stress
openly, whether white or black. What Miss Martineau relates of a young
man's purchasing a colored concubine from a lady, and avowing his
designs, is too absurd even for contradiction. No person would dare to
allude to such a subject, in such a manner, to any decent female in this
country.

After all, however, the number of the mixed breed, in proportion to that
of the black, is infinitely small, and out of the towns next to nothing.
And when it is considered that the African race has been among us for
two hundred years, and that those of the mixed breed continually
intermarry--often rearing large families--it is a decided proof of our
continence, that so few comparatively are to be found. Our misfortunes
are two-fold. From the prolific propagation of these mongrels among
themselves, we are liable to be charged by tourists with delinquencies
where none have been committed, while, where one has been, it cannot be
concealed. Color marks indelibly the offense, and reveals it to every
eye. Conceive that, even in your virtuous and polished country, if every
bastard, through all the circles of your social system, was thus branded
by nature and known to all, what shocking developments might there not
be! How little indignation might your saints have to spare for the
licentiousness of the slave region. But I have done with this disgusting
topic. And I think I may justly conclude, after all the scandalous
charges which tea-table gossip, and long-gowned hypocrisy have brought
against the slaveholders, that a people whose men are proverbially
brave, intellectual and hospitable, and whose women are unaffectedly
chaste, devoted to domestic life, and happy in it, can neither be
degraded nor demoralized, whatever their institutions may be. My decided
opinion is, that our system of slavery contributes largely to the
development and culture of those high and noble qualities.

In an economical point of view--which I will not omit--slavery presents
some difficulties. As a general rule, I agree it must be admitted, that
free labor is cheaper than slave labor. It is a fallacy to suppose that
ours is _unpaid labor_. The slave himself must be paid for, and thus
his labor is all purchased at once, and for no trifling sum. His price
was, in the first place, paid mostly to your countrymen, and assisted in
building up some of those colossal English fortunes, since illustrated
by patents of nobility, and splendid piles of architecture, stai