tation to such violence, as there is so
large a proportion of this class of females who set little value on
chastity, and afford easy gratification to the hot passions of men. It
might be supposed, from the representations of some writers, that a
slaveholding country was one wide stew for the indulgence of unbridled
lust. Particular instances of intemperate and shameless debauchery are
related, which may perhaps be true, and it is left to be inferred that
this is the universal state of manners. Brutes and shameless debauchees
there are in every country; we know that if such things are related as
general or characteristic, the representation is false. Who would argue
from the existence of a Col. Chartres in England, or of some individuals
who might, perhaps, be named in other portions of this country, of the
horrid dissoluteness of manners occasioned by the want of the
institution of slavery? Yet the argument might be urged quite as fairly,
and really it seems to me with a little more justice--for there such
depravity is attended with much more pernicious consequences. Yet let us
not deny or extenuate the truth. It is true that in this respect the
morals of this class are very loose, (by no means so universally so as
is often supposed,) and that the passions of men of the superior caste,
tempt and find gratification in the easy chastity of the females. This
is evil, and to be remedied, if we can do so, without the introduction
of greater evil. But evil is incident to every condition of society, and
as I have said, we have only to consider in which institution it most
predominates.

Compare these prostitutes of our country, (if it is not injustice to
call them so,) and their condition with those of other countries--the
seventy thousand prostitutes of London, or of Paris, or the ten thousand
of New York, or our other Northern cities. Take the picture given of the
first from the author whom I have before quoted. "The laws and customs
of England conspire to sink this class of English women into a state of
vice and misery below that which necessarily belongs to their condition.
Hence their extreme degradation, their troopers' oaths, their love of
gin, their desperate recklessness, and the shortness of their miserable
lives.

"English women of this class, or rather girls, for few of them live to
be women, die like sheep with the rot; so fast that soon there would be
none left, if a fresh supply were not obtained equal to the