come out," says Dr. Channing,
"that the hopes of the most sanguine advocates of emancipation have been
realized--if not surpassed--by the West Indies." What! the negro become
idle, indeed! "He is more likely," says the enchanted doctor, "to fall
into the civilized man's cupidity than into the filth and sloth of the
savage." But all these magnificent boasts were quite premature. A few
short years have sufficed to demonstrate that the deluded authors of
them, who had so lamentably failed to predict the future, could not even
read the present.

Their boasts are now exploded. Their former hopes are blasted; and their
cry is changed. The song now is,--"Well, suppose the negroes will not
work: they are FREE! They can now do as they list, and there is no man
to hinder." Ah, yes! they can now, at their own sweet will, stretch
themselves "under their gracefully-waving groves," and be lulled to
sleep amid the sound of waterfalls and the song of birds.

Such, precisely, is the paradise for which the negro sighs, except that
he does not care for the waterfalls and the birds. But it should be
remarked, that when sinful man was driven from the only Paradise that
earth has ever seen, he was doomed to eat his bread in the sweat of his
brow. This doom he cannot reverse. Let him make of life--as the Haytien
negroes do--"one long day of unprofitable ease,"[189] and he may dream
of Paradise, or the abolitionists may dream for him. But while he
dreams, the laws of nature are sternly at their work. Indolence benumbs
his feeble intellect, and inflames his passions. Poverty and want are
creeping on him. Temptation is surrounding him; and vice, with all her
motley train, is winding fast her deadly coils around his very soul, and
making him the devil's slave, to do his work upon the earth. Thus, the
blossoms of his paradise are _fine words_, and its fruits are _death_.

"If but two hours' labor per day," says Theodore Parker, "are necessary
for the support of each colored man, I know not why he should toil
longer." You know not, then, why the colored man should work more than
two hours a day? Neither does the colored man himself. You know not why
he should have any higher or nobler aim in life than to supply his few,
pressing, animal wants? Neither does he. You know not why he should
think of the future, or provide for the necessities of old age? Neither
does he. You know not why he should take thought for seasons of
sickness? Neither does he