dly deserves a harsher term than
that of weakness. I have heard of complaint made by a free prostitute,
of the greater countenance and indulgence shown by society toward
colored persons of her profession, (always regarded as of an inferior
and servile class, though individually free,) than to those of her own
complexion. The former readily obtain employment; are even admitted into
families, and treated with some degree of kindness and familiarity,
while any approach to intercourse with the latter is shunned as
contamination. The distinction is habitually made, and it is founded on
the unerring instinct of nature. The colored prostitute is, in fact, a
far less contaminated and depraved being. Still many, in spite of
temptation, do preserve a perfectly virtuous conduct, and I imagine it
hardly ever entered into the mind of one of these, that she was likely
to be forced from it by authority or violence.

It may be asked, if we have no prostitutes from the free class of
society among ourselves. I answer, in no assignable proportion. With
general truth, it might be said, that there are none. When such a case
occurs, it is among the rare evils of society. And apart from other and
better reasons, which we believe to exist, it is plain that it must be
so, from the comparative absence of temptation. Our brothels,
comparatively very few--and these should not be permitted to exist at
all--are filled, for the most part, by importations from the cities of
our confederate States, where slavery does not exist. In return for the
benefits which they receive from our slavery, along with tariffs,
libels, opinions, moral, religious, or political--they furnish us also
with a supply of thieves and prostitutes. Never, but in a single
instance, have I heard of an imputation on the general purity of
manners, among the free females of the slaveholding States. Such an
imputation, however, and made in coarse terms, we have never heard
here--_here_ where divorce was never known--where no court was ever
polluted by an action for criminal conversation with a wife--where it is
related rather as matter of tradition, not unmingled with wonder, that a
Carolinian woman of education and family, proved false to her conjugal
faith--an imputation deserving only of such reply as self-respect would
forbid us to give, if respect for the author of it did not. And can it
be doubted, that this purity is caused by, and is a compensation for the
evils resulting from