an to the whites and slaves.
By the census of 1850, the ratio of whites in the Penitentiary of
Virginia, for ten years, was one to twenty-three thousand and three,
while the ratio for the free negroes was one to three thousand and one.
For the same length of time, in the Penitentiary of Massachusetts, the
average of whites was one to seven thousand five hundred and
eighty-seven, instead of one to twenty-three thousand and three, as in
Virginia; and in Massachusetts the average of free negroes in the
Penitentiary, for this length of time, was one to two hundred and fifty,
instead of one to three thousand and one, as in Virginia. Here we see
that for an average of ten years, two hundred and fifty free negroes at
the North, commit annually as much crime as twenty-three thousand and
three white persons at the South; and that two hundred and fifty free
negroes, in a non-slaveholding State, commit annually as much crime as
three thousand and one free negroes in a slaveholding State. We see,
also, that seven thousand five hundred and eighty-seven white persons at
the North, commit annually as much crime as twenty-three thousand and
three white persons commit at the South. In the cities, criminal
degradation at the North is from three to five times greater with the
whites than at the South, and from ten to ninety-three times greater
with the free negroes at the North, than with the whites at the South,
and about twelve times greater than with the free negroes at the South.

The Federal census, and the State records, show not very far from this
proportion of criminal degradation, chargeable to this race of people
when invested with _the freedom of New England_. Can we, with these
facts before us, think that freedom to this race, in our country, is a
blessing to them?

In Africa, the condition of the aborigines in freedom is now, and ever
has been, as much below that of their enslaved sons in these States, as
the condition of a brute, is beneath that of a man. Slavery is becoming,
to this people, so manifestly a blessing in our country, that fugitives
from labor are constantly returning to their masters again, after
tasting the blessings, or rather the awful curse to them, of freedom in
non-slaveholding States; and while I write, those who are lawfully free
in this State, are praying our Legislature for a law that will allow
them to become slaves.

But before I dismiss the subject of wealth entirely, let me remark, that
while