improvement as to make what
he calls the necessary condition of servitude needless in the interest
of either race. We are surprised that so good a reasoner should speak
of the ignorance of the black as a natural disqualification for
independence, and the more so, because, in another passage, Mr. Fisher
says, with truth, "We darken his mind with ignorance." That some form
of subjection of the negro may be necessary for a time that extends far
into the future is a point we will not dispute; but that slavery, as
that word is generally understood, is the necessary result of his nature
and of our nature we believe to be utterly untrue. The whole history
of American slavery, far from exhibiting the negro as incapable of
improvement, shows him making a slow and irregular advance in the
development of intellectual and moral qualities, under circumstances
singularly unfavorable. It is the plea of the advocates of the
slave-trade, that the black is civilized by contact with the white.
The plea is not without truth. It is the universal testimony of
slave-owners, and the common observation of travellers, that the city
and house slaves, that is, those who are brought into most constant and
close relations with the whites, show higher mental development than
those who are confined to the fields. The experiment of education,
continued for more than one generation, has never been tried. The black
is in many of his endowments inferior to the white; but until he and
his children and his children's children have shown an incapacity to be
raised by a suitable training, honestly given, to an intellectual and
moral condition that shall fit them for self-dependence, we have no
right to assert that slavery is a necessary condition, if in the meaning
of necessary we include the idea of permanence. It is not needful to
present here other objections to this sweeping assertion. They are old,
well-known, and unanswerable.

But leaving this and other points on which we find ourselves at issue
with Mr. Fisher, we come to what we regard as the most important part of
his pamphlet,--the results which he shows to follow from the law, that
"each race has a tendency to occupy exclusively that portion of the
country suited to its nature." In the States that lie on the Gulf of
Mexico the negro "has found a congenial climate and obtained a permanent
foothold." "The negro multiplies there; the white man dwindles and
decays." We should be glad to quote at leng