I see our countryman James Stuart, in his "Three Years in America," adopted the idea of the friends with whom he conversed, that in ten years slavery would be at an end in Kentucky. That was said in 1830. Twenty-one years of ill-gotten gains and woe have passed since then. The delusions of hope that tend but to prolong a system which themselves abhor, are they not most pernicious and unfounded? When did evil arise and break itself to pieces, and rejoice over its own ruins? It cannot be. The better genius of Kentucky must awake and do the work—and rising from the wreck of its wrong, spring up to what just principles, genius, industry, and plentiful and fertile land, and free institutions, can make it. It must heal itself—and if it does not, another ten, another twenty years may pass, and Kentucky and Delaware will be found as they are now, groaning and hating, but enduring and abetting slavery.

It was not my design to allude to this most painful subject. But in contemplating death, the termination of all our toils and all our gains, how could the depression of the coloured race and its termination fail to arise in the mind? "Behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the living who are yet alive.” Yea-presently-haste to be just before the time comės, for presently "the small and the great will lie down together, where the servant is free from his master."

Having fallen on this sore subject, it is right to make an observation or two to place British motives for remarking on the condition of the Africo-American race in a kinder point of view than that in which they generally first appear to an American.

We are not used to see coloured people at home, though our own heavy share of the evil and responsibility of transporting them from Africa, and placing them in a state of bondage, leads us to think much of them in absence, and to be anxious about their condition when we see them and visit their haunts.

For myself-and it may truly be said of thousands besides my observation and questions about them are from motives the very reverse of a desire to censure, or a pleasure in remarking on what is felt by Americans to be the unsound and inconsistent part of their constitution. I wanted to know their posi

tion, social and religious, in the Free States.

I

wanted to know the mind of the slaveholders in the Slave States. I longed for leave to hope for good in the one, and to see good in the other. The manner in which such questions were generally met pained me sincerely. It was the only subject on which I saw a tendency to a ruffle on the sunny surface of American temper, and reminded me of Tom Moore's anecdote of an interview he had with Byron. Byron seemed never to have forgiven the providence which had disfigured his otherwise beautiful person by a club-foot. While the poets conversed, the eye of the Irish lyrist rested on the foot. The saturnine lord observed it, and his countenance darkened. Poor Tom became aware, and evaded a bitter burst by making his eyes wander carelessly over the whole person as if he had not specially marked the foot, when gradually the thunder-cloud dispersed, and sunshine returned.

Every nation has its club-foot-some have twosome are perfect centipedes in deformities: happy America, if she have but one! It is the more painfully deforming, but will be the more easily remedied. Even young ladies seem expert tacticians on this subject, and carry the war into the enemy's camp with great keenness. When a simple inquiry is made, not by an enemy, but a true friend, they accuse England of the cruelties perpetrated in Manchester on the manufacturers of cotton cloth, as being worse than those inflicted on negroes who

raise the raw material.

They hardly believe when told that these people are free, that if they do not like one master they can engage with another, that they receive wages for their work, and if oppressed or injured, they can bring the oppressor before a magistrate. If, however, convinced that this is not a point where they can make a breach in the wall of the British constitution, they will assail you on the wrongs of Ireland. Should the truth that Ireland has been misgoverned by reason of its Popish preferences be conceded, they triumph, and say it does not become us to criticise slavery; as if evils on one side of the Atlantic could neutralise those on the otheror as if evils in our government of Ireland-the remedy of which has cost Britain millions of gold, and more than millions of ingenuity, trouble, and disappointment-ought to seal up our hearts against every benevolent sentiment in reference to the African race, or shut us out from the natural desire of information as to the condition of one branch of the human species.

The coloured people, who imitate all the respectable customs of the whites, have their funeral processions and their mourning garments, and look much more like paying respect to their dead, and feeling sympathy for the living, than the Irish do. Those of them who have any religion, are Protestants, and form the procession, not to please, or to put money into the purse of the priest, but to shew kindness to the departed. I heard the minister of a coloured

church announce from the pulpit the death of a highly esteemed church-member, and the hour of his funeral, inviting attendance, and stating that if the choir could be spared by their employers, it would fitly assist a becoming solemnity if they would attend, and sing two appropriate hymns, which he pointed out. There was neither levity nor show, but a becoming sentiment apparent, in what the good man advised.

One custom, which at first surprised me, but afterwards commended itself as most convenient, prevails, as I found on inquiry, in many cities and villages. In cases of death, some considerate neighbour borrows for the bereaved family suitable dresses, from any one who has them, which are worn on occasion of the funeral, and then returned, thus leaving the mourners undisturbed, till their own convenience enables them to procure at leisure what they require.* I have known one excellent Christian gentlewoman, on occasion of the death of one of the most highly esteemed pastors of her city, consider the age and size of the daughters, and who of similar figure among her acquaintance were wearing mourning at that time. She then set off herself, accompanied by her maid, procured what she wanted, bonnets, shawls, and everything necessary, and carried them to the house of mourning, where they were willingly received, and used without scruple.

* It must be remembered that the funeral comes very quickly after death, and that females generally attend them.