Freedom alone will not elevate the blacks.

CONVERSATION XVII.

""Tis liberty alone that gives the flow'r
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;

And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,

Is evil; hurts the faculties; impedes

Their progress in the road of science; blinds

The eye-sight of discovery: and begets

In those who suffer it, a sordid mind,

Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit

To be the tenant of man's noble form."-Cowper.

· AFTER all, Pa, it appears to me,' said Henry, 'that it is more than freedom that is necessary to raise the African in the scale of being, and make him respected and happy. How many Negroes there are in this country that are free, and yet are quite as degraded as the slaves! Emancipation, it seems to me, is but a small part of the duty to which humanity calls us.'

'Yes, Pa,' said Caroline, 'I have thought that the blacks, even at the North, are generally very degraded and miserable; and I have been told that the free blacks at the South are even more grovelling and abandoned in their morals than the slaves.'

'It is true, my children, that whilst there are in the United States 300,000 persons of African origin who have the name

Strange that they are not even more depraved.

of being free, they are generally wretched. But we should remember that is because invincible prejudice is continually pressing them down, and paralyzing all the energies of their nature. There are circumstances which seem to check and utterly forbid, in most cases, every rising emotion of ambition. They have, in truth, neither home, country, or motive to effort. Let the white man be similarly situated, generation after generation growing up in ignorance and disgrace; and see if, in the lapse of time, he and his descendants are not wretched, their thoughts grovelling, and morals abandoned.'

Why, as to that, I do not think the blacks are more degraded than many whites. I have heard it remarked, that at the South even the slaves consider it a degradation to associate with the lowest class of whites."

'It has been said that, at the South, there are three great classes the respectable whites, the negroes, and the ignorant, or vicious and degraded whites; the last being lowest on the scale of respectability and moral worth. At the South, the line of demarkation is more clearly drawn between the respectable and the degraded, than in the Northern States. The white man who, at the South, cannot find a comfortable support, and maintain a respectable standing in society, is generally obnoxious to the suspicion of other causes of poverty and degradation than misfortune; whilst there is far greater equality than with us, among the respectable portion of the community.

'To return to your remark, about the unhappy condition of the free blacks. We admit that it is correct; but let me

ask if it is not strange that the blacks are not even more degraded than they are. I do not think that either free or slave will suffer in comparison with the whites, allowing for all

No stimulus to effort, and opportunity for distinction.

the circumstances which have led to the present condition of the blacks. The free, however, it must be confessed, are generally more sunken to a level with the brute, than the slave. They are, as a whole, exceeding corrupt, depraved, and abandoned. There are many honourable exceptions among them, and it is often a pleasure which I enjoy of bearing testimony to these exceptions; but the vicious and degraded habits and propensities of this class, are known to every man of attentive observation.

The characters of men for active industry, enterprise, and external morality, to say the least, always depend, more than is generally supposed, upon the circumstances in which they are placed. Among the causes which, probably, operate most powerfully on the character, is early encouragement. The child who is taught to expect and attempt great things, is most likely to imbibe a generous spirit of enterprise. It is the encouragement, the hope of attaining to some degree of excellence or measure of prosperity, which is wont to develope genius and make the man. But what hopes are before the minds of the children of our coloured population, as motives to aim at an elevated standing in society? What honourable employment to which the genius might happen to be suited, can be promised? To what circle of friendship and respectability, whose cultivated minds and purity of morals may operate as a stimulus, can the children of a coloured skin be introduced? Can the parents of those children, affording powerful motives in their own success and example, point to the successful merchant, the distinguished statesman, the eminent scholar, or physician, or divine, and say, you have the prospect of rising, with equal industry and merit, to a level with those? Alas! they must, at best, be hewers of wood and drawers of water. The bar, the pulpit, the legislative hall, the circles of refinement, and