ture;
otherwise the first accident, the first war, gives it over to perils
that make us shudder. Thanks to their metropolises, our colonies were
able first to keep, and afterwards to enfranchise their slaves, without
succumbing to the task. But let a Southern Confederacy come, in which
the immigration of the whites will be naught, while the increase of the
blacks will be pursued in all ways, and, in case of success, the moment
will soon arrive when many States will see themselves placed, as is the
case already with South Carolina, in presence of a number of slaves
exceeding that of free men. Such a social monstrosity never existed
under the sun; even in Greece, even in Rome, even among the Mussulmans,
the total number of free men remained superior; the colonies alone,
through the effect of the slave trade, presented an inverse phenomenon,
and the colonies were consolidated with their metropolises in the same
manner that the States of the South are consolidated with those of the
North.

In this will be found, I repeat, a most important guarantee. The South
in rejecting it, and imagining itself able alone to maintain a situation
which will become graver day by day, deludes itself most strangely. At
the hour of peril, when servile insurrection perhaps shall ravage its
territory, it will be astonished to find itself left alone in the
presence of its enemy.

And this enemy is not one that can be conquered once for all. Even
after the victory, even in times of peace, the threat of servile
insurrection will ever remain suspended over the head of the Southern
Confederacy; it will be necessary always to watch, always to be on the
guard, always to repress, and, to tell the truth, always to tremble. The
planters, whether they know it or not, are not preparing to sleep on a
bed of roses. To labor to accomplish an iniquitous work amidst the
maledictions of the universe, to increase their estates and their slaves
under penalty of death, and to feel instinctively that they will die for
having increased them, to tremble because of European hostility, to
tremble because of American hostility, to tremble because of hostility
from without and within--what a life! That one might accept it in the
service of a noble cause, I can comprehend; but the cause of the South!
In truth, this would be taking great pains for small wages.

The South inspires me with profound compassion. We have told it, much
too often, that its Confederacy was easy t