th the striking pages in
which Mr. Fisher shows the prospect of the ultimate and not distant
ascendency of the black race in this new Africa. The considerations he
presents are of vital consequence to the South, of consequence only less
than vital to the North. But by the side of "New-Africa" are States and
Territories in which the black race has little or no foothold. Free,
civilized, and prosperous communities are brought face to face, as it
were, with the mixed and degenerating populations of the Slave country.
In the Free States the white race is increasing in numbers and advancing
in prosperity with unexampled rapidity. In the Slave States the black
race is growing in far greater proportion than the white, the most
important elements of prosperity are becoming exhausted, and the
forces of civilization are incompetent to hold their own against the
ever-increasing weight of barbarism. Shall this new Africa push its
boundaries beyond their present limits? Shall more territory be yielded
to the already wide-spread African, race? It is not the question,
whether the unoccupied spaces of the South and West shall be settled by
Northern white emigrants with their natural property, or by Southern
white emigrants with their legal property,--and there an end; but it
is the question, whether New England or New Africa shall extend her
limits,--whether the country shall be occupied a century hence by a
civilized or by a barbarous race. Every rood of ground yielded to the
pretensions of the masters of slaves is so much of the heirloom of
freedom and of civilization lost without hope of recovery. Slavery is
transient.

As an institution, such as it has developed itself in our Southern
States, it has already, given tokens of decay. But the qualities of race
are so slowly affected by change as to admit of being called constant
and permanent. The predominant influence of the blacks in the Cotton
States is already (even putting aside the results of slavery) exhibiting
itself in the lowering of the whites. These States are becoming
uninhabitable for the whites,--not by reason of climate, or of slavery
as an institution, but by reason of the operation of the inevitable
increase of the slaves. They must have the land, and the stronger race
will be driven out by the weaker, on account of the preponderance of
their numbers and the _vis inertice_ of their natures. There is no room
in the United States, or in any of their unsettled territory,